Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [81]
Boil the figs in about one quart of water with the sugar for twenty minutes. Allow to cool until tepid, drain off about half the remaining water, and add the whiskey. Set aside in a covered bowl to steep before serving. Serves four or five.
POISONOUS MUSHROOMS
It is difficult to tell by looking whether a mushroom is poisonous. You have to be able to accurately identify them. There are over two thousand species around the world that are perfectly good to eat and only about thirty that are dangerous. Of the latter, one—the Amanita phalloides or “death cap”—accounts for almost all deaths. A white mushroom with a delicate stem and a swollen sac at the base, it is found widely.
In 54 A.D., Roman Emperor Claudius fell victim to this variety, added to his food by his fourth wife, Agrippina II, so that Nero, her son by a former husband, could ascend the throne. Claudius’s symptoms—a cold sweat, a raging thirst, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting—were the classic ones, which tend to appear about ten hours or so after eating.
In Sacha Guitry’s 1936 film The Story of a Cheat, a twelve-year-old boy, by way of poisonous mushrooms, learns a lifelong lesson in the consequences of bad behavior. Late for a family dinner because he was out stealing, he’s sent to his room. In the morning, he discovers that his entire family is dead, having mistakenly eaten Amanita phalloides at the meal he missed.
SECRET FORMULA
Even after centuries, the precise formulas for the liqueurs Benedictine and Chartreuse—both brandy-based and originated by monks, Benedictine around 1510 and Chartreuse some one hundred years later—remain secret. It is said that only three living people know the formula for Benedictine at any one time.
The composition of Angostura bitters, created by a surgeon in Simón Bolívar’s army in Venezuela in the early 1800s and intended to reduce fever and act as a tonic, is also still a secret.
CHERRIES
A member of the rose family, the cherry is a drupe—that is, it has a pit, like plums, peaches, and apricots. That of the cherry is a perfect projectile for spitting competitions, with the current Guinness world record of ninety-five feet, one inch set on this day in 1994, in Langenthal, Germany.
It is the fruit most frequently represented by poets and painters. There are nearly one thousand varieties, sweet and sour, with the most popular in the United States being the Bing, first grown in the 1870s in Oregon by Henderson Lewelling, who named it for one of his Chinese workmen.
The blossoming cherry trees associated with Japan bear no fruit. Their name, Sakura, is a favorite for Japanese girls, though the tree symbolizes not long life but its fleeting quality. But then, what’s in a name? A week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, probably as retaliation, someone cut down four of the cherry trees in Washington, D.C. They were among the three thousand that had been given to the city by Tokyo forty years earlier. To prevent more vandalism during the war, from then on they were called oriental cherry trees.
The maraschino cherry started in Yugoslavia as a variety called Marasca that was preserved in liqueur. Once in the United States, the Royal Anne cherry was substituted, the alcohol eliminated, and it ended up on top of children’s ice cream sundaes.
And of course, George Washington, as a boy, never did cut down a cherry tree.
ARMAGNAC
Gascony in southwestern France, is the home of The Three Musketeers, foie gras, and Armagnac, the earthy, intense cousin of Cognac, loved by Henry IV, who in the 16th century wrote to his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, “As God lives, dearest, nothing is comparable to Armagnac.”
During August, when the French take their holiday, a group of boyhood friends who grew up in Gascony—the departments of Gers and Landes east of Biarritz—return to their châteaus there and host dinners for one another at which each man in turn offers a toast to his host, his friends, and their wives at the end of the meal. Armagnac is invariably served. Several of the men even make and bottle