Canterbury
Celebrated for its archbishops and its brawn, Primates of England and prime of pig-cheek.
CAPERS are the buds of a plant which were at one time a good deal cultivated in England-and which might well be wgron in chalk pits, on cliffs and on walls. We get our chief supplies from Italy, and our sauces are so much indebted to them that it is difficult to explain why the plant is now rarely to be seen in England. Perhaps if the history of the plant were known, a greater interest would be felt in it. Dr. Royle has proved that it is the hyssop of Scripture, "which springeth out of the wall." It has long trailing branches like the bramble, and it was on one of these that the sponge filled with vinegar was offered to our Saviour on the cross. "They filled a sponge Carbonade IOI with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop." It was with a branch of the same that the Israelites sprinkled their doorposts with blood when they ate the passover.
Caper Sauce. English butter sauce with a tablespoonful of capers added, not forgetting a little of their vinegar. Let some of the capers be minced, so as to flavour the sauce more effectually.
CARAMEL is to soup and sauce what rice powder is to the face-it gives a complexion. It is difficult to find a substance which will colour soup and yet not alter its flavour. Burnt onions are sometimes used, but they are as rouge to the countenance-not to be trusted. The most innocuous substance is caramel, or burnt sugar, which is prepared as follows: Put a pound of sifted sugar into a brass skillet or preserving pan, and melt it on a slow fire, stirring it with a wooden spoon. After it has melted let it remain on the fire till it becomes the colour of mahogany, stirring it from time to time to make the tint uniform. This may be dark or light at pleasure; but care must be taken to avoid a quick fire, which will burn the sugar and make it black. When the proper tint is gained add three tumblers of water. Then stir up the fire and reduce the caramel to a syrup. Pour it out, cool it, and bottle it for use.
Two workable recipes sit inside this dictionary entry: caper sauce, which is a one-line addition to an existing sauce, and caramel colouring, which is the more useful of the pair and the one that needs care.
- The hinge: low heat, no stirring in of water too soonSugar taken past mahogany turns black and bitter, and the bitterness cannot be corrected. Melt it slowly over low heat and pull it the moment the colour is right, since it keeps darkening from residual heat in the pan.
- Adding the waterHot sugar is around 340-350F when it reaches mahogany; cold water hitting it erupts in steam and spits molten syrup. Add the water off the heat, a little at a time, at arm's length, then return the pan to dissolve any set lumps.
- "A brass skillet or preserving pan"Victorian kitchens used unlined brass and copper for sugar work. Use a heavy stainless or enamelled pan instead, wide rather than tall, so you can judge the colour against the metal.
- "Three tumblers of water"A Victorian tumbler runs roughly 8-10 fl oz, so this is somewhere around 24 to 30 fl oz, three cups and more, for a pound of sugar. The figure is genuinely loose; work to consistency, reducing until the liquid coats a spoon thinly, since it thickens further as it cools.
- "English butter sauce"This is the old English melted butter: a flour-thickened butter sauce made with water or stock, not a hollandaise or a beurre blanc. Proportions vary from cook to cook, but something like 1 oz flour to half a pint of liquid, with butter beaten in generously to finish, will do.
- Capers and their vinegarThe instruction to keep some of the pickling liquid still holds: it is the sharpness, not the buds, that carries the sauce. If you have salt-packed capers rather than brined, rinse them and replace the missing acid with a spoonful of white wine vinegar.
- Yield and keepingA pound of sugar makes something in the region of a pint of caramel colouring, which is a lifetime's supply for a domestic kitchen; a quarter batch is more sensible. Bottled and capped it keeps for a very long time, being essentially sugar syrup, but discard it if it clouds or moulds.
- Whether you need it at allCaramel colouring was a working necessity when consommés were judged on clarity and depth of colour. A modern cook gets the same effect from properly browned bones and a well-caramelised mirepoix, and the bottle is worth making only if you want colour without additional flavour.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner's Soho restaurant, and its alphabetical form lets an entry wander as this one does, from Canterbury's brawn to capers to burnt sugar. The joke about primates and pig-cheek turns on a real local trade: Canterbury and the Kentish towns were known for brawn, the pressed jellied meat from a boiled pig's head. The claim that the caper is the hyssop of Scripture comes from John Forbes Royle, a botanist of the East India Company, and it was widely repeated in the mid-nineteenth century; it remains one identification among several, with marjoram and other aromatic plants also proposed, so treat it as a Victorian argument rather than a settled fact. Caper cultivation never returned to England on any scale, and Dallas is right that the plant will grow on walls — it does so still around the Mediterranean, rooted in old masonry.