The Puzzle of Blackstone Lodge

Mystery reading this week: The puzzle of Blackstone Lodge  by Martin Edwards, first published 2022. Set in the 1930s, this book is crammed with culture and drama — food, wine, fashionable and not fashionable clothing, motor cars, household situations, complicated relationships, unexplained disappearances, and murders of course. It’s a good mystery, more or less in the style of the well-known writers of that era: I’m thinking Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. Like the locked room mysteries of early mystery writers, it’s very complex, with many characters, constantly shifting motives, and vast numbers of clues. The most amazing portrayal is that of a spiritual medium who possesses highly effective methods of seemingly offering contact with the dead to bereaved customers  — and charging them very high prices. The gradual revelation of the reality of this character and the discovery of how she is able to be such an effective medium is masterful.

Finally after several murders and much effort to find the murderers and their motives, there’s a very long denouement in a very unusual setting. Finally, in this scene and one more conversation, the author reveals the perpetrators — both suspected and unsuspected. The young woman amateur detective, Rachel Savernake, masterminds the entire final revelation. Although the novel is complex — even over-complex and maybe a bit too long — it’s a readable tale, and it amuses me that the author, writing in the present time, the 2020s, returned to so many classic mystery novel conventions.

A Bottle of Wine

“Jacob reclined on the settee in the sitting room of Gaunt House. Nell Fagan’s death had ruined his day, but a glass of Château Pavie 1921 provided a touch of solace. He was no wine buff, but it was the most stunning Bordeaux he’d ever tasted. … Jacob washed down Hetty’s shepherd’s pie with more than his fair share of the Château Pavie.” (p. 186-189)

Ah, yes, the pleasure of visiting a grand household that hasn’t lost its money in the Depression. I don’t know what the wine was worth then, but I’m sure it was expensive. (The bottle depicted here is available, believe it or not, for around $3500, though it may have lost some of its flavor in the past century or so.) 

UPDATE: in response to comments — to repeat, the price of a surviving bottle of the 1921 vintage TODAY is very high, but that wouldn’t have been the price in the 1930s when the book is set. Today a recent vintage is around $400.

Quite a few scenes of food and drink contribute to the atmosphere of this novel, and I always love to see how the author employs food details as a way to enhance atmosphere and character development. 

In sum: I found this to be a good read, even if very complicated and drawn-out. Above all, I am highly impressed at the vast number of loose ends that are explained in the final chapters.

Review © 2023 mae sander

What did English detectives eat for breakfast?

Continuing with my exploration of the English Breakfast, I checked my bookshelves for cookbooks that tell what English detectives ate and how it was prepared. The most famous fictional English detectives often visited traditional country houses where their rich clients lived. These clients sometimes became murder victims and sometimes turned out to be the murderers -- but they still ate breakfast! Each of the cookbooks I found has rather extensive discussions of such breakfasts, including recipes. And these breakfasts were frequently just the type of English Breakfast that's described in Kaori O'Connor's book The English Breakfast (which I discussed here yesterday). While I've written posts about these three books before, I want to concentrate on their treatment of the detectives' breakfasts.

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's childhood home Torquay, and her favorite country residence Greenway House both served breakfast in the traditional country house manner, always in the special-purpose breakfast room.  Christie loved these homes, and others where she lived as well, according to Crèmes & châtiments: Recettes délicieuses et criminelles (Creams and Punishments: Recipes both delicious and Criminal from Agatha Christie) by Anne Martinetti and François Rivère. My diligent searches have not turned up an Agatha Christie cookbook in English: I fear this is the only one that's been published.

The only Agatha Christie cookbook I can find. Published 2005.

From her first detective novel onward (published 1920), Agatha Christie often featured English country house breakfasts, as well as breakfasts eaten in other venues by her detectives and her other characters. The recipes and descriptions in Crèmes & châtiments begin with a detailed explanation of tea: its history, its many types and origins, and how English people enjoy it. Coffee lovers are also accommodated at a classic country house breakfast. As for Hercule Poirot, his beloved hot chocolate at breakfast is distinctly non-English. He requires it to be served on a very symmetrically arranged tray with a croissant or roll for dipping. 

In her chapter on breakfast, Martinetti also includes recipes for tomatoes with white beans, grilled tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms in which you might just include one or two poisonous ones if you are an aspiring murderer; several types of eggs including omelet curry and eggs Benedict; kidneys with bacon, many fish dishes suitable for breakfast, and a couple of home-made marmalades. For every recipe there's an appropriate quotation from one of Agatha Christie's numerous stories, and many beautiful pictures.

In short: this book offers a very good selection for the classic English Breakfast!

Arthur Conan Doyle

"A good roast beef, plum pudding, or English trifle" are quintessential dishes named at the beginning of Dining with Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Cookbook by Julia Carlson Rosenblatt and Frederic H. Sonnenschmidt (published 1976 and 1990). Breakfast, however, is "by far the most prominent meal in the Sherlockian Canon." One expert they cite "Has counted 73 specific mentions of breakfast, as opposed to 30 references to lunch, 3 to high tea, and 58 to dinner or supper." (p. 19) 

Not the only Sherlock Holmes Cookbook.

While Rosenblatt and Sonnenschmidt's details about the foods provided by Holmes and Watson's landlady Mrs. Hudson are speculative, they reflect the fact that Mrs. Hudson was working in the 19th century tradition of an English Breakfast. (The first Sherlock Holmes publication was in 1887.) Mrs. Hudson's repertory specifically included eggs, bacon, ham, a cold joint of beef, and other classics. Although Arthur Conan Doyle rarely listed the full menu, the cookbook authors speculatively provided complete menus that might have been eaten before or during the hectic investigations in the stories.

Dorothy Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey was a member of the aristocracy, the English class that lived in country houses and thrived on breakfasts of eggs, fish, game, organ meats, and many other savory dishes, served at a buffet in a special breakfast room. Indeed, from Dorothy Sayers' first detective story (published 1923) Lord Peter often enjoys such a meal, and many are documented in quite a whimsical way in The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook by Elizabeth Bond Ryan and William J. Eakins. 

"Ah, I have never regretted  Paradise Lost since I discovered that it contained no eggs and bacon," observed Lord Peter (quoted on p. 14). The authors add quite a number of the detective's other observations about classic English Breakfast foods as well. For example, he wished he could tell off his charlady for her "tiresome habit of boiling his breakfast kippers till they resembled heavily pickled loofahs." (p. 15)

The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook, published 1981.

The chapter on breakfast provides a number of helpful menus with suggestions for re-enactments of the scenes in Lord Peter's breakfast room, such as assigning your guests to pose as characters from the novels. Here is one of the menus, which the authors recommend that you serve in "bilibeastly" weather:

BLOATERS

RIDDLESDALE BREAKFAST CURRY

SCRAMBLED EGGS (optional)

BREAD, BUTTER, TOAST, AND SQUISH (Marmalade)

COFFEE

There follows a very helpful explanation of bloaters:

"Bloaters are herrings which have been lightly salted and smoked. They do not keep for long periods of time so they should be eaten right away like fresh fish... They are the famous 'red herrings' of literature. 

"Allow one bloater per person. Not everyone at the breakfast table will want one. Trim each bloater of head and tail. Make incisions in the skin at approximately one-inch intervals across each side of the fish. Place the fish in a lightly buttered, shallow ovenproof dish. Dot each fish with butter and bake for about 30 minutes in a preheated 350º oven. ... 

"An even more distinguished bloater dish is suggested by Mrs. Sayers's husband, Atherton Fleming, in his cookbook. Major Fleming recommends putting two bloaters in a soup plate, poring on whiskey to cover, setting the dish afire, and letting it flame until done." (p. 9-10)

The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook is highly entertaining, even if you are not a Dorothy Sayers fan. It's a lot more fun to read than the Victorian breakfast cookbooks and household manuals reproduced in Kaori O'Connor's The English Breakfast. I will return to this topic!

Blog post © 2021 mae sander.

What is an English Breakfast?

What I'm reading: a definitive treatise on the English Breakfast.

The English Breakfast today is a popular choice for discriminating lovers of all things British. In London and other English destinations there are B&Bs, country inns, urban hotels, pretentious and unpretentious dining establishments, Harry Potter theme park restaurants (representing the Hogwarts dining room), and probably a few surviving country houses that still offer a menu that fits the description of this classic meal. You can even get an English Breakfast at some places in New York; cruise ship menus often have English Breakfast options, as do trains and car ferry restaurants -- providing they aren't stopped by pandemic closures 

If you order an English Breakfast, the expectation is that you will find a set choice of foods. The usual offerings would be tea or coffee, toast drowned in butter, two kinds of bacon, variously cooked eggs, a grilled tomato, a few mushrooms, several types of English-style sausage such as chipolatas; a dish of kedgeree; fish such as bloaters, smoked salmon, haddock, or kippers; black or white pudding, Heinz baked beans, marmalade, and possibly something or other in a white sauce. 

If you find a croissant, a blueberry muffin, or a Danish pastry in an "English Breakfast" your host has probably overstepped the traditional definition of this very English meal. An egg-white omelet would also be suspect. The English Breakfast flavors are traditionally mostly savory not sweet, and the choices are mostly fattening, not abstemious. 

Two items that were blamed for the demise of the English Breakfast in the 1920s were grapefruit and packaged cold cereal, which were more convenient and faster, and less dependent on domestic servants. The Americans were held responsible for these innovations, but that's not fair. After all, it was the American Heinz corporation that developed the canned baked beans that became a luxury item for country house breakfasts  before canned food was a cheap and easy choice and a required item on the English Breakfast list. In any case, the English Breakfast did not die, but was resurrected after the World War II rationing almost brought it to extinction.

"The English Breakfast is the national dish of a mythic and indivisible England, a repast that, despite differences in execution, binds its people together as one." (The English Breakfast, Kaori O'Connor, p 46). There are Welsh, Irish, and Scottish versions but there is one English Breakfast to rule them all.

The English Breakfast as many people imagine it now may take inspiration from literary versions of the meal. A century ago, detective fiction by Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, A.A.Milne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others often set their imagined murders in a country house. The resident servants got up early to produce a lavish buffet with every item on this list and maybe more, to be consumed by hosts, guests, and possibly murderers and detectives. Versions of the English Breakfast still show up in current detective fiction by authors like Tana French, sometimes called a fry-up or a Full English. Such a breakfast in more recent detective fiction is rarely presented by a staff of servants in a serious country house, but still -- it survives in fiction as it does in real life.

While twentieth and twenty-first century versions are more familiar, the origin of the English Breakfast was actually during the Victorian era, when gentry living in country houses were a model of English propriety — and culinary correctness. The increasing wealth of the non-gentry created a new class: one that aspired to act genteel, but that had not been born into gentility nor inherited an estate. A real gentleman's estate would ideally stretch as far as the eye could see from the manor house. From these lands would come all the food served in the dining rooms and breakfast rooms of the stately home at the center of the property. The dishes that showed up on the table were the products of "one's own soil, rivers, forests and moorlands. The upper class fondness for venison, game and salmon springs from the fact that these are all specific products of country estates, once largely available only to those who possessed them." (p. 23)

For aspiring non-aristocrats, the Victorian era produced a large literature on how to act genteel even if you weren't born to it. Some of the challenges included training your domestic staff to cook and serve as they should, and setting tables worthy of the class to which you wanted to belong. O'Connor's book includes facsimile versions of three Victorian manuals on the ideal high-class breakfast -- that is, instructions on how to emulate the gentry in their country houses no matter how humble were your actual circumstances. To serve a proper breakfast required proper recipes for the foods, but also demanded the use of damask tablecloths, china place settings and serving dishes, silver tableware, utensils like a purpose-made scissors for cutting the top off a boiled egg, various types of toast racks, or coffee and tea sets with ewers, creamers, and so on. You needed a special diagram to know how to arrange all this on the table. Not to mention a big table. It wasn't easy!

From O’Connor’s book: an illustration of how to set a breakfast buffet for twelve.

In a future post I'll describe more of the fascinating story of the English Breakfast as told in O'Connor's wonderfully detailed book.

Review © 2021 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

"The Moving Toyshop"

Today's reading: The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, first published in 1946. I find this book very funny, almost a send-up of the more conventional British detective novels such as those by Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. It's also a kind of send-up of books about pompous academics: the setting is Oxford and the amateur detectives are a literature don, Gervase Fen, and a poet named Cadogan. Not quite as funny as a Bertie Wooster novel... but close. And furthermore, it is actually suspenseful.

Beyond the humor about people and situations, the plot of this tale is so improbable that even the characters in the story comment on it:

"'I don't think this is going to work,' Mr Beavis remarked with some apprehension.

"'It will work,' Fen responded confidently, 'because no one expects this sort of trick outside a book.'" (p. 147)

The novel takes place in a single day, beginning with the poet's negotiation for an advance from his publisher in London because he needs a vacation, and continuing as he takes a train to Oxford for this needed break. His train trip is interrupted because there are no further trains from a station almost to Oxford. Thus he has to hitchhike with a strangely literate truck driver (who gets back into the story later, quite improbably). As he walks toward the center of town, he randomly enters a toyshop whose door is standing open, and he witnesses the result of a murder. 

Thus the tale begins. Cadogan enlists Gervase Fen, Oxford literary don, to help find the culprit. They engage in a rather madcap rush to understand both the disappearance of the murder victim and the disappearance of the toyshop where the murder took place, and to find the guilty perps. And indeed, the day of crazy risks and chases on foot, by bicycle, in Fen's own sports car, in a stolen car, in the previously mentioned truck, and even by punt on the river, is wrapped up by the following evening. What classical unity!

I often notice how a detective story can be punctuated by stops for meals -- such pacing helps to ground the detectives in a kind of real world. With each meal, we see how time is passing. Descriptions of food and eating places can reveal insights about the character of the detectives. Meal times in The Moving Toyshop come off in a somewhat off-beat way. Fen and Cadogan come close to eating at least a couple of times, but instead keep chasing after and confronting a larger and larger collection of bizarre and eccentric suspects.

First they miss lunch in an Oxford dining hall thanks to being briefly kidnapped by a couple of mysterious thugs involved in the crime cover-up. After an escape from this peril, they reach Fen's Oxford chambers:

"Fen, who had been arranging about tea for them all with an elderly, mirthless individual who proved to be his scout, returned to the room, unlocked a drawer in his untidy desk, and took out a small automatic pistol. For a moment conversation was still: something of the implication of that act was borne in on everyone present. 

"'I'm sorry I shall have to desert you,' he said, 'But this interview really won't wait....' 

"Curiosity, and the desire for tea, were conducting a mimic battle in Cadogan's brain; curiosity emerged triumphant. 'I'm coming too,' he announced." (p. 113)

Another failed chance to eat! Finally, they do manage to have a bit of food later that afternoon:

"Cadogan had finished the buttered scones and was eating a piece of angel-cake. 'The Episode of the Guzzling Bard,' said Fen as he lit a cigarette." (p. 128) 

And just as he finishes eating, one of the possible witnesses they have been seeking turns up in the very same café! The pursuit of suspects and discovery of more and more surprises continues until the improbable wrap-up. Read it and chortle!

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978), who wrote scripts and film scores for quite a few non-detective films, and also an entire series about Gervase Fen. He is quite obscure compared to the still-popular authors of the Golden Age of crime fiction before World War II. Still, his books, especially this one, make it onto various lists of "best detective novels." Though Agatha Christie's work, for example, continues to be turned into film on a regular basis, I can find only one such treatment of The Moving Toyshop, a TV show aired in 1964, listed on IMDB -- but with no available way to watch it. 

Note: Authors of Crispin's era whose detectives stopped to eat while detecting include Christie, Sayers, Georges Simenon, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Rex Stout, and many others. Detective stories throughout the 20th century continued to feature meals in one form or another.  I've written about this often! In much more recent "cozy" mysteries, this trope has been forced into something different, which I don't admire nearly as much. 

Cooking for Cold, Damp Weather

Squash, red pepper, and chicken soup.

The soup!

"Beloved by the British, this rich,
protein-filled dish is traditionally
made with a mashed-potato crust."
-- Epicurious

For dinner tonight, I made soup. I used chopped onion, cubed squash, most of a jar of red peppers, spices, and chicken broth. After browning onions, spices, and squash in butter, I added stock & peppers and simmered the pot until the squash was soft. Then I set aside around 2/3 of the vegetables and pureed the rest with my immersion blender. I put back the reserved vegetables and added chopped up meat from last night's roast chicken. Roasting meat in the oven, simmering soup on the stove -- good choices for cold nights.

I garnished the soup bowls with rings of fresh bell pepper, Greek yogurt, and parsley. And I served those little Trader Joe's gluten-free crackers which are good even if you don't have anything against gluten.

Earlier this week, I cooked lamb shanks in the slow cooker. Bloggers all around have been writing about slow cooker dishes this week: obviously this is the time of year when you want your house to fill with the aromatic steam that this wonderful device produces, whether you're making filling for enchiladas or sloppy Joes, a simmered roast beef, pulled pork, or a meat-and-vegetable stew.

After the lamb slow-cooked overnight until it fell off the bones, I chilled it and skimmed the fat. That evening we ate the resulting lamb stew by itself. The next time around, I made it into shepherd's pie -- with a mound of mashed potatoes in the center (see photo). There are lots of ways to make shepherd's pie -- with beef or lamb, with various vegetables, spiced to taste. Some say the beef version should be called "cottage pie." With lamb, it's an English favorite that links to my reading project featuring detective fiction by Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

"The Nine Tailors" -- TV Version

The beginning of the 4-part TV series "The Nine Tailors" --
a 1914 wedding in British upper class splendor.

The TV series "The Nine Tailors," originally broadcast on the BBC in 1974, begins with an opulent wedding. In the impressive reception hall of a fine country mansion, servants are placing the wedding cake and a remarkable collection of sweets on the buffet table. The night after the wedding, which took place in 1914, the mansion's butler and his accomplice steal a £60,000 emerald necklace from one of the guests. Lord Peter Wimsey, played by actor Ian Carmichael, is a guest at the wedding; he chases the fleeing suspect in a fast car.

The first episode of the TV series continues with the experiences of Peter Wimsey in the trenches of Word War I, providing the back-story of his relationship to his incomparable gentleman's gentleman, Bunter. It's a very dramatic and fast-paced hour of drama. Only at the very end of this episode do we go forward 20 years to 1934, when Wimsey and Bunter crash their car into a snowdrift in the same little town -- the point in time where the original novel by Dorothy Sayers begins. I find this rearrangement of flashbacks in the book into an exciting first episode to be very effective and enjoyable.

Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey. 

From the second episode onward, the TV drama follows the book quite closely, continuing to dramatize every possible action scene with enthusiasm. In fact, this TV treatment seemed so exciting that we watched all 4 episodes in one night. 

I've already written about my visit to the prototype of the little town and the church that is central to the plot of Sayers' book. I believe that some of the filming was done at that location or at least using a reconstruction of that church. If anything, this treatment an improvement over the book, as the long-winded digressions on bell ringing and other technical subjects were condensed sufficiently to contribute to the plot without retarding the action. Even though I don't find the sound of pealing bells particularly appealing, it's much nicer to hear them than to read about them!

The Five Red Herrings, another Lord Peter Wimsey novel, was also made into a BBC TV series with Ian Carmichael as the detective. I also watched it recently, but did not like it nearly as well -- in fact, I found the acting wooden and dialog too staged, which is odd since it dates from only a year later. The actors in "Nine Tailors" seemed much better suited to their roles, especially the character parts like the Rector, his wife, the doctor, and the eccentric village people.

For all my blog posts about Dorothy Sayers, including this one, click here.

Saint Wendreda and the Nine Tailors

Lord Peter Wimsey again! The Nine Tailors is the only Dorothy Sayers mystery that I remember reading in the past, and I decided to read it again. It's quite long for a detective novel, and contains enormous detail about English bell-ringing. The bells are central to the plot, but I eventually found the technical descriptions about them a bit tedious.

If you aren't familiar with the terminology, "tailors" are peals of the bells: it was a tradition to ring the bells of a village church tower nine times to mark a village man's death. Specifically, amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey spends a lot of time in a village where the Rector is obsessed with ringing changes on the bells of the local church. He himself participates in a 9-hour sequence of bell ringing to bring in a New Year; that is, pealing the bells in various mathematical and not necessarily musical sequences. At least now I know why I have never understood what I was hearing when bells ring in the New Year or something -- always sounded like noise to me.

The Nine Tailors also contains quite a bit of description about the architecture and decoration of the church whose bell tower is involved. This, I found more interesting, because I once visited the church that was the prototype for the fictional building. Its main feature is an "angel roof" with 120 wooden sculpted angels at the ends of the hammer beams that support the roof. Friends who were very dedicated Dorothy Sayers fans took us on a tour of places of importance to her novels. Some photos of that tour (March 13, 1999) --

The angel roof of St.Wendreda's church in March, England, prototype of the church in The Nine Tailors. 

Our friends Sheila and John with the key to the angel roof church.
We had to ask at the local pub "The Stars" to obtain the key. 

Churchyard of St. Wendreda's. The keys to the church and the cemetery are both plot elements in The Nine Tailors. 

St. Wendreda's church tower.

Mae and John looking over the church.

To return to the novel: the Rector and the village inhabitants in The Nine Tailors are all very deferential to Lord Peter Wimsey, as Wimsey's family are the local nobility -- his brother is the Duke of Denver, the local area (fictitious). Although the term isn't used, Wimsey is very condescending in the old sense, which meant the way a noble is actually supposed to treat his inferiors. I am rather fascinated by the way the word has evolved from praise for the behavior of a person who was born into a socially superior stratum to criticism for a person who acts as if he was born superior, and expects to be treated as such! This mutual view is reflected, I think, in the way the Rector and his wife offer meals to Wimsey:

• "Can you eat shepherd's pie?" she asks. "You're sure? The butcher doesn't call today, but there's always cold ham." (p. 51)
• "The butcher says he has some nice calf's liver today, only I don't know if you can eat it," she says on a later occasion. "Theodore is very fond of liver-and-bacon, though I always think it's rather rich." (p. 187)
• After singing hymns on Christmas Eve, Wimsey returns to the Rectory with the Rector, his wife, and others "to eat cold roast beef and trifle." Not his usual French-style menu! By this time, Wimsey is being nobly helpful to the locals, and no apology seems needed when they share their meal with him. (p. 377)

The novel's time frame spans an entire year, which allows a vast amount of detail (maybe too much for me) about life in the village while a murder mystery is being solved. I also found the level of detail about the drainage systems in the fens of England to be a bit excessive, though rising water when the sluices are breached causes some of the most exciting scenes in the novel, as well as requiring another type of bell ringing: sounding an alarm. On our tour of the area, we also looked at some of the dykes and sluices that keep the former wetlands from being flooded.

If you decide to read The Nine Tailors expecting the usual pace of detective fiction, you must be quite patient! But tastes vary -- I've become a bit weary of both the pace of these novels and the extreme class-orientation they show. However, I'm planing to watch the TV series that was made of this book in the 1970s.

Mysterious Filet of Sole

Last night we dined on Dover sole filet with white wine and mushroom sauce.

In The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Lord Peter Wimsey eats sole on two occasions. It's mentioned in the other Dorothy Sayers book I read recently, Whose Body. Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, a lover of subtle flavors, is also known to eat sole occasionally. 

The cookbooks based on English detective fiction that I've been reading recently offer lots of recipes for sole in various sauces. Having my mind on these detectives, I made my own favorite filet of sole recipe last night. The sole filets -- which I bought from the freezer case at Trader Joe's -- were so thin I could almost see through them, meaning they would cook in just a couple of minutes. To avoid overcooking this delicate fish, I made the sauce first, and then laid the filets on top of the sauce just long enough to cook them.

Too bad about the kippers

Herbed scrambled eggs for breakfast, from Jeanine Larmoth, Murder on the Menu, prepared by me (the cook)
served by me (the butler), consumed by me & Len (residents of our fine mansion).
No mysteries here for the moment, unless you count the question of how the stock market will do today.

Here's the recipe I used. Yes, I meant to include Kippers, which I bought yesterday. But ...

Alas, when I looked at the package, I realized that somehow  -- although I bought them yesterday --
these kippers were 6 years out-of-date. I was afraid to open them, and will take them back to Whole Foods!

Note: the scrambled eggs were very good. But I'm afraid we didn't come near to reproducing the atmosphere described by Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers. I'll try again to make something from one of my mystery cookbooks! 

Next step: watch more TV dramatizations of these mystery stories. I was amused at one scene that I already watched in "Hickory Dickory Dock."  Poirot (played by David Suchet) was having his usual Continental breakfast with his houseguest Inspector Japp, who says "I say Poirot, don't you have any bacon and eggs?"

Burned Porridge or Kidneys and Bacon? -- Another Dorothy Sayers Mystery

"Mr. Parker was a bachelor, and occupied a Georgian but inconvenient flat... for which he paid a pound a week. His exertions in the cause of civilization were rewarded, not by the gift of diamond rings from empresses or munificent cheques from grateful Prime Ministers, but by a modest, though sufficient, salary, drawn from the pockets of the British taxpayers. He awoke, after a long day of arduous and inconclusive labor, to the smell of burnt porridge." (Dorothy Sayers, Whose Body, Pocket Book edition, p. 65)

It's easy to see how much Parker, the plain-clothes detective, differs from the very aristocratic Lord Peter Wimsey, star of the Dorothy Sayers mystery series. Lord Peter's wealth and privilege allow him to regard detecting as an amusing hobby. He enjoys life in a luxurious flat with an attentive personal servant, his valet Bunter. He can even afford to support Bunter's hobby of photographing crime scenes, buying Bunter cameras and darkroom equipment and leaving the valet's time free to develop his photos, though of course always photos of use to himself. In contrast, Parker can barely afford a decent breakfast.

While Parker is getting ready to eat his porridge -- clumsily prepared by his daily char woman Mrs. Munns -- he contemplates the "sordid absurdity of the human form." Before he gets to the porridge, though, he receives a phone call. It's Bunter with the message: "His lordship says he'd be very glad, sir, if you could make it convenient to step round to breakfast."

Sayers continues: "If the odour of kidneys and bacon had been wafted along the wire, Parker could not have experienced a more vivid sense of consolation." Parker's anticipation highlights difference between an aristocratic and a lower-middle class breakfast. Parker hurried to Lord Peter's flat, viciously saying to Mrs. Munns who was making bad tea: "You can take the porridge home for the family." On the social ladder in an English mystery story, there's always someone lower down. And when Parker arrived at Lord Peter's house, "Mr. Bunter served him with glorious food, incomparable coffee, and the Daily Mail before a blazing fire of wood and coal." (p. 65-66)

The culinary contrast between the social levels of the two detectives had come up the previous day while Parker was continuing his analysis of a complex murder and disappearance and eating "a plate of ham sandwiches and a bottle of Bass." Leaving Parker at work on the case, Lord Peter went to a restaurant named Windham's to meet a friend. I suspect that Sayers believes her readers will recognize this dining establishment; obviously I don't. The menu there clearly doesn't tend towards ham sandwiches and Bass! Lunch at Windham's, in fact, is consommé Polonais; a filet of sole; "the Montrachet '08" about which Lord Peter complains; and a salmis of game, which he declares "not bad." He also complains about a bit of cork in the wine glass. The Montrachet by the way, is from 1908 -- this mystery takes place in 1923! (p. 56-57)

Lord Peter's lifestyle, as portrayed in these small food scenes and throughout the book, might now, nearly 100 years later, be seen as immature and irresponsible. His nonchalance about work led me to suspect that he was very young -- but I now know that in Whose Body he was around 32 years old, just still without mature responsibilities! Moreover, in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (which I wrote about here) he was in his late thirties.

Food characterizes yet another random possible witness: "The Indian Colonel on the first floor was loud but unexpectedly friendly," Parker reports to Lord Peter as they are finishing breakfast. "He gave me Indian curry for supper and some very good whiskey." (p.68)

Monty Python's Cheese Shop didn't have any named cheeses either.

As Whose Body continues, Lord Peter again suffers for the sake of his detecting hobby when he has to eat in Salisbury in a dining establishment not at all up to his standards. "As he sat sadly consuming that impassive pale substance known to the English as 'cheese' unqualified (for there are cheeses which go openly by their names, as Stilton, Camembert, Gruyère, Wensleydale or Gorgonzola, but 'cheese' is cheese and everywhere the same), he inquired of the waiter [about a person of interest in his case]" (p. 80) Reminds me of the Monty Python cheese shop episode.

The most extreme example of food in relation to class concerns the missing man in Parker and Lord Peter's case: Sir Reuben Levy, a Jewish businessman. Levy is married to a woman once known to Lord Peter's mother, the Dowager Duchess. Needless to say, the wife's long-ago marriage to a Jew had caused quite a bit of objection among the antisemitic upper class to which she belonged. The Dowager Duchess speaks of this couple at some length:

"I used to know her quite well, you know, dear, ... when she was a girl. Christine Ford, she was then, and I remember so well the dreadful trouble there was about her marrying a Jew. That was before he made his money.... she fell in love with this Mr. Levy and eloped with him. ... I'm sure some Jews are very good people, and personally I'd much rather they believed something, though of course it must be very inconvenient, what with not working on Saturdays and circumcising the poor little babies and everything depending on the new moon and that funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name, and never being able to have bacon for breakfast." (p. 42-43)

Clearly Sayers, like her contemporary Agatha Christie, has a lot of casual antipathy towards Jews, based on half-truths and general prejudice -- and absolutely incorporates food stereotypes into the mix. I really wonder what she was referring to by "that funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name." I looked around on the web, and this passage is often quoted but the funny kind of meat is never explained.

From the rest of Sayers' portrayal of the character of Sir Reuben Levy, I would say that the Dowager Duchess reflects the author's own attitudes towards Jews -- purportedly well-meaning, badly-informed, and carelessly prejudiced. Agatha Christie can be even worse. Quite a lot has already been written about the prejudices reflected in these two famous mystery authors, but I'll end my say-so here. I wonder, as a Jew, why I tolerate their outdated bigotry instead of finding some other mysteries to read, or instead of watching the cleaned-up TV versions!

"Stay and have a spot of tea with us" -- More English Detective Gourmandise

"I really think you are one of the nicest people I know. You don't talk rubbish about art, and you don't want your hand held, and your mind always turns on eating and drinking." -- Spoken by Miss Marjorie Phelps to Lord Peter Wimsey in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Pocket Book Edition, p. 79

Peter Wimsey definitely loved food. He used it as metaphor -- "Now my child, What's all this?" he says to a distraught wife, "You're as cold as a pêche Melba. That won't do." (p. 144)

I can't imagine why he chose this comparison! Cold as a peach? Cold as raspberry sauce? I guess he's referring to the ice cream in the dish.

Wimsey's love of food is the subject of discussion in The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook, by Elizabeth Bond Ryan and William J. Eakins. They offer recipes for several of the menus originating in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Also, Jeanine Larmoth's Murder on the Menu (which I wrote about here) devotes an entire chapter to "Lord Peter Wimsey: The Moment Wimsicale," and also mentions some of the food highlights from The Unpleasantness.... My choice of this novel, randomly chosen from our mystery shelves, is thus fairly lucky. I have read very few of Sayers's books, and none recently.

During Wimsey's often hurried detecting in The Unpleasantness ..., he constantly stops for meals, accepts a "spot of tea," or refers to meals eaten at some other time. Many dishes are French, or at least they seem to be listed in French on the menus of the restaurants where he eats them. Examples:

• Saddle of mutton at the Bellona club of which he's served the best cut.
• Sole Colbert, Apple Charlotte and "light savory to follow."
• Lobster mayonnaise, meringues and sweet champagne, remembered from a date: "her choice -- oh, lord!" Lobster and champagne evidently don't live up to Wimsey's upper-class standards.
• Moules marinières.
• Grilled kippers "at a friend's studio in the early hours" -- though evidently Wimsey doesn't often eat kippers, according to The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook.
• A perdrix aux choux (partridge with cabbage).
• Breakfast on "a chaste silver tray, containing a Queen Anne coffee-pot and milk-jug, a plate of buttered toast, a delicate china coffee-cup and a small pile of correspondence."
• Curious little stuffed buns and petits-fours at a studio reception -- recipes for these are included in Ryan and Eakins' cookbook.
• Dinner ordered for a lady at a fine restaurant: Huitres Musgrave, soup of Tortue Vraie, Filet de Sole, Faisan Rôti with Pommes Byron, a salad ("And, waiter -- be sure the salad is dry and perfectly crisp), and a Soufflé Glace to finish up with. Recipes for this entire menu appear in Ryan and Eakins, though the authors suggest using tinned turtle soup (that would be Tortue Vraie) rather than starting with an entire sea turtle. Now, 35 years on from the book's publication in 1981, the poor turtles are all protected and it would be irresponsible indeed to eat any type of turtle soup!
  
  (Unpleasantness, pp. 33, 48, 56, 72, 83, 89, 100)

The very noble Wimsey takes high-end food as an entitlement, and has high expectations of what he's served by his very proper valet Bunter (who was his orderly in the war), by his club, and at restaurants. He also has "very definite and highly developed tastes in wine, beer, and spirits" but has no taste for champagne, though when he does drink it, "it is a Pol Roger or Veuve Cliquot." (Wimsey Cookbook, p. 117)

A veteran of World War I, Wimsey is the son of a Duke, born to a family with quite a lot of wealth, taste, and even a coat-of-arms. His youth seems striking to me in this novel. I doubt if he's over 30 years old. Wimsey finds it amusing to solve a murder case, and in fact takes everything with a good deal of humor. Habits of the 1920s seem more pronounced in this work than in contemporary mysteries by Agatha Christie: for example, several of the characters in The Unpleasantness... are averse to using a telephone, considering it a new-fangled upstart.

I close with a very amusing quotation, in response to a lady's remark "Some things are so beastly." Wimsey replies:

"Oh, yes -- quite a lot of things. Birth is beastly -- and death -- and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautiful supréme de sole, with the caviare in boats, and the croûtons and the jolly little twists of potato, and all the gadgets -- I could cry, but there it is, don't you know." (Unpleasantness, p. 171)

Why do so many English mysteries include food?

Hercule Poirot in the kitchen from the TV version titled "Hickory Dickory Dock"

Food, food, glorious English food! An English murder mystery runs on meals, especially when set in a village vicarage, aristocratic country house, exotic vacation villa, the enclosed environment of a first-class train or seaside hotel, or a mansion bought with the profits from ill-gotten gains of social upstarts.

After the war, in the early 50s, Agatha Christie had to expand her settings; for example in Hickory Dickory Death, the murder victims live in a rooming hostel for students and young professional workers, but their dynamics very much resemble that of aristocratic weekenders at a country house she might have used for a 1930s setting. An Italian cook for the hostel makes dinner of "excellent minestrone... from a big tureen. This was followed by a piping hot dish of spaghetti and meat balls." But dinner is just as much a part of the story as a breakfast in that country house. (p. 23, Pocket Book Edition, first published 1955).

Murder on the Menu by Jeanine Larmoth is a wonderful, rather snarky, study of English murder mysteries, including Christie and the other big names -- Allingham, Marsh, Sayers, Innes, and others. Larmoth creates and explores stereotypes of all the main mystery-story characters: Lords, Ladies, butlers, maids, nannies, village spinsters, cooks, amateur detectives, police inspectors, constables (as distinct from chief constables who are higher class!), ordinary policemen, and so on. Above all, Larmoth describes what they eat.

One of Larmoth's most interesting topics is the question of WHY so much food appears in these fictions. I've often wondered that while writing about food in detective fiction (click on the link for all my posts including this one). Here's what she has to say:

"Hidden within each mystery writer is a gourmet; guiding each stroke of the writer's pen is a chef of chef d'oeuvres. If mysteries contain menus and recipes for murder, happily they contain menus and recipes for meals as well Between shudders of fear and apprehension at a past or coming crime are delightful islands where the principal consideration is the next dish, and the shudders are solely pleasurable. The aroma of herbs or fresh bread rises in the air, ginger cake lurks in the larder, a pan sizzles anticipating Yorkshire pudding, a bottle of burgundy makes a sound Margery Alligham describes... as a 'ghost of a pop; ... a beautiful sound, regretful, grateful, kind.'" -- Murder on the Menu, p. 155

Yet, after all the food scenes, Larmoth continues: "one stops to wonder 'why.' Why, and wherefore, all the food?" She cites Agatha Christie for using food as a hiding place, as a trap, as a test to see if the victim has eaten what he was alleged to have eaten, and as a vehicle, of course, for poison. She lists several more practical reasons in plotting mysteries.

"Food indicates setting," as in a country weekend at a great house, for example. Food descriptions among the detective's activities show the reader "This is not ... a story being told; this is real life. In mysteries, food is, in fact, one of the few means of creating an impression of life... giving a sense of reality." (p. 157)

"The Proof of the Pudding" is the title of Larmoth's last chapter, and her conclusion is:

"When the last fork has been laid on the plate, the last crumb of a treacle tart has been eaten, the last Admirable Eccentric has daubed his mustache with a starched white napkin... the case is definitely proved. Not against the murderer. For a way of life. 

"The case for thin slices of bread and butter with tea, and drapes drawn, before rising in the morning.... The case for buttery muffins, grandmother's receipts, brandy for the fainting, meat pies for the police, curry for poisoning. For butlers serving breath-light soufflés, and solicitously bending over one's chair. ... 

"We have tasted, smelled enjoyed -- for all of these can be done with the imagination. ... The only thing we haven't done is eaten, really eaten. This, for all our authors' care, is up to us. ... There is nothing to do but to step hastily into the kitchen, and serve it forth." (p 253-255)

Published in 1972, Murder on the Menu could be a perfect description of many later TV series about English aristocracy; in fact, it was evidently written at about the same time as the production of "Upstairs Downstairs," the series that began in 1971 and helped define a TV genre.

Most chapters of this book include an impressive set of appropriate recipes -- like "Library Snacks," "The Post-Funeral Lunch," "The Tea-Trolley," or "The All Day Buffet." In reading the recipes, I wonder: exactly how wonderful was the food in those idyllic yet fatal settings? It's often very bland, and the meat recipes sometimes call for hours of simmering or boiling what might be nice cuts of pork, beef, veal, or even a chicken. The recipes given in the book are probably quite authentic, as they were written by Charlotte Turgeon (1912-2009). Note: Turgeon was the translator of the Larousse Gastronomique and other French cookbooks. A college classmate of Julia Child, she remained Child's lifelong friend.

A Cookbook Mystery

My newest cookbook is A Taste of Murder edtited by Jo Grossman and Robert Weibezahl, published in 1999. 

Dozens of mystery authors contributed recipes with fascinating commentary to this compendium. Among these recipes, the editors interspersed quotes from earlier mystery authors, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Rex Stout. Profits from the book were donated to some charity or other.

I'm enjoying looking through these literary reflections, reviewing the noted food choices of detectives I know, and learning about new detectives and mystery series that I've never read.

Turning first to my favorites, I started by reading the recipe "Susan Silverman's Boiled Water" contributed by Robert B. Parker, who was alive at the time the book was published, but died in 2010.

As any Parker fan knows, the character Susan Silverman appeared in many of his books: the long-time girlfriend of Parker's splendid detective creation, Spenser. While Spenser was a lover of good food of many sorts, Susan ate very little and maintained her very slender and beautiful figure for the entire 40 years or so covered by the mystery series. Spenser, to summarize, was happy to eat donuts with low-level cops, to eat haute cuisine when offered, or to cook delicious meals for Susan to pick on. Susan's recipe for boiled water, served "in a pretty cup with a squeeze of lemon and some Equal," illustrates her character perfectly.

At the beginning of the recipe, I read:

"When invited to participate in this cookbook, Robert Parker kindly responded: 

'Since there is a Spencer cookbook in development, I guess I better not. But should you wish to be frivolous, you might wish to use Susan's recipe for boiled water, which follows.'" (A Taste of Murder, p. 21)

Always on the lookout for cookbooks based on detective fiction, I immediately began to search for this book, hoping it had indeed been completed before Parker's death. It's a bibliographic mystery indeed! References to a Parker cookbook appeared in very interesting newspaper articles in the past. But I've seen no evidence that any Spenser cookbook was ever published in English at all. Examples:

"A collection of Spenser's recipes, to be edited by Kate Mattes, the owner of Kate's Mystery Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., is to be published by Delacorte." Who Done It? Food Can Thicken the Plot. by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, June 4, 1986.

"Robert Parker's 'Spenser' novels have been best-sellers, including his 13th, 'Taming a Sea Horse,' and the basis of a television series. He now has another book in the oven -- a cookbook. Parker has signed a contract with Delacorte to produce the 'Spenser Cookbook,' but he won't be writing it. He will be collaborating with Kate Mattes, owner of Kate's Mystery Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. He'll cook and she'll write it down." -- from Glimpses by William C. Trott, United Press International, June 11, 1986. 

"The Japanese have also published a Spenser cookbook, because the detective's regularly displayed skills, along with insolence and a penchant for walloping people, include whipping up a good meal." -- from He Said He Had a Pistol; Then He Flashed a Knife. by John Kifner, June 11, 1997.

The page from A Taste of Murder.

I'd love to add a Parker/Spenser cookbook to my bookshelf, which includes recipe collections from Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, Simenon's Inspector Maigret, and Donna Leon's Venetian Detective Brunetti -- and now this collection from many authors. I'd be really curious to see a Spenser cookbook: especially one written as the food-loving writer Robert Parker cooked while his collaborator Kate Mattes wrote down the recipes. But I'm convinced that this isn't a reality and probably never will be.

Meanwhile, we had another stunning fall day here in Michigan, with record or near-record warmth.

I went for a brief bird walk...

And at the pond by the city dump, I saw a heron and a turtle.
Rarer birds that had been spotted here didn't appear when we were looking.

It's Just about the Food

The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is a venerable event: I suspect it's the Gold Standard for food articles. Lazy me -- I haven't systematically read through the collected proceedings of these annual meetings where the best articles from each year since 1981 have been published. On a recent visit to the library, however, I checked out the 1998 volume, Food in the Arts. I was especially interested to read "Food in the Detective Novel" by Joan P. Alcock, and to learn how a professional food historian approaches the subject that I often return to.

"Food in the Detective Novel" begins with a quote from W.H.Auden's famous article on detective fiction, though in fact he says little about food. Alcock acknowledges that the most basic role of food in crime is "in relation to killing the victim," and the second place goes to "the contents of the stomach" for clues to the time of death. She continues:

"In recent years attention has been paid to the food eaten by the investigator, either as part of the story or to add background verisimilitude. This is evident in the historical whodunits, but it may also be a facet of the investigator. The number of cook/chef investigators is increasing." (p. 13)

After this introduction, the article continues with a survey in chronological order by the setting of the detective stories. Inspector Marcus Didius Falco in ancient Rome is her first example: readers hear of the value of peppercorns, the economics of the oil trade, and the lost herb silphium. She continues by tabulating the food references in detective stories set in the middle ages, such as Brother Cadfael "who is more concerned with growing herbs ... than with his stomach, for his herbs have healing powers." (p. 14) She continues with Renaissance-era detective fiction, such as the protocol and place settings for a feast in the work of Kate Sedley. Alcock points out:

"The feast is described in some detail but phrases such as 'I cannot remember at this distance of time more than a tithe of what was consumed that evening,' seem an attempt to avoid accurate description." (p. 15)

The article proceeds with a study of several series of detective novels set in the Mediterranean, including those of Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Questura:

"Chilled wine is sipped slowly while savouring views over Venice.... Prosecco or Fragolino are aperitifs; Soave is served with chicken and artichokes; Dolcetto with pasta fagioli and cotoletta; brandy or grappa with coffee." (p. 17)

A summary of French detectives' food follows -- "If Madame Maigret has a vice, it is drinking her cup of Balthazar coffee, which she takes every morning." Then the classic English detective novel, "mainly by women writers... Food was of little account in their stories." She finds a few meals of interest in the stories of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and the less-famous Gladys Mitchell.

Alcock invents another category for the novels of Conan Doyle, Michael Innes, and Rex Stout: "The Abstemious and the Aesthete." I was surprised that she made no mention of Stout's Nero Wolfe novel Too Many Cooks, published 1938, where the subject is a meeting of 15 international master cooks. In it, Nero Wolfe gives a paper on American food; he consents to attend the meeting only because he wants to obtain a secret recipe.

And Alcock goes on to discuss women detectives, such as the work of Amanda Cross and others (somehow, Miss Marple isn't in this category, but in the Classic English category). She lists the foods eaten by each detective, without being distracted by other features of the tales. Only in her conclusion does she apply what I would think of as literary analysis:

"Other books than detective stories incorporate food, but it is obvious that the frisson between murder and food, between intellectual puzzle-solving and creating of dishes is eminently satisfying. ... The dinner party provides opportunities for endless twists in a murder plot, the murderer awaiting an opportunity, the victim calmly eating, unsuspecting of the final fate." (p. 29)

I wish she had been more explicit about how each author made use of the food details that she catalogued.