Historical Food Fortnightly #1: Protose
Jun. 11th, 2014 08:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizabeth_mnAll right!!! My first Historical Food Fortnightly challenge! The first theme is Literary: “Make a dish that has been mentioned in a work of literature, based on historical documentation about that food item.”
I posted a little intro about this last week, and yesterday I went for it.
The Challenge: Literary Foods: 1. Literary Foods June 1 - June 14
Food is described in great detail in much of the literature of the past. Make a dish that has been mentioned in a work of literature, based on historical documentation about that food item.
A meal from the Battle Creek Sanitarium, as described in the novel The Road to Wellville by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
The whole belief system of the Health Food craze at the time was what inspired the meal, not just one recipe. The elimination of meat, not necessarily for ethical reasons, but to remove toxins from the diet; the focus on beneficial intestinal bacteria; the idea that the body could be purified and kept in a state of perfect health based on diet alone.
I find it so funny/annoying that while the early 1900s health food movement was so much about grains – whole grains! – now we have a complete backlash and everyone thinks grains make you fat, gluten is the devil, meat is awesome again, everyone’s doing Paleo diet, bacon is still a fad, etc.
Okay, moving on.
The Recipe(s): Protose, bran and graham biscuits, stewed tomatoes, and orange yogurt
A bit of intro on the Protose. This was a product manufactured by Kellogg. It was not meant to be made at home, so no recipes exist for it. There are LOTS of recipes telling you what to do with it, but it assumes you are buying it. Apparently this product was manufactured until the 1990s. I found the ingredient list from the 1990s-era version as well as several recipes for reverse-engineering the product.
Its main ingredient is gluten. Gluten in the form of seitan is a common food at my house, so I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the concept. I have also experimented with making whole food “meat substitutes” off and on for years.
We tend to think of these weird fake meat foods as a very modern thing, so I love the idea of making a historic meat substitute.
The sides to round out the meal were from The New Cookery, A Book of Recipes, Most of which are in Use at the Battle Creek Sanitarium on google books. Details below.
All the dishes were part of the menu appearing in the Road to Wellville.
The Date/Year and Region: The cookbook dates from 1913, but these recipes were in use since at least 1900. Battle Creek, Michigan, Midwestern USA.
How Did You Make It: I started by mixing my gluten flour with a little chickpea flour as suggested in the protose recipe here. Used about 21/2 cups gluten, maybe 3/4 cup chickpea flour.
Added some tamari and slowly added about 3 cups of water and stirred to make a firm dough. I had a helper.
Fully moistened.
Added the peanut butter, about a cup.
Minced half an onion. In non-historic cooking mode, I would have used the processor, but for this I just knifed it.
Stretchy gluten strands.
The finished mix. What a delicious glutenous mass!
My improvised double boiler. I kept the kettle handy and refilled the pot with boiling water about every half hour.
When it first went in.
After about an hour I flipped it.
And 2.5 hours later, done!
From New Cookery: BRAN AND GRAHAM BISCUIT 1 cup sterilized bran 2 teaspoons sugar 2 cups graham flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons butter 1 egg 1 teaspoon soda 80 minims hydrochloric acid CP This amount of soda and hydrochloric acid is equivalent to 4 teaspoons baking powder Mix the flour bran sugar and salt together Beat the egg slightly and add to the milk Dissolve the soda in the milk and add the melted butter Lastly add the hydrochloric acid Turn very quickly into the dry ingredients Mix lightly but quickly Turn upon a molding board and shape with a biscuit cutter and bake fifteen to twenty minutes in a hot oven If baking powder is used omit the hydrochloric acid and the soda and proceed as follows Mix the dry ingredients together beat the egg slightly and add to the milk Stir the liquids into the dry ingredients the same as for cream biscuits Turn out upon a slightly floured molding board and roll to one half inch in thickness Cut into shape with the biscuit cutter and bake in a hot oven.
The biscuits went together as biscuits generally do. Mixed the dry ingredients, melted the butter, added milk and egg. I didn't have any hydrochloric acid handy (wtf?) so I just used the alternate method suggested for baking powder.
Graham flour was a tricky one. Invented by Sylvester Graham in the 1830s/40s, it was originally a type of whole, complete wheat flour, nothing discarded. Later in the century it came to mean a partially refined flour with some bran added back in. Since my recipe is from 1913, I ended up using half whole wheat and half unbleached white flour.
The bran called for was not specific; I used oat bran.
Baked! A "hot oven" to me meant 400 F.
Mmmmmm!
From New Cookery: ORANGE YOGURT For each glass of the beverage use 1/2 glass of yogurt buttermilk the juice of one orange and one teaspoonful of sugar Stir the ingredients together and chill If yogurt buttermilk is unobtainable kumyss or clabbered milk beaten smooth with an egg beater or other sour milk preparations will suffice.
I just used regular yogurt and it came out so thick!! Even with the juice. I added a little milk to compensate.
From New Cookery: 329 STEWED TOMATOES Take canned tomatoes heat to boiling and season with butter and salt to taste or take nice ripe tomatoes peel and cut into halves or quarters then put in a stew kettle with the addition of a little hot water and cook half an hour season with butter or cocoanut butter and salt to taste.
Seriously just canned whole organic tomatoes, which I crushed with my hands into a saucepan. Heated, added butter and salt, done!
Time to Complete: About 3.5 hours
Total Cost: No idea. Maybe $15 for everything? But of course I didn’t use the whole bag of gluten.
How Successful Was It?: The protose tasted. . . okay. Pretty much how I expected. It had a firm and only slightly chewy texture. It was denser than store-bought seitan. The flavor was only slightly of peanuts, mostly it had a savory taste from the onions and tamari. A little bit more bready-tasting than I had expected. It was very dense and filling; one slice was quite enough!
The stewed tomatoes were delish, natch.
The orange yogurt was REALLY thick. Almost not a beverage. But yummy.
And the biscuits were very good as well. Light, not flaky but slightly crumbly, with a good oaty flavor. They had a firm bite, like the biscuit version of al dente pasta. They didn’t get very brown, probably due to the lack of fat in the dough.
The Girl approved.
She loved the tomatoes and biscuits and said the protose was "okay."
How Accurate Is It?: The protose recipes I used are modern interpretations. The other 3 recipes are original. I noted ingredient substitutions in the “how” section.
I had so much fun with this and I’m excited for the next one!
I posted a little intro about this last week, and yesterday I went for it.
The Challenge: Literary Foods: 1. Literary Foods June 1 - June 14
Food is described in great detail in much of the literature of the past. Make a dish that has been mentioned in a work of literature, based on historical documentation about that food item.
A meal from the Battle Creek Sanitarium, as described in the novel The Road to Wellville by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
The whole belief system of the Health Food craze at the time was what inspired the meal, not just one recipe. The elimination of meat, not necessarily for ethical reasons, but to remove toxins from the diet; the focus on beneficial intestinal bacteria; the idea that the body could be purified and kept in a state of perfect health based on diet alone.
I find it so funny/annoying that while the early 1900s health food movement was so much about grains – whole grains! – now we have a complete backlash and everyone thinks grains make you fat, gluten is the devil, meat is awesome again, everyone’s doing Paleo diet, bacon is still a fad, etc.
Okay, moving on.
The Recipe(s): Protose, bran and graham biscuits, stewed tomatoes, and orange yogurt
A bit of intro on the Protose. This was a product manufactured by Kellogg. It was not meant to be made at home, so no recipes exist for it. There are LOTS of recipes telling you what to do with it, but it assumes you are buying it. Apparently this product was manufactured until the 1990s. I found the ingredient list from the 1990s-era version as well as several recipes for reverse-engineering the product.
Its main ingredient is gluten. Gluten in the form of seitan is a common food at my house, so I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the concept. I have also experimented with making whole food “meat substitutes” off and on for years.
We tend to think of these weird fake meat foods as a very modern thing, so I love the idea of making a historic meat substitute.
The sides to round out the meal were from The New Cookery, A Book of Recipes, Most of which are in Use at the Battle Creek Sanitarium on google books. Details below.
All the dishes were part of the menu appearing in the Road to Wellville.
The Date/Year and Region: The cookbook dates from 1913, but these recipes were in use since at least 1900. Battle Creek, Michigan, Midwestern USA.
How Did You Make It: I started by mixing my gluten flour with a little chickpea flour as suggested in the protose recipe here. Used about 21/2 cups gluten, maybe 3/4 cup chickpea flour.
Added some tamari and slowly added about 3 cups of water and stirred to make a firm dough. I had a helper.
Fully moistened.
Added the peanut butter, about a cup.
Minced half an onion. In non-historic cooking mode, I would have used the processor, but for this I just knifed it.
Stretchy gluten strands.
The finished mix. What a delicious glutenous mass!
My improvised double boiler. I kept the kettle handy and refilled the pot with boiling water about every half hour.
When it first went in.
After about an hour I flipped it.
And 2.5 hours later, done!
From New Cookery: BRAN AND GRAHAM BISCUIT 1 cup sterilized bran 2 teaspoons sugar 2 cups graham flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons butter 1 egg 1 teaspoon soda 80 minims hydrochloric acid CP This amount of soda and hydrochloric acid is equivalent to 4 teaspoons baking powder Mix the flour bran sugar and salt together Beat the egg slightly and add to the milk Dissolve the soda in the milk and add the melted butter Lastly add the hydrochloric acid Turn very quickly into the dry ingredients Mix lightly but quickly Turn upon a molding board and shape with a biscuit cutter and bake fifteen to twenty minutes in a hot oven If baking powder is used omit the hydrochloric acid and the soda and proceed as follows Mix the dry ingredients together beat the egg slightly and add to the milk Stir the liquids into the dry ingredients the same as for cream biscuits Turn out upon a slightly floured molding board and roll to one half inch in thickness Cut into shape with the biscuit cutter and bake in a hot oven.
The biscuits went together as biscuits generally do. Mixed the dry ingredients, melted the butter, added milk and egg. I didn't have any hydrochloric acid handy (wtf?) so I just used the alternate method suggested for baking powder.
Graham flour was a tricky one. Invented by Sylvester Graham in the 1830s/40s, it was originally a type of whole, complete wheat flour, nothing discarded. Later in the century it came to mean a partially refined flour with some bran added back in. Since my recipe is from 1913, I ended up using half whole wheat and half unbleached white flour.
The bran called for was not specific; I used oat bran.
Baked! A "hot oven" to me meant 400 F.
Mmmmmm!
From New Cookery: ORANGE YOGURT For each glass of the beverage use 1/2 glass of yogurt buttermilk the juice of one orange and one teaspoonful of sugar Stir the ingredients together and chill If yogurt buttermilk is unobtainable kumyss or clabbered milk beaten smooth with an egg beater or other sour milk preparations will suffice.
I just used regular yogurt and it came out so thick!! Even with the juice. I added a little milk to compensate.
From New Cookery: 329 STEWED TOMATOES Take canned tomatoes heat to boiling and season with butter and salt to taste or take nice ripe tomatoes peel and cut into halves or quarters then put in a stew kettle with the addition of a little hot water and cook half an hour season with butter or cocoanut butter and salt to taste.
Seriously just canned whole organic tomatoes, which I crushed with my hands into a saucepan. Heated, added butter and salt, done!
Time to Complete: About 3.5 hours
Total Cost: No idea. Maybe $15 for everything? But of course I didn’t use the whole bag of gluten.
How Successful Was It?: The protose tasted. . . okay. Pretty much how I expected. It had a firm and only slightly chewy texture. It was denser than store-bought seitan. The flavor was only slightly of peanuts, mostly it had a savory taste from the onions and tamari. A little bit more bready-tasting than I had expected. It was very dense and filling; one slice was quite enough!
The stewed tomatoes were delish, natch.
The orange yogurt was REALLY thick. Almost not a beverage. But yummy.
And the biscuits were very good as well. Light, not flaky but slightly crumbly, with a good oaty flavor. They had a firm bite, like the biscuit version of al dente pasta. They didn’t get very brown, probably due to the lack of fat in the dough.
The Girl approved.
She loved the tomatoes and biscuits and said the protose was "okay."
How Accurate Is It?: The protose recipes I used are modern interpretations. The other 3 recipes are original. I noted ingredient substitutions in the “how” section.
I had so much fun with this and I’m excited for the next one!
