Joe McNamee: How historic recipes can teach us so much about Ireland's past

Tracing the evolution of the Irish peasant’s diet over the centuries serves up the grievous impact of Ireland’s colonisation almost literally on a plate.

A gingerbread loaf recipe at National Library of Ireland. The NLI boasts an archive of over 300 cookbooks and 100 hand-written recipe manuscripts.

Did you ever wonder what kind of sandwich Gavrilo Princip polished off in Moritz Schiller’s Sarajevo delicatessen before he walked outside and assassinated the passing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, in 1914, whose deaths were the catalyst that triggered the First World War?

I have always been fascinated by history, even though rote learning of dates and other ‘vital facts’ during my school days too often numbed that part of me that found history so interesting in the first place. Back then, history was ‘important figures’, mostly men, and ‘major’ historical events, mostly battles/wars, the Irish curriculum yet to truly engage with social history.

Social history began to emerge as an educational alternative in the 60s, considering history from the ‘bottom up’, from the perspective of ordinary, everyday lives and lived experiences. When you can properly visualise the overall structure of a society, from lowest to highest, all history acquires a new-found colour and vibrancy.

Decades later, I did a degree that included researching the Irish diet before the arrival of the potato in Ireland. Trawling a period when oral tradition dominated and written sources were few, required lateral thinking.

Conversely, applying a social history perspective to ‘mere’ culinary source material can inform the bigger picture. Tracing the evolution of the Irish peasant’s diet over the centuries — from what was once the widest ranging and most nutritious diet in all of Europe, to the eventual and greatly restricted diet of little more than potatoes — serves up the grievous impact of Ireland’s colonisation almost literally on a plate.

Nora Thornton and Joanne Carroll are National Library of Ireland (NLI) archivists who combine a personal interest in food and food culture with their professional work. Beginning when Nora won an in-house staff bake-off competition several years ago using the archive’s 18th and 19th century recipes, she and Joanne have grown into the public face of the archive’s collection of 300-400 historic cookbooks and over 100 handwritten recipe manuscripts, which the NLI regularly releases to the general public.

A recent tranche includes recipes for parsnip pudding (savoury or sweet), turnip soup requiring “12 large turnips”, and a gingerbread loaf leavened with pearl ash (potassium carbonate), a forerunner of sodium bicarbonate or bread soda. From a culinary perspective alone, it is fascinating stuff.

But it was a line in another recipe that Joanne encountered in Instructions To The Poor On How To Feed Themselves, by the Countess of Caledon, that again demonstrates in breathtaking fashion how social history can illuminate the overarching history of the times. Dating from 1847, the countess writes that time taken in queuing for a soup kitchen could be better spent cooking a nutritious meal. 

A single line in a forgotten cookbook, yet it is a startling encapsulation of the callous disconnection among the ruling classes as Ireland was being ravaged by the Famine.

Getting back to Gavrilo. It was the BBC documentary series, Days That Shook The World, from the early 2000s, that introduced the sandwich story, a tiny detail yet it caught the popular imagination and spread like wildfire. History teachers embraced it to promote engagement among pupils. One pupil ran home to her historian father to tell him about the sandwich.

He did some research of his own and it was social history that eventually debunked what had become a globally accepted fact — the sandwich, then still very much an Anglo-American dish, was unlikely to have been on the menu at the time in Schiller’s. Any self-respecting Serb back then would have instead eaten a börek, a flaky pastry parcel with any of a variety of fillings, including meat, cheese, spinach, or potatoes. He concluded the most likely source was Twelve Fingers, a novel published a few years before the documentary, long enough for fiction to morph into ‘fact’.

By the way, the NLI archive is open to the general public. That includes the aforementioned manuscripts and cookbooks, should you be looking for a new recipe for the weekend.

Table talk

I know it’s only November, but the Late Late Toy Show is only a couple of weeks away, enough time to order one of Mitchelstown-based Praline’s Late Late Toy Show Christmas Box, full of treats for the entire clan to munch on during this rite of passage for generations of Irish children. It includes milk chocolate drops to make hot chocolate, with mini-marshmallows for on top, white crispy stars, rocky road Christmas trees and a tub of mini-sprinkle cookies. Order online for €35, including nationwide delivery.

praline.ie

I’m presuming there’ll be none of the shenanigans on show in the current TV historical drama about the Guinness family when Ashford Castle commence honouring Lady Ardilaun of the same clan with a festive afternoon tea marking the 100th anniversary of her demise, from December 1 right through to January 5.

Open to both residents and non-residents, the menu was created by executive head chef Liam Finnegan in collaboration with Guinness family historian Dr Kevin Egan. It includes clementine mousse with shortbread, choux bun with orchard apples, redcurrant mousse with spiced notes, and Valrhona chocolate with Guinness Foreign Extra, all served up in the castle’s Connaught Room, formerly Lady A’s drawing room.

ashfordcastle.com

TODAY’S SPECIAL

I’ve long been a fan of Poacher’s range of tonics and mixers, very much my go-to choice of mixer when drinking from the top shelf. This Irish premium drinks company bring the same level of precision and innovation to their new canned sodas, blessedly shorn of much of the sugar of other similar fizzy beverages. Grapefruit’s tang surfs an Achill Island sea salt wave, while zesty lemon is freshened with mint grown in Wexford. Already a big fan of ginger beer and chilli on their own, this spicy combo made with organic ginger, lime zest, Irish apples, and chilli grown in Galway is far and away my favourite. All three should make for cracking alcohol-free alternatives, €2.35 each.

poachersdrinks.com