Saturday, 1 February 2025

It's A Slippery Slope

Kop van een schaap, van voren, 1859 print by Dirk van Lokhorst, Rijksmuseum

"Prepare the sheep's head in the usual way." 

So sayeth the rather unhelpful opening instructions to a recipe for Sheep's Head Stew, according to a popular Edwardian-era recipe book consulted by the doughty domestic historian Ruth Goodman on the olde BBC programme Edwardian Farm.* 

Edwardian Farm BBC promotional photo at Morwellham quay
Time-travelling farmers,
Alex, Ruth, Peter & Chums

Even Your Correspondent, a two-year long Carnivore, doesn't have an autopilot procedure for tackling such a beast's bit**. When, I hear you cry, did such traditional knowledge fall out of the domestic sphere? Ditto, as another for inst., olde dressmaking patterns, with their spare and breezy instructions to go ahead and sew up some complicated garment as you "ordinarily would". The Edwardian era was only just over a century ago, merely twice the temporal distance from my earliest memories, and without the aid of Mr. Google, I have no notion how to prepare a head o' mutton for the pot nor sew a leg o' mutton sleeve. For shame!

Leg o' Mutton sleeves, if you please

Back to Dear Ruth on the telly, she was preparing this frugal yet filling aforementioned staple while her fellow time-travelling adventurers had gone off to cook some limestone in a kiln for several days, as you do when the rather acidic soil on the farm you are to work needs some tonnes of quicklime and there is no local agricultural store to pop into, it being, you know, not invented yet. For the Gentleman Viewer this was an instructive lesson for when the agro-chemical industrial complex goes up in smoke, and some back-to-basics is required to keep starvation from the door, for forgotten manly commonplaces necessary to life lie thick on the ground these days.

Indeed, the observant reader will have already gleaned many valuable tidbits from around these pages, (granted, all unsolicited advice, but provisioning against the end-of-days has become rather a niche herein and I am confident you will thank me later), viz. the tongue of a hoopoe will restore the memory of a forgetful person, amongst the many choice nuggets. 

A hoopoe for those who forgot what it even was

And, of course, will have noted that the Pipistrellos have at their fingertips a most excellent book of instruction on keeping calm and carrying on when the electricity is switched off forever, and thusly a perpetual source of practicality and delight, and from which I share from time to time over at my Commonplace Book:

Chockfilled with canny know-how

But today's cautioning about the slippery slope to a new dark age, Dear Reader, is less to do with such diverse canny know-how falling by the wayside, like how to clear a blocked chimney (Edwardian Farm tip: feed down a bundle of scouring holly!), and more to do with the sort of permanent cultural amnesia which besets us when we stop thinking about once-quotidian abstract ideas. Or, to put it plainly, how if you don't use it you lose it. Like the forgotten habit of Biphasic Sleep.

Apparently, up until the Industrial Revolution, we humans slept in two stages between sundown and sunrise, our so-called First and Second Sleeps, separated by The Watch, when we were up and about for an hour or so and getting on with things prosaic, practical or personal. Who knew? 

Since self-help books in the olden days were confined to the Properly Improving, such as The Art of Dying Well ***or Galateo: The Rules Of Polite Behaviour**** (and good paper would never be frittered away on the Blindingly Obvious, like perhaps a little pamphlet entitled Muttonheads Guide To Sleep), when sleeping (or attempting to) straight through the night came into vogue for various reasons, since nothing was written down reminding us otherwise, we basically, and incredibly, forgot how we used to sleep.

Daresay Flaming June never forgot how sleep worked

Which is a comfort to know, really, for those beset with middle-of-the-night insomnia, and for which is recoursed judicious applications of Animal/Vegetable/Mineral and the like. Embrace The Watch! could become a catchcry, if not just for reminding ourselves how our forebears lived their lives. 

We really need to take notice of stuff and write things down. And the more pedestrian the better. This is the rôle of the diarist, of course, and the contemporary writer, to capture the zeitgeist, not I. The occasional scribblings around here tend to hearken back more to nostalgic doings, coloured with purple prose since English is fun, and anyways is really only useful while the electricity works and the cloud can keep it all going. But at least I've figured out that if we stop doing and thinking about the stuff we take for granted, it's possible to wake up one day and hey presto! it's the Dark Ages again. No fun.

ps: And don't get me started on the pruning of Nature Notes words, like acorn and kingfisher, from the Oxford Junior Dictionary to make space for so-called technology words like blog and voice-mail! Call me old fashioned but blog, as fond as I am of this little playground, is hardly going to be a forever word worthy of muscling out beauteous words like bluebell. Remember, kids, if you don't use it you lose it!




* Thank you, Dear Cro, sidebar resident over at Magnon's Meanderings for the televisual heads-up this week!

** Although, I do know how to prepare lamb's fry! As I tiny tot I would volunteer to do so as I found holding the liver under the running cold tap and skinning the membrane to be a strangely sensual experience.

*** A tip from Saint Robert Bellamine: Fasting is meritorious and very powerful in obtaining divine favours.

**** Bonus two tips from Giovanni della Casa: 1) Don't fall asleep or pull out a letter to read when in the pleasant company of others, thus demonstrating little appreciation of others and their conversation, and 2) Avoid proclaiming how greatly you are enjoying food and wine, for this habit is fit only for tavern keepers.


Image credits: 1: Rijksmuseum; 2: via Google: 3: via Pinterest; 4: Royal Collection Trust; 5-6: Flying With Hands; and 7: forgotten as I didn't write it down!



17 comments:

  1. Herewith the tongue of a hoopoe is ordered!

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    1. A mere prophylactic against memory loss I trust, dear Sean!

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  2. I have never heard that up until the Industrial Revolution, we humans slept in two stages between sundown and sunrise i.e First and Second Sleeps separated by The Watch. I am assuming hard working families didn't know what sleeping in two stages meant either.

    Flaming June is a large painting by Sir Frederic Leighton (1895). I love it because the colour and material are gorgeous, but particularly because the model was comfortable enough to lie back in the open air and close her eyes. My grandmother wouldn't have done that.

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    1. Dear Hels, it would seem that from court records of trials and whatnot, research found that the working class indeed slept in two phases. The watch was when you got up to go to the loo, tend to the fire, work on things, prowl nefariously about the neighbourhood (helpfully contributing to court records), and physicians recommended the time as conducive to conceiving babies, as you would be too knackered before your first sleep (and presumably get a bit of privacy in the communal bed!) Their betters might use the time loll about in bed chatting about their day, or engaging in spiritual matters.

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  3. I would never eat the tongue of a Hoopoe. The Hoopoe just happens to be my very favourite bird. We have them regularly in the garden in France, but last summer; not one! I am now wondering if some Jean-Louis or José isn't trapping them for their tongues. I shall now be on the look-out for discarded Hoopoe feathers.

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    1. Forgetful and ageing populations and their folk remedies may well have decimated the hoopoe population, dear Cro. I'm sorry for your loss!

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  4. Hello Pipistrello, My usual way of treating unattached sheep heads is to stay far away from them, although there is a fish called a sheepshead, which I could possibly deal with. But your quote brings up the problem of old recipes that assume knowledge of an archaic or non-local cuisine. Even not-so-old recipes call for a "can" of this or a "medium" carrot, but those standard sizes change frequently.

    Currently I am trying to translate my recipe for gumbo into Chinese, but this is proving very difficult since their cooking system is so different. How can I explain the intricacies of a roux, or leave it as "some" onion and "some oil", especially since I am more the inspirational kind of cook and just make do with what is on hand or could find in the market. But someone who has no idea might guess a teaspoon of onion and a cup of oil. Anyway, the most essential part is to use Tabasco brand pepper sauce only, which luckily is obtainable everywhere in Taiwan.
    --Jim
    p.s. Happy Chinese Snake Year!
    If you want to see some Chinese snakes, take a look at my old post:
    http://roadtoparnassus.blogspot.com/2013/02/happy-snake-year.html

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    1. And kung chee fat choy to you, dear Jim! I hope your eventual gumbo translation takes Taiwan by storm and the locals delight in mastering some exotic-to-them techniques. Years ago, we used to watch a cult Japanese cooking competition from the 90s dubbed in English called Iron Chef, which you could probably see on youtube. Anyway, there were points to be had and appreciation given for the mastering of Western techniques :)

      I do like your snakes on your post - although I would have to be feeling brave to even handle the life-like ones. Perhaps the one-shoed god found the snake curled inside his other shoe in the morning and was thus compelled to slay it? When we had a house in the country, you would never blindly put a foot in a shoe without shaking it out first for some nasty hiding critter!

      ps: The Road to Parnassus needs to come back to life. Keeping a record of mysterious and obsolete stuffs is essential to keeping the aforementioned cultural dark age at bay!

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  5. Go to the Jmaa el-Fna Square in Marrakech in the evening for to eat and there you will see many preparing sheeps heads "in the usual way". You can choose what part of the delicacy you wish to have served to you fresh. Why even my friend Allal could do it for you. I am sure there are many other parts of the world where a sheep's head is a common food prepared in the home but Marrakech is where I have seen in before my very eyes.

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    1. Yes, dear Rachel! You remind me that we once passed what could loosely be described as a butcher in a mud-brick hamlet somewhere in Morocco, with a couple of sheep's heads and some entrails hanging in the open window. Quite the sight! But, cooking it aside, how does anyone prepare it for the pot? Should you clean the teeth? Do the eyeballs need attention? Is there some kind of membrane like on a liver that needs pulling off? So many mysteries! I hazard a guess that Allal's resultant tagine would be super delicious.

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  6. Coming from a family of genealogists I know the importance of writing the obvious down in detail. We think we/later generations are going to remember what is obvious to us but this never happens.

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    1. Dear Ur-spo, the House of Spo must be the repository of much folk wisdom then and will be society's future oracles. So lucky!

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  7. I am definitely not timid when it comes to food preparation ..... I'm a whiz with squid and octopus ..... but, sheep's heads can stay in the Edwardian era as far as I'm concerned ..... I wouldn't be squeamish about it but I can imagine it would take a while to prepare it for the pot ! All I can say is that I am so grateful that I was born when I was ! As for sleep, all members of our family are experts ....our daughter gets on a plane in London, puts her head down and wakes up in Sydney !!! XXXX

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    1. Dear Jackie, such adventures you must have in your lovely kitchen! Yeah, the sheep's head can wait ... Your family's sleep expertise is so enviable! What bliss to wake up in a foreign land with no fuss. Even without flying across the globe in my bed, it's hot and clammy here at night at the moment and my personal Watch is getting to the point of the ridiculous. xxx

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  8. Dear Pip, may I lend you my book "How to Cook a Wolf" by M.F.K.Fisher? (Maybe it will offer sort of double help, if the wolf killed and devoured a sheep. And we all know by Gebrüder Grimm's fairy tales that 7 gooatling in a wolf keep surprisingly lively and fresh for some time).
    I think you will know about M.K.Fisher, an American food writer - today she would be an influencer, but I join you in keeping beautiful words - and food writer evokes "gourmet" , though looking around in Berlin's underground I see more "Gourmands" - maybe having devoured sheep and wolf at one greedy bite.

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    1. Ho ho, dearest Britta, you, too, notice the preponderance of Gourmands over Gourmets in our fair cities! And some clad, as in these sultry summer days, so revealingly with their lycra exo-suits that, like a python which is busy digesting some hapless mammal, the outline of their consumed sheep, goatling and/or wolf can be seen without any imagination.

      I've only read one of M.F.K.F.'s books, a so-called "lost" novel entitled The Theoretical Foot, and found it didn't live up to the effusive blurbs on the cover. But I trust your book recommendations implicitly, so am willing to give her another try and How to Cook a Wolf sounds rather more appealing, thank you!

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