Humbugs

Humbugs brought back so many memories from my childhood!

Tasting

   Well, I have to say I decided to try humbugs just because I read they were mint-flavoured. I bought a small package of them at Sainsbury’s and went for the surprise.

   Of course I liked them, because I usually like mint sweets. They have a balanced flavour between the strong, refreshing mint and the sweet, honeyed taste of syrup and caramel. The texture is also very good – you can’t chew it, but it’s also not that kind of bothering hardness. They also look good, and the transparent wrapping gave me a sense of nostalgia, of old-fashioned sweets.

Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of me
eating when I was a child. This one is probably
from 1995 or 1996, when we were on a family trip
to the beach. Thank you dad for catching me
on such a great angle! hahaha

My own sweet memoir

   I can’t really remember when I started to like mint sweets. I just know I did. First I was obsessed with small mint candy, and then after that came the bubblegum… When I actually learned how to not swallow them.

   Everytime my father asked me which treat I would like from the restaurant’s sweet counter, I would always pick the mint or peppermint flavoured ones. I really really liked a sort of bubblegum that came with a soft thick filling… I think they still sell them back in Brazil. I also was really into an old-fashioned one called “Mentex”, which my mother once told me she and my dad would always share when they used to date.

   My sister hated any kind of mint sweets. It was funny when dad said we should choose our sweets together to share, because she would never want to have them. Most of the times we would get strawberry bubblegum or any other fruity sweet. Sometimes, if I was alone with dad, I would choose these really strong-flavoured mint drops called “Halls”. Carol would always make a funny disgusted face when I offered them to her. Of course she would also make a big deal about it, but we’d be fine in about just five minutes, because that’s just how we were. And in the end it was great because I could have the whole pack just for myself :P

   Until I was 10 or 11, we used to live in a building that had a sweet shop just across the street. It was called “Itu Doces” – Itu was the name of my city and “doces” means sweets in Portuguese. Very creative. Actually, the store seemed more like a huge warehouse where you could find pretty much any kind of sweets you wanted to. The walls were grey and there wasn’t much light at the end of the corridors, but I liked it anyway. My mom wouldn’t take me there a lot though, because I would definitely freak out with all the options they had.

   Humbugs seems the kind of sweet that they would sell if there were any in Brazil. I would probably convince dad to buy one of the big packages they would have – because they would sell everything in big packages at Itu Doces – and then have one humbug everyday after dinner. Or maybe I’d just stick with the chocolates. I don’t know.

Humbugs and tragedy

   It is believed that sugar has started being used in Britain in the 14^th century, and only very rich people could afford to buy it. Historic researches point that, during that time, a pound of sugar would cost approximately 2 shillings, which would be almost £50 nowadays. This happened because sugar cane could not be cultivated in Britain’s cold climate – it had to be imported. During the 18^th century, for example, most of the supplies came from the West Indies and then refined at only 120 sugar refineries across the country. Only 30,000 tons of sugar were produced each year and taxes on the “white gold” were very high.

Definitely going to take some humbugs home when I leave! Delicious!

   Because of that, sometimes sugar was mixed with other substances, such as sulphate of lime, plaster of Paris and powdered limestone, and then sold to the working classes for cheaper prices. Even though sugar didn’t taste the same, it was still safe to ingest.

   In 1858, though, arsenic trioxide was accidentally poured into the mixture by the pharmacist who provided the supplies for Joseph Neal’s factory, in Bradford. Poisoned humbugs were produced and then purchased by William Hardaker, known as “Humbug Billy” by the locals, and sold at the Green Market at the centre of the city. The tragedy caused the poisoning of over 200 people and made other 20 die.

Humbugs in British culture

   I was really surprised to find out that not only humbug means a kind of sweet, but can also be used as a verb or noun related to deceiving and misleading. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the word humbug can mean a wilfully false, deceptive or insincere person; an attitude or spirit of pretense and deception; or even to engage in a hoax or deception.

   One of my favourite bands, Arctic Monkeys, has entitled their third album “Humbug”. Most people thought they were referencing to the “mean” side of the word, but according to Alex Turner, the singer, it was named after the sweet: “You’ve got to suck it and see”. Interestingly, they have named their next record as “Suck It and See” as well.

   Another nice reference to the word humbug happens is Charles Dickens’ novel “A Christmas Carol”. The main character, called Ebenezer Scrooge, uses the catchphrase “Bah, humbug!” to say that Christmas traditions are a fraud. This quote is still famous nowadays and used a lot to criticise Christmas advertisements. Dickens’ critic to industrial capitalism in this book is also still very praised, and his work has been adapted to film, opera and stage.

Trifle

Loved it! Great recipe to cook with my grandmas back in Brazil, maybe? :)

Around the World

   Trifle is a typical English dessert, cooked very often during Christmas time, which contains thick custard, sponge cake, fruits and whipped cream. The ingredients are arranged in layers and moisturised with juice or even alcoholic beverages.

   Apparently, it was an “evolved” version of another English dessert called fool, which is made with puréed fruit, cream and sugar. Trifle was also an alternative way to use leftovers of stale cake and make it edible again by moisturising it.

   This dessert has become very popular in England during the 17^th century, but has also established itself in American cuisine through British emigrants who settled in the coastal South. Over there, trifle is called “tipsy cake”. There are also versions of trifle in several other countries. In Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, for example, there is a similar layered cake called Punschtorte. In Italy, there is “zuppa inglese”, which means “English soup”, and is cooked with custard, sponge cake and an alcoholic beverage called Alchermes. In Scotland, a similar recipe with Drambuie or whisky is called “Tipsy Laird”.

Dish illustrations in "Mrs. Beeton's Book
of Household Management". The trifle
one is on the lower left hand side.

Representations in British Culture and Literature

   One of the first literary references to trifle is dated from 1597. It is a simple recipe for cream flavoured with sugar, ginger and rosewater in a book called “The Good Huswifes Jewell”, by Thomas Dawson. This book was probably written for the Elizabethan middle-classes and, while reading a transcript on the internet, I realised a few differences from the written English we use today.

   Another old reference to trifle is made in “Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management” – yes, her again. The curious part about Isabella’s recipe is that she adds a lot of ingredients to the basic recipe: macaroons, ratafia (a kind of liqueur), almonds and brandy are used to make it more tasty. Apparently, she considered trifle a posh dish. She also mentions the decoration for the dessert, saying that using coloured comfits may seem old-fashioned.

   Jumping to a more recent time, I thought it was interesting to see how many British websites claim to have the recipe for the perfect trifle. Blogs, newspapers and even food companies advertise their way of doing as being the best. Basically, the recipes don’t change much, but the photographs and the way they are written are quite diverse. There is also, just as with toffee, the mentioning of “homemade” and “family history” points with the recipe to make it sound more convincing and important.

   I also found it interesting that many recipe forums and websites with comments are crowded with questions and descriptions from their visitors. Even though trifle seems to be a traditional and very popular recipe, their cookers are still worried with getting it perfectly. This audience is mainly formed by housewives and starting amateur chefs, who exchange tips about timing, ingredients and procedures, as well as exotic twists to these recipes.

The word

   During my research, I found out that the noun “trifle” is not only used to describe this dessert. It may also be a synonym for “slightly”, as in “She was a trifle sad”; or may mean something of little value or importance, as in “There’s no reason to worry about such trifles”.

   Trifle may also be used as an intransitive verb. In this case, it may mean you’re handling something idly, treating someone as unimportant or talking in a mocking or misleading manner.

   According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word started being used in the 14^th century and comes from Anglo-French “trufle”, “triffle” or “trufler”, which meant a fraud, a trick, or to talk nonsense.

Not too bad for a industrialised one!

The eating part

   To write my trifle review, I went against all recipes and homemade recommendations and actually bought a small ready-to-eat raspberry trifle at Sainsbury’s. I wanted to cook it myself, but these past weeks have been so busy... And anyway, I’m still afraid to mess it up and burn the flat :P

   Well, tasting trifle was good! Even though it’s hasn’t become my favourite dessert in my entire life (chocolate cake lover, sorry!), I can definitely say I’ll try to cook it back home or even eat a more elaborated one again here in London sometime.

   Considering it was an industrialized trifle, I wasn’t expecting much. The custard part was actually a little tasteless, but I guess it’s okay if you’re being lazy as I was. The raspberry jam and the sponge cake were delicious, and the macadamias on top gave it a little crunchy feel. It didn’t taste as sweet as I thought it’d be, but I guess it was a good thing – otherwise, you may not be able to eat the whole thing. The dessert was very well moist and I really enjoyed the different textures from the different parts. The only thing I would spare is the whipped cream, but that’s just because I don’t like it anyway.

Toffee

This really really made me miss home. But it also made me glad to be learning 

so much about British culture, habits and food :)

Toffee also reminded me of some caramel
sweets we have in Brazil. There, we call
them "puxa-puxa"

Origins

   Apparently, the word “toffee” was first published in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1825. According to it, toffee is “a kind of firm or hard sweet which softens when sucked or chewed, made by boiling together sugar and butter, often with other ingredients or flavourings added”. It is said that the word was a variation of taffy, which is a very similar sweet.

   Another important reference to toffee origin is made in “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen”, written by Harold McGee. It is a book that provides references to the history of food and cookery, but also analyses flavours, textures and molecular components of the ingredients. In his comment, McGee says that the word “toffee” comes from a Creole language, and is used to describe a mixture of sugar and molasses.

   Anyway, even though toffee’s recipe origin is unknown, it is possible to say that this sweet got really popular during the 19^th century, especially because slave labour made sugar and treacle quite accessible.

My tasting experience

   This time, I kind of already had expectations about toffee. That’s because I have heard a lot about it when I lived in the U.S. last year, and also because its colour and shape reminded me of “doce de leite”, a typical sweet in Brazil.

   I bought a small package of original toffee at a Thorntons’ store during my trip to Liverpool. From what I had looked up on-line, it was a great store for buying them. I only opened the package a few days later though, during a reading afternoon at home. The toffee pieces were quite big, but I just went into it anyway.

   So far, I think it has been my favourite tasting on the blog. Toffee is very sugary, but at the same time, it is not too sweet – I guess all the butter it contains breaks it a little. I also liked it because it reminds me of home:  it IS actually similar to “doce de leite”, even though it’s more tough and less creamy.

So many options, so many memories

   As usual, I did a brief research on Google to see what I would find about toffee. I got really surprised on how many results would be websites for stores that sell it and how many different options they offer. There’s toffee with almonds, nuts, chocolate, treacle, liquorice, banana, mint… And they might be soft, hard or even unbelievably sugar-free.

   It is also curious how many factories advertise their toffee as being homemade. They tend to value the fact that it is an old recipe, and there’s usually a story about that recipe that relates to the history of the company or its owner. Another curious aspect is their description for the ingredients: they always use the freshest milk, the softest nuts, the creamiest butter. They also make use of traditional graphic elements to complement the text and the idea of classic toffee. You can check these elements out in websites such as The Toffee Shop, Walker's Nonsuch and Thorntons.

Toffee nosed?

   Searching through the internet, I found out that there is a very popular expression in British English called “toffee nosed”. It is similar to “posh”, and can also mean snobbish, supercilious or stuck-up. Sadly, the toffee part has nothing to do with the sweet. It comes from the slang “toff”, used long ago by the lower-classes in Victorian times to designate stylish upper-class gentlemen.

   I have also encountered with the phrase “not for toffee”. It is usually used when one person is absolutely incompetent at doing a particular action, as in “Those girls can’t sing for toffee”.

Rhubarb Cake

That sad awkward moment when you think you were eating crumble cake, but you were not.

My discovering (and a little disappointing) experience

    After I started this blog, I decided to make a list on all the sweets and desserts I wanted to try. One of them was the crumble. From my research, I found out that it could be a dessert itself, or that it may be used in cakes, for example.

    Last week, I went to Borough Market, a very famous and absolutely good smelling place here in London, with two friends. My idea was to get at least one dessert from the list and write the review. I ended up choosing a rhubarb cake, which I thought had crumble on the top. Unfortunately, after coming back to my flat and searching for some pictures on-line, I realized the cake didn’t actually have a real crumble on it. Which was quite sad :(

    Anyway, it wasn’t a completely wasted experience. Tasting rhubarb for the first time was quite funny, because I didn’t know what to expect, and I found out it is a very popular ingredient here in England. I don’t think I ever saw a dish in Brazil that uses rhubarb, though. Besides, I ended up loving the cake! :)

Even though it wasn't crumble on top, I totally
reccomend this rhubarb cake! ;)

What is it? And how was it?

   My rhubarb cake had three important parts: the “fake” crumble on top, a sweet dough part, and the filling with rhubarb and custard. Overall, it was very sweet, with a refreshing taste from the rhubarb to balance it off. It also had a lot of different textures: crunchy from the top, soft from the custard and a little stringy on the rhubarb pieces.

   For those (as me) who didn’t know, rhubarb is a plant from the family Polygonaceae and started being considered a fruit in 1947 in the United States. Its culinary use is considered an innovation and the first records about it come from the 17^th century in England. It has become very popular during the 20^th century two world wars and is often stewed with sugar to be used in desserts.

   As for custard, it is a kind of a cream very used in English cookery. It may have different consistencies and added ingredients, but its foundation is simply milk or cream and eggs’ yolks. Usually it has sugar and vanilla on it, making it sweet; but it may also be used in savoury dishes as quiches, for example.

Books, recipes and television

   In my Literature of Food classes, I have already read three different cookbooks so far: “Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management” (1861); “A Book of Mediterranean Food” (1950) and “The Alice B Toklas Cookbook” (1954). Unfortunately, only the first and the last one have recipes with rhubarb – I’m guessing it’s not a very common ingredient in Mediterranean cookery, then. Anyway, none of these recipes regard pies or cakes. Mrs. Beeton talks about rhubarb jam, and with her recipe I found out that this plant is usually in season from February to April only. Alice Toklas, on the other hand, offers a similar recipe, but calls it “rhubarb preserve”. I found interesting that both authors recommend using lemons with rhubarb, and a little surprised that they didn’t have any other recipes with rhubarb in their books.

   Then I decided to search for some other books with rhubarb recipes and… Oh my God! I got more than 1200 results in Amazon search for books, and they had any kind of story you’d like to read: children’s books, fiction, medical books, travel books… Anything! That’s when I realized how popular it actually is here in England.

   The first result was “Rhubarb”, by M. H. Van Keuren, published last year. It is a sci-fi book in which a rhubarb recipe takes a very important role on the story. I have also liked “Rhubarb: more than just pies”, which is a cookbook by Sandi Vitt and Michael Hickman that obviously gives exotic recipes for rhubarb. “Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug”, by C. M. Foust, is also worth mentioning, because it seems to explain how this plant started being used in Europe and for which reasons.

   But I have got to admit: my favourite find about rhubarb in British culture was a cute television cartoon from the 1970s called “Roobarb”. It was written by Grange Calveley and animated by Bob Godfrey and  was about the friendly rivalry between Roobarb, a green dog, and Custard, the pink cat from next door. A lovely reminder of my rhubarb cake, I’d say :)

PS: I still don't know exactly what was that thing on the top of my cake, hahaha