Today, our lesson is from the Book of Hugh Lunn, chapter 8 "Domestic Science", verse 2 "Making Do". I often swear I am going to economise. Here are some superb suggestions from an Australia gone by.
Because people had to be frugal there were many recipes for imitation meals. Such food was prefaced with the word
mock. There was:
mock crab: cheese, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and tomato sauce mixed into a sandwich paste
mock chicken: minced tripe* with herbs in a white sauce, popped into vol-au-vents
mock duck: rump or bladebone steak rolled in a mixture of breadcrumbs and butter, then baked
mock goose: alternate layers of lamb's fry# and potato and onions, baked.
When you couldn't even afford the cheapest offal, there was:
mock brains: rissoles made from leftover porridge, beaten egg, and onion
mock tripe: onions and butter boiled in milk and thickened with flour
Bet you can't wait for your mock dessert:
mock cream: milk, cornflour, butter, sugar
mock ginger: vegetable marrow, sugar, ginger powder, lemons
mock pears: sweetened, boiled choko**
*from the stomach of an ox
#lamb's liver, fried up
**Hugh says "Everybody grew a choko vine over the dunny (outside toilet) or the back fence. It produced bountiful crops of pear-shaped chokoes. Chokoes were boiled, then split length wise, and the seeds removed. Your mother might say chokoes had a delicate flavour. They were almost tasteless, but not tasteless enough."
Hugh is right. I once made my mother cry when I refused to eat the chokoes she served up. We were broke & she had nothing else to give us. I still remember the disgusting slimey vegetables more than 40 years later. There used to be a rumour that Cherry Ripe bars were made with chokoes, not cherries. Bleaughhhh.
We need a bit of joy today, wouldn't you say? The marvelous Hugh Lunn gives us these words to live by.
