Origins of two seasonal exotics and a year round favourite

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own

Many of the well-to-do and even barely managing are after a week of good eating. It is desperately disheartening to know that many in this beautiful, and once bountiful island, did not have enough to stave off hunger while others may have pigged themselves not only on food but on other luxuries. I cannot help but see with angered eye round bellied men in kapati suits and families luxuriating on ill gotten gains. But let’s wipe miseries off and savour the last bit of Christmas cheer by talking about three food items, tracing their history. Additionally let’s look to 2022 as a good year for us Sri Lankans in spite of severe setbacks.

Christmas cake is traditionally British and probably originated before medieval times. Many of the seasonal delights we enjoy at this time are of Dutch origin; however the Brit colonizers too left us many of their foods. Every Christian home usually makes its own cake, while others buy what they need. Expensive mostly because cashew nuts are so high priced now

Christmas cake started off as plum porridge. People ate the porridge on Christmas Eve, using it to line their stomachs after a day of fasting. Then dried fruit, spices and honey were added to the porridge mixture. In the 16th century, oatmeal was removed from the original recipe, and butter, wheat flour and eggs were added. These ingredients helped hold the mixture together which was boiled. Richer families had ovens by now and they baked fruit cake which they topped with marzipan, an almond sugar paste. The added spices represented those the Three Kings of Orienta brought to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. This confection became known as ‘Christmas cake.’

The traditional Scottish Christmas cake, also known as Whisky Dundee, is a light crumbly cake with currants, raisins, cherries and Scotch whisky. Holes are made in the cake and sherry, brandy or whiskey, singly or in combination, poured in weekly. This process is “feeding” the cake.

Christmas pudding is also a traditional part of the festive dinner on December 25 having its origin in medieval England, It is known as plum pudding or just pud. Despite its name, plums are not usually an ingredient. The pudding has been heavily mythologized with even the idea that it has thirteen ingredients and thus symbolizes the Twelve Disciples. Another not accepted fact is that the pudding was first served to George 1 of Great Britain (1714-1727). Early puddings had suet, dried fruit, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, spices with milk or wine according to the maker’s means. We now associate it with a blue flame on it, it being lightly doused with brandy and set alight. Brandy butter accompanies the pudding.

A food that has caught on rapidly and is appreciated universally is Pizza. So here goes facts extracted from an article titled ‘A History of Pizza’ by Alexander Lee writing in History Today – July 2018. His summary reads: “The world’s most popular fast food has ancient roots, but it was a royal seal of approval that set it on the path to global domination.” Lee is a Fellow of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick.

Pizza.

Pizza has caught on rapidly in this land of ours with people of all ages, and its Huts are all well patronised, more so its home deliveries. Pizza’s most profitable home ground seems to be the US where around three billion are sold each year.

According to Lee, the story of how the humble pizza came to have global dominance as a food “reveals much about the history of migration, economics and technological change.” Imagine that!

Pizzas are centuries old, first starting soon after civilisations began as pieces of flatbread topped with savouries which was an affordable meal for people sans crockery, or on the move. To quote Lee: “These early pizzas appear in Virgil’s Aeneid. Shortly after arriving in Latium, Aeneas and his crew sat down beneath a tree and laid out ‘thin wheaten cakes as platters for their meal’. They then scattered them with mushrooms and herbs they had found in the woods and guzzled them down, crust and all, prompting Aeneas’ son Ascanius to exclaim: ‘Look! We’ve even eaten our plates!’”

However the pizza that we now know originated in 18^th century Naples, which under the Bourbon kings became the largest of cities in Europe and flourished while its population grew. Around mid 1970s, poverty overtook many and the abject were known as lazzaroni, due to their perceived resemblance to Lazarus. Around 50,000 in number they scrambled for jobs as casual labour and for cheap food. Pizzas filled the latter demand. They were packed into boxes and carried around and pieces cut and sold. Alexander Dumas mentioned them in his writing in the 1840s.

“Associated with the crushing poverty of the lazzaroni, they were frequently denigrated as ‘disgusting’, especially by foreign visitors. In 1831, Samuel Morse – inventor of the telegraph – described pizza as a ‘species of the most nauseating cake … covered over with slices of pomodoro or tomatoes, and sprinkled with little fish and black pepper and I know not what other ingredients. It altogether looks like a piece of bread that has been taken reeking out of the sewer.”

Cooks and cookbooks up until the end of the 19^th century ignored pizzas, even though pizza restaurants began mushrooming themselves. All that changed after Italian unification. Lee writes that in 1889, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita grew tired of the gourmet dishes served them and so three kinds of pizza were offered them: with tomato, mozzarella and basil. The Queen liked best the basil pizza and so they were named Pizza Margherita. This was a major shift to popularity from being a poor man’s meal to a national dish and the consequent ideal pizza is an Italian food akin to pasta.

However, its moving across country boundaries was slow until migration gathered speed and volume and Neapolitans moved across borders and took their pizza with them from the 1930s onwards. A further impetus to popularity was the arrival of Allied forces in France and elsewhere during WW II. Tourism was a much larger and more powerful and persistent promoter of pizza in Italy. Varieties increased, new toppings were added and it became costlier too.

How did it come to the United States of America which is now its adopted home and largest market and most munificent promoter worldwide? Italian emigrants had already reached the East Coast of America and in 1905, the first pizzeria –Lombardi’s – was opened in New York City. It became an American institution; moved all across the country and adapted itself to suit local palates.

From the 1950s onwards as the economic and technological situations in the US broadened, the pizza too was transformed and resulted in its ‘domestication’ and ‘convenience food’ state; meaning it turned American and with fridges and freezers being freely available, demand rose for frozen pizza to be taken home, warmed and eaten much later. The change was that instead of fresh tomato as a topping, a thick layer of tomato sauce was added as a lining that prevented the dough from hardening. New cheeses were developed to withstand freezing, Another change was ‘commercialization of pizza’ – that is delivering of cooked pizza in boxes to customers’ doors.

In 1960, Tom and James Monaghan founded Dominik’s in Michigan with speedy delivery, and spread country-wide as Domino’s. They and their competitors expanded abroad, so that now there is hardly a city in the world without a pizza outlet. Paradoxically, pizza became both more standardised and more susceptible to variation

“Today’s pizzas are far removed from those of the lazzaroni; and many pizza purists – especially in Naples – balk at some of the more outlandish toppings that are now on offer. But pizza is still recognisable as pizza and centuries of social, economic and technological change are baked into every slice,” concludes Alexander Lee.

I believe many will be moving into ‘bottle month’ of tightening of slimmer purse strings or if affluent, reducing food to lose pounds or kgs. I end on a whimsically cynical note by quoting Orson Welles: Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.

Sincere apology

The Sunday Island of 26/12 carried a letter with title “Correction: Indira Peradeniya alumnus, not Moratuwa” by Neil Kottege ‘on behalf of all who entered University of Ceylon Peradeniya on October 4^th 1969’. He points out that Nan ‘erroneously stated “Indira graduated from the University of Moratuwa.” Yes, I made a mistake and I apologize sincerely. I also thank Neil and his batchmates for pointing out my error so those readers of my article now know Indira Arulpragasam Samarasekera graduated from the University of Peradeniya Engineering Faculty. Criticism such as this is highly valued by me.

I rapidly turned the pages of Nerve authored by Indira and Martha Piper and on page 33, in Chapter 2 ‘Education of a Female Leader’ Indira writes: “The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Ceylon was established with Cambridge University as a model… Twelve women were admitted, including me, and we were named the ‘Dirty Dozen’ by our male colleagues.”

I inadvertently interpolated Moratuwa, for which my apologies. A much better 2022 is my earnest hope for all Lankans! We hope our wonderful country, politically driven down to the pits, will rise.