Some Trivial Info

[Laurie Verge]

It's a Friday afternoon at Surratt House. I have finished my projects for the day; the visitors have left; the volunteers have left; and all is quiet on the Southern Front. Therefore, I decided to add more trivia to my trivial menu post and define the foods that I left above with question marks. Sorry, guys, but inquiring female minds want to know...

Stewed Chicken a la Marengo has a great history behind it! It was supposedly created in Italy after the Battle of Marengo on June 14, 1800. According to the legend, Napoleon refused to eat before fighting at Marengo and came off the battlefield with a ferocious hunger. Since he had his own chef accompanying him, he demanded food. The chef concocted this dish from whatever he could scrounge from the countryside -- chicken, bread, oil, garlic, tomatoes, eggs, and crayfish.

Napoleon gulped down his meal, returned to the field of battle and things turned in his favor, allowing his forces to be victorious over the Austrians and effectively drive them out of Italy. Supposedly, the superstitious General insisted on having the same dish prepared for him before each battle thereafter. Since he was well known for having bad digestion as well as inhaling his food, this dish must have soothed his problems in more ways than one.

Ingredients in the modern version: chicken, salt & pepper, flour, butter, olive oil. onion, garlic, dry white wine, diced tomatoes, bouillon cube, dried thyme, mushrooms, cognac, and fresh parsley or basil.

The next menu question is simple: What is Hock Wine? An old-time term for German wine.

Cabinet Pudding is a British dessert composed of sponge cake or lady fingers, sugar, Sultanas (raisins), glazed cherries (both soaked in rum or Madeira wine), unsalted butter, and a standard pudding made with milk and eggs.

Finally, Lady Cake seems to be a version of Lady Baltimore Cake -- except that the history of Lady Baltimore Cake only goes back to the early 1900s, and has nothing to do with Baltimore. It is basically a white cake topped with a boiled or "seven minute frosting." What makes it distinctive is the combination of chopped nuts and dried or candied fruits in its frosting.

It was first mentioned in a Southern novel by Owen Wister. Set in Charleston, SC, the novel's main character, Lady Baltimore, is fashioned after one of the city's former belles, Alicia Rhett Mayberry. Lady Baltimore creates this cake in the novel. However, the British had a Queen Cake at least fifty years before that is very similar, so maybe Willard's copied the Queen Cake and called it a Lady Cake??

And that is the sum total of my historic cooking research for the day. I want my own space for totally obscure, trivial trivia, often non-Lincoln related!