FOOD TRIVIA: Henri Toulouse - Lautrec

The world fanous artist and gourmet,  Henri Toulouse - Lautrec wrote a cookbook called, "The Art of Cuisine" and illustrated it himself. It still is available.

FOOD HISTORY: The "Hot Dog".

While the history of sausages is ancient, even having been mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, the history of what we know as the "Hot Dog" is much more recent and has several branches on its family tree. It is believed that the "original" sausage that eventually became the contemporary "Hot Dog" was created in the late 1690's by Johann Georghehner, a butcher living in Coburg, Germany.  Later, Georghehner, travelled to Frankfurt, Germany to promote his product. In 1805, a master sausage maker in Vienna, Austria, who got his training in Frankfurt, Germany, made a sausage that he called the "Wiener- Frankfurter". This fact has given Austria a claim to be them birthplace of the "Hot Dog". His sausage, however, generally became known as "Wienerwurst"; Wien being the German name for Vienna and wurst the German word for sausage.This is, however, where we get the word  "Wiener" as a synomym for "Hot Dog"'. In 1852, the Butcher's Guild in Frankfurt, Germany developed a spiced, smoked sausage which was packed in a thin casing that they called the "Frankfuter", named after its city of origin. The sausage's gently curved shape, it is said, was suggested by a butcher who had a Dachshund dog as a pet. When Germans immigrated to the U.S., they brought this sausage, with the name "'Dachshund-sausage", with them;  Austrians brought their "Wieners". Frankfuters and Wieners, served with milk rolls (bread rolls but sweeter and softer due to milk added to the dough) and sauerkraut, were sold from pushcarts on New York's Bowery during the 1860's. (As a personal aside, when I served in the Army's occupying forces in Austria, 1954-1955, there were wurst stands all over. They served Wiernerwurt sausages on a paper plate, containing a dab of mustard and a small bread roll on the side. I consumed many, many of them!) Back to History: In 1871, Charles Feltman, a German butcher, opened a stand in Coney Island, NY. He wanted to sell a variety of hot sandwiches to his customers but his wagon was too small to make different  sandwiches in the wagon's confined space. Thus, he came up with the idea of selling only sausages served IN a roll. With the help of  the wheel-wright who had made his wagon, a tin lined chest was put in the wagon  to keep the rolls warm and a charcoal stove to boil the sausages was installed. Thus, the idea of serving sausages in a bread "container" is credited to Feltman. .Feltman sold 3,684 sausages in a milk roll during his first year in business. In 1880, Antonione Feuchtwanger, a German sausage peddler in St. Louis, Missouri, supplied white gloves with his sausages, so his customer's would not burn their fingers while eating their sausages. However, many customers would walk off with the gloves after finishing their snack. Feuchtwanger consulted his brother- in law, a baker, about the problem and he came up with a long, soft roll in which the sausage could be placed. Thus, the German sausages ( Frankfuters/ Wienerwurst) were introduced to the bun. How this combination of a German sausage on a bun became known as the "Hot Dog' is another convoluted story to be told in a subsequent post.

FOOD HISTORY: Crumpets and English Muffins

Crumpets are an Anglo-Saxon invention. Initially, they were hard pancakes baked on a griddle.  The term  has Celtic origins and dates from the 1600's and is related to the Breton "kranpoez" ( a thin, flat pancake) or the Welch type of pancake called, 'crempog". The 1649 Oxford dictionary referring  to "crumpet", describes it as a mixture of buckwheat flour, beaten egg, milk and baking powder. These were different from the more familiar crumpets of the Victorian Era when yeast was added to the dough and the crumpet was baked in a ring mold to hold the batter while it baked. Crumpet makers of the British Midlands and London developed the characteristic holes which appear on top of the crumpet when it is cooked the by adding extra baking powder to the dough. Thus,the more familiar soft, spongy crumpet of the Victorian Age, with their characteristic holes on their top to "hold" butter and other popular toppings, evolved..

The British "muffin", which was  originally made from left over bread and biscuit dough scraps and mashed potatoes, which the cook fried on a hot griddle to produce a light, crusty muffin, were eaten by the "downstairs" servants in England's Victorian society .When the "upstairs" family learned about these tasty morsels, they began to request them, especially for their afternoon teatime snack. Because of this, these muffins became the most "fancied" bread in England and muffin factories, each with their own recipe for making their  muffin, sprung up all over. These muffins could be split and toasted over an open fire and served with various toppings. They became so popular that "Hawkers" sold them on the streets of London and the song , "Do you know the Muffin Man" became a big hit.

The MODERN English muffin is, in fact, an American invention created by Samuel Bath Thomas, a 1874 immigrant to New York City from Plymouth, England. Thomas, who worked in a bread bakery, opened his own bakery in 1880. It was in this location that he created a "toaster crumpet"; a flatter version of the English crumpet which did not contain baking powder used to create holes as in the traditional crumpet. However,Thomas' secret process did retain the "holes" that crumpets have on their outside to trap butter and other toppings  but the Thomas English muffin's "holes"( his, "nooks and crannies") are on the inside of the muffin. "Fork splitting" his muffins before toasting retained this "crumpet"characteristic.Thomas English muffins became very popular in the U.S.and their popularity spread to the world wide market even introducing "English" muffins to the British.