The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 26th November 2003
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 2
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
Enjoy great vegetarian menu in our cooking club plus get the tips on the Belgian appetizer ...
New sounds on PG - read about new audio collection from Thomas Edison label ...
Update in real time - find out what is going on with the search engines ...
Editorial notes about PG in original languages ...
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News and Comment
Catalog Updates:
Thanks to the work of Marcello Perathoner, there is no longer a delay getting
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Jazz, Blues and Polka - music sounds nicely on PG ...
Edison National Historic Site Sound Recordings
This week Brett Fishburne had started to post some of the 100 sound recording
available from the Edison National Historic Site (ENHS). The ENHS has over
48,000 sound recordings made on both cylinder and disc. These were produced
by Edison between 1888 and 1829, just two years before his death.
The sound recordings last for around 4 minutes each and feature a variety of
genres, from music, speech, actors auditions, vaudeville comedy, the chimes
of Big Ben and even the voices of Presidents of the USA and Mexico.
The ENHS is making these recordings available as part of the preservation
process of the full collection which began in 1993 as an attempt to make
sense of the collections' size and organisation. Once complete the whole
collection will be made available via the internet.
You can find out more about ENHS at http://www.nps.gov/edis
Alice Wood
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Another interesting addition to PG collection is the lections on geology by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), English clergyman, poet and novelist, to students in Chester, England. The author,who was a conservative President of the Midland Institute in Birmingham, took surprisingly unortodox position in these lections, supporting Lyell's geological theory. See http://www.gutenberg.net/1/0/2/5/10251
More about Kingsley at http://www.magdalenecambridge.com/biog/kingsley.html
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Radio Gutenberg Update
http://www.radio-gutenberg.org
Two channels of broadcasting are available, but what for the subtle
change in the web address, that's org not com.
channel 1 - Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four"
channel 2 - Robert Sheckley's "Bad Medicine"
Both are high quality live readings from the collection.
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Hieroglyphs and cuneiform, Chinese and Arabic characters - millions of signs that learned scribes and calligraphists traced out painstakingly on stones and papyruses in sumptuous palaces and humble monasteries during the history of human civilization. The concrete buildings are now in ruins and sands are covering the walls of great palaces, but strangely enough, the most virtual part of civilization - the signs are still alive. They are changing slowly, but still reflects the thousand of years passed since the sinful tower was destroyed, supplying the beauty of variety and the sense of "far away land" for the travelers (which can be, of course, kind of annoying when you try to find your hotel in China or small Russian town ? ). They are very important part of mental environment and I believe that their influence on the world perception should be considerable. So for the ancient Egyptians the world probably looked much more picturesque than for us writing in economical and r
ational 20+ alphabets ... Japanese and Russian, Hebrew and Arabic - plenty of copyright free texts are waiting for to be included to PG in their original beauty together with their translated reflections. This is an important theme and we will continue to explore it in the future issues
Editor
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Cookery Club unveiling dinner ...
Last week we issued an invitation to join PG's Cookery Club, a series of virtual dinner parties based on some of PG's extensive cookery book collections, and proposed a starter from The Belgian Cookbook called Gourmand's Mushrooms. As you may recall, part of the fun is reporting back each week on how we fared preparing the recipes. So here is my report on Gourmand's Mushrooms.
One of the challenges of old cookery books is their inattention to features we take for granted in modern recipes, such as exactly measured amounts and times. The Belgian Cookbook is especially notable for its vague directions in this area, and thus in making Gourmand's Mushrooms we were asked to measure butter in terms of a tangerine. I did happen to have a tangerine on hand, but I couldn't help wondering if they might have been smaller back then. Then there was the matter of the gravy. "Moisten them with gravy" says the recipe, without mentioning where the gravy was to come from. Are we supposed to have it on hand, like eggs and milk (and tangerines)? I think so, because further exploration of The Belgian Cookbook reveals other recipes calling for gravy in an offhand manner. But if this dish is "fit for the greatest saints to eat on Fridays," which I take to mean that it is meatless, then what kind of gravy would this be exactly? (Ed. It might be a saint vegan gravy, howeve
r we'll never know ...)
In the event, I didn't think the mushrooms needed any moistening, so I skipped this step. Otherwise, the recipe was very straightforward. I'm not sure I'm a fan of Gourmand's Mushrooms though; could it be I am a Prussian?
[Ed. Our chief editor's response was quite different - 'tried out the recipe from last week, minus egg yolk as we have no eggs at the moment. The verdict from us is that it was different, having the lemon taste with mushrooms was nice, but the quantity required in the recipe would have been too much for two of us. Overall, 6 out of 10 and we might try it again in the future.' So to summarize: the Gourmand's Mushrooms get average 3 out of 10 based on 2 reviews. However, remember, dear guest on our virtual dinner, that You still have a chance to change the statistics by trying the receipt at home and sending us your comments ...]
For the remainder of our menu, which is a vegetarian menu suitable for a cool evening in autumn (or spring, if you are in that part of the world), we propose the three recipes below. Once again, you are invited to partake by trying one or more of these recipes, and sending your comments to us. Before presenting the recipes, though, here are few interesting findings about The Belgian Cookbook:
The most interesting fact, I think is that it was published in 1915, and, as noted in the Preface, "The recipes in this little book have been sent by Belgian refugees from all parts of the United Kingdom." So while we are wondering where the gravy comes from, we can recall that all these recipes were contributed by war refugees who comforted themselves in their exile by cooking the dishes of their country, and sharing them with the people of their host nation.
Getting past this somber fact, we notice some amusing instructions in the preface. Savories, we are told (of which Gourmand's Mushrooms could be considered an example), should be "like an ankle, small and neat and alluring." Hmm. And as for soup,
"Let your soup be extremely hot; do not let it be like the Laodiceans. You know what St. John said about them, and you would be sorry to think of your soup sharing the fate which he describes with such saintly verve."
I'll have to investigate my PG edition of the New Testament to find out what this means. Meantime,
"Be sure that your soup has a good foundation, and avoid the Italian method of making _consommé_, which is to put a pot of water on to warm and to drive a cow past the door."
I think I've heard that joke about other soup, such as the kind served in the prison camps, but rest assured that our soup will not be like that.
CAULIFLOWER SOUP
After you have boiled a cauliflower, it is a great extravagance to throw away the liquor; it is delicately flavored and forms the basis of a good soup. Wash well your cauliflower, taking great care to remove all grit and insects. Place it to simmer with its head downwards, in salted water; and, when it is tender, remove it. Now for the soup. Let all the outer leaves and odd bits simmer well, then pass them through a sieve. Fry some chopped onions, add the liquor of the cauliflower and the pieces that have been rubbed through the sieve, add a little white pepper and a slice of brown bread. Let all cook gently for half-an-hour, then, just before serving it, take out the slice of bread and sprinkle in two teaspoonfuls of grated Gruyere cheese.
POTATOES AND CHEESE
Every one likes this nourishing dish, and it is a cheap one. Peel some potatoes and cut them in rounds. In a fireproof dish put a layer of these, sprinkle them with flour, grated cheese, pepper, salt, a few pats of butter. Then some more potatoes, and so on till the dish is full. Beat the yolks of two eggs in a pint of milk, add pepper and salt and pour it over the dish. Leave it on the top of the stove for five minutes, then cook it for half-an-hour in a moderate oven. Less time may be required if the dish is small, but the potatoes must be thoroughly cooked. The original recipe directs Gruyère cheese, but red or pale Canadian Cheddar could be used.
APPLE FRITTERS
Put half pound of flour in a deep dish and work it with beer, beating it well till there are no lumps left. Make it into a paste that is not very liquid. Peel and core some good apples, cut them into rounds, put them in the paste so that each one is well covered with it. Have a pan of boiling fat and throw in the apple slices for two minutes. They ought to be golden by then, if that fat has been hot enough. Serve them dusted with powdered sugar and the juice of half a lemon squeezed on them. Icing sugar is another term for powdered sugar
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No quiz this week, so time to do a little revising.
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Credits
Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
booklists.Alice, Thierry, Gali, Greg, Michael, Mark and Larry
Wall. Entertainment for the editor-on-duty this week was provided by live jazz at Vinegard Village NYC and Kamelot Herzlia ...
pgweekly_2003_11_26_part_2.txt
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