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I was unfortunately unable to get Smith & Cross rum for this, so I got the next best with Pusser's Gunpowder; turns out a local liquor store has a huge rum selection, ordering practically everything available in Florida, and had half a dozen bottles of it. I drank half of the 10 oz. rum ration in grog form over about 2 hours and came to some conclusions about it. The 4:1 grog smells strongly of rum, but the taste is only the strongest portions severely watered down. With the Pusser's Gunpowder that ends up being a caramel/toffee flavor and alcohol. The most import conclusion is the alcohol content. You will indeed get mildly drunk off it if you consume as much as I do and have the tolerance of a man 6'2 and 220 pounds, but how much you're affected will depend on the job you're doing. I would certainly suspect that in the 6 hours or so between rum servings, this amount would wear off and leave you sober to receive the next half. It's an amount that leaves a regular drinking sailor pleasantly buzzed but expressing few or no obvious signs of drunkenness. This is only part of the experiment. I still have the rest of the bottle and will be doing a day where I drink 4 cups of grog over the course of a day, each cup having 2.5 oz. of the rum in it. It's ambiguous if the sailors actually drank their whole ration in one go, so this will cover the second possibility of a more gradual consumption over the day.
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Nov 19, 2019 04:30
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I cannot believe that there wasn’t some kinda on-ship black market in rum rations. But my pop history loving self has never heard of this. Is this, like the specifics of buggery aboard, lost to time and the upper classes’ control of the narrative?
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Nov 19, 2019 04:49
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Remulak posted:I cannot believe that there wasn’t some kinda on-ship black market in rum rations. But my pop history loving self has never heard of this. The rum ration was kept in a locked room on the ship under guard, not only to prevent theft but because its high proof meant that it could cause a deadly fire if a careless/drunk sailor started swinging a lantern around the tub. It was issued twice per day: once around noon and once in the late afternoon. At least from 1850 onward, a mess's ration was poured into a metal can and brought to the rest of the mess in it rather than handed out to each sailor individually (especially since, watered down to grog, it would take two roughly half-full pint mugs to drink one serving). Sailors did offer parts of their ration to others in their mess in exchange for other duties or goods and they could use their pay to buy more food and drink in port, but there wasn't a ton to go around. You could reject your rum ration in exchange for monetary compensation, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least one teetotaler got the idea to stay quiet and just give his ration to others to make his life easier belowdecks. It's been said that the watering down of the rum ration to grog was a way to keep sailors from just saving their ration and getting trashed on a weekend, and it makes sense. A 4:1 dilution makes drinking the ration take much longer for the relative amount of alcohol, like downing a mug of beer rather than a shot of liquor. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 05:09
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Though Google Books I found these bits in "Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy" by Christopher McKee:  
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Nov 19, 2019 09:04
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I finally got a bottle of the Smith & Cross Jamaican, so I did the second half of my experiment! I would drink one mug of grog with 2.5 oz. of alcohol total every 2 hours to see how stretching my rum ration over the entire day would affect my sobriety. It seems to depend very much on how fast you drink your mug! If you chug the whole thing and stick with water for the next 2 hours, you'll maintain your sobriety relatively well. However, drinking it slowly will cause a steady buildup of drunkenness as you leave insufficient time for the rum to wear off before getting to the next serving. It seems like the Royal Navy issuance of twice a day is actually the best option, as it allows the initially high dose of 5 oz. of 100 proof rum to wear off for the most part by the time you get your second in the late afternoon. Either way, I don't see any truth to the more exaggerated claims of sailors being in a constant state of inebriation, constantly falling off the rigging or tumbling overboard. Along with the regulations against visible drunkenness, it would simply be stupid of a navy that was ordinarily obsessed with order and precision (often to the detriment of those who needed to follow all the regulations and do all the paperwork to comply) to issue its sailors alcohol in a way that left them unable to do their duty, regardless of the morale benefits.
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Nov 25, 2019 04:27
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Since the USSR is history, that means real Soviet cooking is also historical cooking. As for drinking, I think that also roughly follows the Pareto principle, in that about 20% of the population consumes 80% of the liquor.
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Nov 25, 2019 04:44
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There's a steak recipe that was apparently the kind eaten by Taft that I would like to try:quote:Broiled Steak
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Nov 25, 2019 05:35
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chitoryu12 posted:There's a steak recipe that was apparently the kind eaten by Taft that I would like to try: But that's just a standard broiled steak? I mean they're good but it's not precisely a rare (lol) technique.
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Nov 25, 2019 15:27
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That's pretty much "recipe for steak: cook a steak"
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Nov 25, 2019 16:49
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angerbeet posted:That's pretty much "recipe for steak: cook a steak" 
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Nov 25, 2019 17:10
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Pham Nuwen posted:But that's just a standard broiled steak? I mean they're good but it's not precisely a rare (lol) technique. I wanted to try and replicate it exactly, including the time and gas broiler, to see how it comes out.
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Nov 25, 2019 17:18
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18th Century Welsh Rarebit: Welsh Rarebit, pronounced Welsh Rabbit, is not a Welsh dish and there is no rabbit in it at all. It is believed the name originated in the 18th century as an English insult to the Welsh. It's a grilled cheese sandwich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeV3DLfeWGQ
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Nov 27, 2019 06:08
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golden bubble posted:18th Century Welsh Rarebit: Welsh Rarebit, pronounced Welsh Rabbit, is not a Welsh dish and there is no rabbit in it at all. It is believed the name originated in the 18th century as an English insult to the Welsh. The actual reason why the rabbit is Welsh is unknown. There are several plausible speculations: the popular prejudice was that the Welsh were overfond of cheese; in early 18th Century English Welsh as an adjective carried a connotation of abstract foreignness; perhaps it is a corruption of the Indo-European root walhaz meaning foreign; and so on. In addition to the Welsh, the rabbit was sometimes attributed to the Scotch, perhaps because of the stereotype of Scotch thrift. That all being said: has Welsh rabbit become obscure enough to need explanation?
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Nov 27, 2019 06:29
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golden bubble posted:18th Century Welsh Rarebit: Welsh Rarebit, pronounced Welsh Rabbit, is not a Welsh dish and there is no rabbit in it at all. It is believed the name originated in the 18th century as an English insult to the Welsh. There used to be a restaurant in Houston called Feast that specialized in "nose to tail cooking" (this was 10 years ago, long before this was common in the US). They were absolutely my favorite restaurant here for a number of reasons, but one of the most memorable dishes was their Welsh Rarebit. I was able to get a couple tips from them shortly before they closed - one was to add some mustard to the mix, the other one was to add some strong flavored beer. Nothing too one note like an IPA, but a good brown ale or something. Make a cheese sauce out of that, top the toasted bread with it, toss it under a broiler for a couple minutes and you're good to go. I keep meaning to replicate it but I never think about it other than times like this when someone else mentions the dish.
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Nov 27, 2019 07:29
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SubG posted:That all being said: has Welsh rabbit become obscure enough to need explanation? I mean, the comic is no longer running in papers...
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Nov 27, 2019 07:59
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The Lord Bude posted:I think Americans are just weird about alcohol. Here in Australia if you wander through a CBD at lunchtime on a weekday you’ll see every pub/restaurant/cafe packed to the brim with office workers having a beer or a glass of wine with their lunch. It’s also entirely normal to have an alcoholic drink at a weekend brunch. I think it's a regional thing. Pretty much every office I've been to in NYC has had either beer, or wine, or both in their fridge to serve to clients. I've been to work functions where there's wine or beer with lunch. They trust you not to get pissed and ruin the rest of your day, because we're all adults. Hell, even in South Florida, nobody looks at you weird if you order a glass of wine with your lunch. That said, I don't know of many places that would look too kindly on like a martini with lunch.
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Nov 27, 2019 12:49
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dino. posted:I think it's a regional thing. Pretty much every office I've been to in NYC has had either beer, or wine, or both in their fridge to serve to clients. I've been to work functions where there's wine or beer with lunch. They trust you not to get pissed and ruin the rest of your day, because we're all adults. Hell, even in South Florida, nobody looks at you weird if you order a glass of wine with your lunch. That said, I don't know of many places that would look too kindly on like a martini with lunch. 'In the fridge to serve to clients' is a tad different to 'all the office staff flood into pubs & cafes for a beer or a glass of wine or a gin and tonic, or yes, even a cocktail if they want one over lunch, which is very common here (cocktails less so, but it still happens). Also a recent discovery of mine is all the fancy hipster barbers that offer you a beer with your haircut. There's even a Barber in town that is literally a high end whisky/Cocktail bar as well as being a barber shop.
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Nov 27, 2019 13:27
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dino. posted:I think it's a regional thing. Pretty much every office I've been to in NYC has had either beer, or wine, or both in their fridge to serve to clients. I've been to work functions where there's wine or beer with lunch. They trust you not to get pissed and ruin the rest of your day, because we're all adults. Hell, even in South Florida, nobody looks at you weird if you order a glass of wine with your lunch. That said, I don't know of many places that would look too kindly on like a martini with lunch. It's partly a regional thing, partly an industry thing (tech is likely to indulge their employees, medicine and government it's largely forbidden), and partly a job title thing - the more important, irreplaceable, or unnoticed you are, the more likely it is you'll get away with it. Oddly (or maybe not), sales can almost always get away with it provided they can credibly claim they were drinking with a client or colleague. Of course the major caveat here is always that it's a beer, maybe 2 and don't be visibly drunk. If you show up visibly drunk and become That Person, you better be the absolute best at your job and completely irreplaceable.
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Nov 27, 2019 14:54
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Shooting Blanks posted:There used to be a restaurant in Houston called Feast that specialized in "nose to tail cooking" (this was 10 years ago, long before this was common in the US). They were absolutely my favorite restaurant here for a number of reasons, but one of the most memorable dishes was their Welsh Rarebit. I was able to get a couple tips from them shortly before they closed - one was to add some mustard to the mix, the other one was to add some strong flavored beer. Nothing too one note like an IPA, but a good brown ale or something. Make a cheese sauce out of that, top the toasted bread with it, toss it under a broiler for a couple minutes and you're good to go. I keep meaning to replicate it but I never think about it other than times like this when someone else mentions the dish. Good brown ale and similar is fairly common in older cooking. I did Townsends' steaks fried in ale a while back in this thread and it comes out great.
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Nov 27, 2019 14:59
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SubG posted:
I did wonder if the Scottish attribution (Scotch is whiskey or food, a product, not people. Don't confuse them. It irks.) was a confusion between the Rabbit and a Scotch Woodcock. But checking the ye olde Hannah Glasse book, the Scottish and Welsh versions are very similar: Luckily Wikipedia quotes them so I don't have to type stuff: quote:To make a Scotch rabbit, toast the bread very nicely on both sides, butter it, cut a slice of cheese about as big as the bread, toast it on both sides, and lay it on the bread. Wiki also claims the Scotch Woodcock is named in a similar fashion to Welsh Rabbit. It's a silly nationalistic jokey name to be sure, Cavenagh fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Nov 27, 2019 |
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Nov 27, 2019 16:45
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SubG posted:It was Welsh rabbit for over half a century before an enterprising lexiographer (Francis Grose) came up with rarebit, claiming that rabbit was a corruption of rarebit despite there being no known instance of anyone ever using rarebit before Grose. False etymologies drive me up the wall. I want a time machine now, so I can go back in time and kick this guy square in the balls.
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Nov 27, 2019 16:50
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Don't forget Italian rarebit, which typically consists of tomato and cheese and people get quite upset if you put pineapple on.
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Nov 27, 2019 17:17
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Falscher Hase ("fake rabbit") actually contains meat (it's just a funny name for meatloaf, probably coming from a time when it would be baked in a special pan). However, if you find yourselves in Cologne and want to eat chicken, don't order the half cock.
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Nov 27, 2019 21:02
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The Lord Bude posted:
One of these just opened like a block away from my apartment and I'm kind of excited to check it out because the barer next door to me, while cheap, is always at least an hour wait.
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Nov 28, 2019 09:14
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angerbeet posted:One of these just opened like a block away from my apartment and I'm kind of excited to check it out because the barer next door to me, while cheap, is always at least an hour wait. In my experience the privilege of paying $20 for a cocktail before your haircut doesn’t negate the irritation at being charged $65 for a short back and sides.
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Nov 28, 2019 12:23
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Zopotantor posted:Falscher Hase ("fake rabbit") actually contains meat (it's just a funny name for meatloaf, probably coming from a time when it would be baked in a special pan). I find stuff like this, or Mock Turtle Soup, where an ingredient is changed or substituted for economic reasons but then the substitution becomes its own dish fascinating.
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Nov 28, 2019 16:16
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Blast Fantasto posted:I find stuff like this, or Mock Turtle Soup, where an ingredient is changed or substituted for economic reasons but then the substitution becomes its own dish fascinating. You mean that there are no Mock Turtles? Has Lewis Carroll lied to me?
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Nov 28, 2019 18:05
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Zopotantor posted:You mean that there are no Mock Turtles? Has Lewis Carroll lied to me? Well, I mean, he was Jack the Ripper
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Nov 28, 2019 19:45
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chitoryu12 posted:The US has a long temperance history due to both a severe alcoholism problem in the 19th century and strong evangelical religious influence for much of its existence. This is also how we got a drinking age of 21 and stigmatized letting teens have alcohol even under parental supervision. The “alcohol problem” was created by prohibition and bullshit protestant Puritanism. It’s loving bullshit and we should all object to it.
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Dec 1, 2019 01:37
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MAKE NO BABBYS posted:The “alcohol problem” was created by prohibition and bullshit protestant Puritanism. It’s loving bullshit and we should all object to it. This is only sort of true—Americans in urban areas were handling a host of social ills with alcohol abuse. Rural drinking wasn’t always politely controlled either. The temperance movement misidentified the actual cause of drinking as the drink itself rather than endemic poverty or immigrants such as the Irish escaping the total devastation of their lives. These days at least some of us would know to seek environmental causes first but a century ago, not so much. Witness the number of people who still think substance abuse is a simple failure of willpower/character.
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Dec 1, 2019 05:50
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The Lord Bude posted:In my experience the privilege of paying $20 for a cocktail before your haircut doesn’t negate the irritation at being charged $65 for a short back and sides. My city is weird in that there's two giant universities (one of which is military) and a college and other factors which apparently encourages "old barber of indeterminate origin or accent" people to move here, so the going rate for a men's cut is like $15. I'd be pretty happy to get an expensive beer if they can do a good hot shave. I was talking about this place with one of the owners of a chain of salons tonight, at a Christmas party for some of the older bears of the city. He says the concept is good but they apparently forgot to apply for a liquor license before they opened? Might take six months. Ain't gonna last.
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Dec 1, 2019 06:00
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My housemates went to the food bank yesterday and amongst their bounty got 2 pounds of sliced mushrooms (some white, some baby bellas) that had obviously been coded out from a local supermarket*. They aren't moldy or slimey, but I sure wouldn't put them raw on a salad, they're going a bit squishy. Definitely needed cooking, and soon. What to do? Duxelles or a cream of mushroom soup came to mind, and then I remembered mushroom ketchup being a thing I've always wanted to try. The Townsends recipe was my first Google hit when looking for a recipe, so I figured that was worthy of this fine thread! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks Mushroom ketchup was A Thing long before the tomato version; tomatoes were regarded as suspect, being a member of the nightshade family. The shrooms are being pressed right now, and I'll be finishing it up tomorrow. Will post trip results! *Shout out to Kroger for actually donating their coded-out stuff to food banks instead of tossing it and pouring bleach on it (cause God forbid homeless/poor/hungry people go dumpster-diving for it) like some other big chains. That loving disgusts me.
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Dec 4, 2019 08:42
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golden bubble posted:18th Century Welsh Rarebit: Welsh Rarebit, pronounced Welsh Rabbit, is not a Welsh dish and there is no rabbit in it SubG posted:It was Welsh rabbit for over half a century before an enterprising lexiographer (Francis Grose) came up with rarebit Rabbit, from Wales (ca. 1765)  From The Clwyd Archives Cookbook, which I found at Goodwill last week:  It is a slender volume of receipts transcribed by the Clywd Archivists from handwritten manuscripts. Most are 18th century so I thought I'd share a few of them here. (Been lurking for a while but had nothing to post until now.) One more, on how to stew a carp: 
TofuDiva fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Dec 19, 2019 |
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Dec 19, 2019 04:13
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I appreciate a recipe that starts with "make sure the fish is dead."
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Dec 19, 2019 06:57
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Take a carp and knock him on his head. This kills the carp.
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Dec 19, 2019 13:21
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"let them stew together till they are enough" 
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Dec 19, 2019 13:50
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I like how a lot of the quantities of ingredients are "some". And that's great for something like a stew where exact quantities are not required. Also, is that last line of the carp recipe indicating that you would serve this alongside smaller fried carp? ("...then put into your dish with the sliced lemon and the spawn of your fish fried")
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Dec 19, 2019 18:37
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Maybe along with roe? Or whatever you call carp eggs.
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Dec 19, 2019 18:45
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As far as I know, I haven't had fish with mace. It seems odd.
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Dec 19, 2019 18:46
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CzarChasm posted:I like how a lot of the quantities of ingredients are "some". Fair criticism, but when I started learning to cook as a kid my mom basically all but slapped measurements out of my hand because she wanted me to learn to do it by eye (when not baking or whatever). Or like my Oma would have measurements like "cut onions until you don't feel like cutting onions anymore and want a cigarette". And it sucked and I made a lot of absolute garbage when I was like a teenager, but now I'm older and can do most measurements by hand/tummy feels. How much paprika? I don't know, that much that I just put in. With the way a lot of Old World cooks used to work I assume they had a similar view. gently caress it, I know what I'm doing. (Yes I know this puts me in opposition to my beloved Saint Kenji but I can't magically change my upbringing.)
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Dec 19, 2019 18:54
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