Oh, no. How on earth Sue Shephard’s Pickled, Potted, and Canned managed to make it from sad little notebook scribbles to a printed and bound book is a mystery I will never understand. Maybe the editor didn’t actually read some of it. Maybe those few chapters I managed to choke through were just flukes–all of them–and the bit I never managed to get to is actually brilliant. And how the hell Sue Shephard, a Brit, mind you, even co-authored a book entitled United Tastes of America (which I’m half tempted to find, just to see if it’s as poorly written and full of broad, sweeping, un-cited statements) I’ll never know. I don’t even want to know, really.

Let’s excuse, for a moment, the fact that the writing is that of an untrained high school sophomore attempting to write a college thesis. Let’s even jump over (briefly, mind you) the strange inclusion of so many statements beginning or ending with “In America, in particular” or “This is especially true in the United States.” Why don’t we talk about the lack of structure. The way she jumps around. How she tries to make grandiose, meaningful closes to her chapters and ends up instead with “the ability of our ancestors to observe, adapt, and “cheat” nature never ceases to astonish.” (27). What I didn’t quite grasp from even the context of that chapter was how drying meat or canning food was cheating nature. Or, for that matter, observing it. And since her book really isn’t about how man cheats nature or how man survived by potting (indeed, the subtitle is How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World), I’m not entirely sure why she like to pull in things about frozen mammoths and bugs preserved in amber. No one, absolutely no one looked at a bug in amber and thought, gee, maybe I’ll use tree resin so I can nibble on beetles year round.

Shall we move on to shaky grasp of America, current and past? She has great regard for Native Americans and even those she calls “mountain men” (28), but laments the settlers’ inability to take advantage of pemmican: “The simple and inexpensive combination of powdered, easily digested meat, high fat content, and vitamin-rich berries might have protected them from scurvy and saved many lives. Despite the fact that they often took mountain men as guides during the summer months, the godly and respectable migrant seemed reluctant to eat Indian and wild men’s food, sometimes with disastrous consequences” (30). (what’s that in the last sentence? Plural-singular subject disagreements? They . . . the migrant . . . oops). Ah, yes, the demise of settler due to lack of pemmican. Clearly documented cases, really. Honestly, I’d accuse Shephard of using Oregon Trail as a source except I definitely remember being able to buy pemmican along with 50 pounds of ham and tinned biscuits at the general store in the beginning. Maybe she only had the early version where you bought pounds of food instead of choosing exactly how much salt pork versus bacon you wanted to bring.

Anyway, I never got beyond page 36, because there were some many awful wordings to gasp over in those first few pages. Throw in there some random (and I do mean random–we get pretty much no lead in to these) quotes and some lovely imperialistic spirit (when was this book written? That recently?) and you have just about the worst book I’ve read in a long time. Okay, not true. Worst food book I’ve read in a long time. (word of advice: Chessie Bligh and the Heir of some-fake-fantasy-name is the absolute worst young adult fantasy I’ve ever read. Ever. Worst fantasy novel in general, actually.)

Choice quotes:

• “Without preserved food man might not have been able to send out large armies and naval ships to explore new lands and seas and conquer new territories” (15-16; hello, imperialism)
• “This is especially true in the United States, where the numerous “ethnic” cultural communities are turning away from their initial assimilation as Americans and rediscovering a pride in the culture and cuisine of their origins” (20; yes, she used those quotation marks, no she really doesn’t think that England has ethnic groups and certainly none that were assimilated, and no, she really doesn’t have any actual facts to back that up)
• “In America, in particular, they are now adapting old ways to more convenient, modern techniques so they can enjoy the gourmet pleasure of “homemade” smoking, bottling, pickling, and jam making” (23; I really want to know what new ways we’ve adapted–is she talking about mass production of food (which wouldn’t really fit with her talk of “natural” (her quotes again) and traditional methods in that paragraph, but you never know with this book) or people taking up canning again. If it’s the latter, pressure canners are about as high-tech as I can come up with for home preservation and my grandmother had one of those.)

Pickled, Potted, and Canned, Sue Shephard. Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Hilaire Walden’s Perfect Preserves has the best pictures.  Even the zucchini chutney, which could so easily have looked like leftovers gone wrong, looks elegant and ready for food.  Not that I know what zucchini chutney goes on, but my knowledge of chutney right now extends so far as to include that stuff at Indian restaurants with the crispy bread and, as far as cooking goes, vinegar, veggies, fruit and sugar.  Hilaire has enlightened me by noting that the above is correct, and spices are also typical.  I’m still not sure what they’re good on, entirely, but I could easily make some now.

The book is split in two; the first half is methods of preservation, like jams, pickles, and potting.  Potting?  Yes, potting.  As in potted meats.  Which I’m pretty sure is more popular in England, where the book was published.  That was really the only section that made me wince.  But she even made lining a pan with bacon and stuffing it full of other fatty meats look sexy.  Her pate, she assures the reader, balances the need for fat with the modern preference to pretend we don’t like so much fat.  Only she uses words like succulence to make is sound good.

The second bit of the book has recipes for each method along with a few actual recipes for meals, like zucchini chutney and cheese loaf.  Ahh, there we see what chutney should be used for.  Bread.  Okay, that’s in keeping with my ideas of chutney so far.

Chutney aside, I really only picked up this book for the pickles and the jam.  I find the idea of jelly lame (why strain out all the tasty fruit bits?) and same with marmalades (which are basically jellies with some orange peel thrown in after the tasty fruit bits come out) and wasn’t terribly interesting in salting or candying fruit.  The jams and pickles, though, live up to their promise.  Not that I’ve made the recipes yet, but I plan on trying out the bread and butter pickles very soon (my garden has four very eager pickling cucumber plants).  I’m hoping also to make pickled beets (my Babci would be so proud!).  As for the jam, I’m sort of a purist.  I like plain ol’ blueberry jam or strawberry-rhubarb if you want to get fancy.  I just might, however, have to give in to both my disdain for jellies and my strict jam desires and try the honey-spiced apple jelly she attributes to her grandmother.

So she delivers when it comes to what I wanted: jams, pickles, and prettypretty pictures.  I could have done without the bits on potted meat and pates and her mentions of drying and freezing where so brief that she could have done away with them without any great loss.  But her methods are thorough and well explained, without any flowery language about enjoying the aroma of this or the bejeweled look of that.  My only real complaint is that out of her four tomato-based recipes, I don’t like any of them.  And with the way my tomato plants have been flowering lately, I’m going to need a good canned tomato recipe.

Recipes to write down:

• honey spiced apple jelly, p.62
• pickled beets, p.107
• bread and butter pickles, p.116

Recipes worth reading:

• Moroccan preserved lemons, p.74
• orange rice gateau, p.82
• pickled walnuts, p.148

Recipes to pass on by:

• steamed pink grapefruit curd pudding, p.73 (curd pudding? curd in general? no thanks)
• raspberry, peach, and amaretto sundaes, p.98 (a little too obvious to be necessary)
• chunky mushroom “ketchup”, p.123 (the name and the unnecessary quotes say enough)

Perfect Preserves, Hilaire Walden. Wiley Publishing, 2002.

I read cookbooks for fun. That’s what I tell people when they catch me gazing longingly at a picture of Moroccan preserved lemons slit in half and rubbed with salt. Or chewing my lip a la romance novel reader waiting to see if stock hero will return for stock heroine while I hold my breath wondering if the olive oil really does need sixty fresh sage leaves and the Pecorino Romano will be salty enough in itself to merit a mere *gasp* quarter teaspoon of sea salt.

So I like cookbooks.  For fun, for entertainment, but also for inspiration.  I also like foodblogs and cooking memoirs and food writing and history.  Here, I’ll review what I read and occasionally let you know how a recipe turns out.  Or whether the inspiration led to my own recipe.

This library trip’s current choices:

Perfect Preserves; Pickled, Potted & Canned; and The Improvisational Chef