Friday Question #91 - Recipes from Novels

Happy Friday, Readers! :tada:

Did you know October is National Cookbook Month? Have you ever made a recipe that was featured in a novel?

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Yes. Anchored Hearts featured Picadillo and it was delicious. It’s our favorite – better than chili. If there is a food mention in any of the books that I read and review, I locate a suitable recipe and feature it on my blog.

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I remember Patricia Cornwall’s Kay Scarpetta having delicious recipes in her books and I think she actually published a cookbook.

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Yes. Hummingbird cake in book by Sarah Addison Allen. and Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Weber. Great books

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I haven’t, but there have been some I’ve wanted to try.

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I have bought the supplies, but have not made the recipes.

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I did not know there was a “National Cookbook Month” but we have made Amor Towles’s Latvian Stew from “A Gentleman in Moscow” several times…excellent!

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I have made cookies from various cozy mysteries I read. I am great at making copies of recipes but not so great at actually following through.

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Why, yes I have made some recipes from novels. In ‘Final Exam’, by Carol J. Perry, I’ve made the Aunt Ibby’s Ginger Pancakes with Lemon Sauce and the Easy Apple Crumble. Which I have passed on to other people.

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“The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary: A Memoir” by John Simpson (excerpt follows)

Excerpt:

On my first day of real editing, my trainer handed me a batch of index cards containing “queen” words which she had selected as likely candidates for addition through the OED’s main sequence of index cards that had accumulated in the dictionary file store since–in some cases–the mid-nineteenth century.

She had passed over all of those older meanings that were already in the dictionary: “queen” in the sense of “a female monarch”–perhaps the oldest one of all; then the rather similar meaning, “the wife of a king” (please note: this is not usually the same thing); instances of “queen” applied to fabulous or mythological beings–the “queen” of fairies, and (as a title) Queen Diana the Huntress; “queen” meaning any woman of pre-eminence, or applied to the moon as the “queen” of heaven, or to the monarch of a bee-hive; verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs using it (to queen it, queenship, queenly, etc.); well-worn compounds (queen cake, Queen Mother).

I did not need to do anything to these old meanings already in the OED, but instead she had found me female cats, sizes of bed, girlfriends, homosexuals, Cunard liners (all queens), and many more. As this was my first range of editing, I was not in any position to argue with her selection, and doubtless would not have needed to.

“Queen of puddings” was in my first batch of words. I didn’t remember ever having eaten–let alone cooked–the queen of puddings, so this was my first encounter with the dessert (which everyone in Oxford but me seemed to know was a trifle-like concoction of breadcrumbs, jam, and meringue).

End of excerpt.

My note: I like to cook so this passage caught my attention. I went looking for a recipe for this and found one on the Internet almost immediately on the BBC Food website. It does indeed contain the aforementioned ingredients as well as a few more, easily found in most households. It’s scrumptious (dare I say–regal?) and easy to prepare if you’ve got time and patience. Try it!

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