January 31, 2022 • 33 mins
Today we’re covering a super yummy comfort food from Italy, and two dishes with debate as to their origin, one on the U.S. East Coast, and one on the West Coast. All are delicious!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Listen, Tracy.
We have really had some downers lately, some murders. Yeah,
(00:23):
not the most fun topics going on. Last week's recording
session was particularly grim, which is great because this week
we've kept it pretty late. We both have been promising
some more fun stuff, which we are delivering on. I
went marching right back to eponymous food because to me,
it's the gift that keeps on giving. It's fun. There
are weird side streets you can go down. It kind
(00:45):
of hits all of my curiosity points, and so far
I have not discovered a murder involved in any of
the food. So today we are going to cover a
super yummy comfort food from Italy and two ishes with
a lot of debate as to their origin. One of
them is associated with the U. S. East Coast and
(01:06):
one on the West coast. All of them, in my opinion,
are delicious. If you think there's nothing quite so delicious
and comforting as a giant bowl of fettuccini alfredo, I
sure love it. We'll talk more about that on Friday.
You're not alone. Although if you were to order this
by name in Italy, people might give you an odd look.
(01:29):
This dish would normally show up on menus in Italy
as fettuccini al treplo, the fettuccini with three butters. You
might see this as fettuccini albero or fettuccini a la crema.
And the beauty of this one is really as simplicity.
The story of its origin is known really well. This
(01:51):
starts with a family with a husband cooking for his wife.
In nineteen o eight, Alfredo de la Leo was working
at the family restaurant that was a little Trittoria and
Piazza Rossa in Rome, run by his mother Angelina, and
night was a very big year for de la Leo
because he and his wife Inez had their first child, Armando.
But as the story goes, after Armando was born and
(02:12):
as was very sick, she was quite weak. She had
no appetite, and Alfredo understandably was very worried about his wife,
so the restaurant tour tried to make her something that
would appeal to her palate and stimulate her appetite. And
give her some energy, maybe a tall order. He made
a bowl of fettuccini and then added in butter and parmesan,
(02:35):
and then, according to the Delileo family legend, he prayed
to one of the patron saints of mothers, which was St. Anne,
and then presented his wife with this dish and told
her that if she did not like it, he would
eat it. He did not get to eat it. Not
only didn't as love it. She thought that her husband
should add it to the restaurant's menu, and he did,
(02:56):
and thus one of the yummiest foods of all time
was born. So the was surely not the first time
that somebody had combined pasta, butter, and parmesan. But there
were some aspects of Alfredo's version that were a little
different than other Italian dishes that have similar ingredients. We'll
talk about that secret in just a moment, uh and
some other aspects of his dish that would have separated
(03:19):
it from those other precursors. Alfredo opened his own restaurant
in nineteen fourteen in Via della Scrofa, and he simply
called it Alfredo, and he continued to build on the
success that he had already achieved and his reputation for
exceptionally delicious pasta. He also started to get the attention
of hungry diners from well outside of Rome, as wealthy tourists,
(03:40):
some very notable started to visit his place. A lot
of travelers from the United States landed in Alfredo's during
a tour of Europe in the early years of his restaurant.
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford famously visited Alfredo's restaurant on
their honeymoon that was in n and they loved it
so much they reported eight their every single day that
(04:01):
they were in Rome. Prohibition in the US contributed to
a bump in tourism in the nineteen twenties as American
tourists sought out vacation destinations where they could get a
drink with their meals. In nine seven, Alfredo was knighted
for the excellence of his beettettini, and an interview Delai
Leo gave to a journalist at the time, he said
(04:23):
this was because he always used the very best ingredients
to make his pasta, even in the most difficult times.
Quote during the war, he said, I found a way.
He was not especially secretive about what made his way
of dressing fettuccini special, saying quote double quantity of butter
and cheese and well mixed. That is my secret. Yes,
(04:47):
so his secret was just more more of the fatty
things that make it delicious. We'll also talk about how
he made his noodles, which is a little different too.
Alfredo was really really proud of the name that he
had made for himself and of his dedicated and impressive patrons,
noting in that interview quote, kings, princes, ministers have eaten here.
(05:07):
The Crown Prince of Sweden is one of my patrons.
The journalist conducting the interview, Alice Wrote wrote of his
table side manner quote, people go to Alfredo's not only
to eat his delicious fetacchini, but to see him prepare it.
After it has been cooked, a waiter brings it from
the kitchen. Alfredo approaches with a spoon and fork, as
(05:27):
though advancing to a sacrificial right. He poises fork and
spoon aloft esthetically, and then begins to mix into the
fetaccini a generous supply of the best butter and grated
parmesan cheese. But even beyond disclosing his double the butter
and cheese secret Alfredo gave Row the entire recipe for
his fetacchini noodles as well. Here it is quote, Sift
(05:51):
upon the mixing board a kilo of fine white flour,
make a hole in the center of the mound of flower,
and into this breaks seven eggs. Then, with your hands,
never with a spoon, gradually worked the flour into the
eggs until no more can be assimilated. Then add a
tumbler of water and a dash of salt, and gradually
(06:11):
need the entire mixture into a smooth paste. Work it thin,
and when all is perfectly smooth, roll it into a
thin sheet. Then cut the paste in narrow strips a
third of an inch wide. This is enough for eight
persons served abundantly, or nine served cocy cosy enough. He
recommended boiling his homemade noodles for exactly eight minutes and
(06:35):
leaving them damp instead of draining them dry. He said
that he used an eighth of a pound of butter
for each individual serving. That's half a stick of butter,
and quote an ample sprinkling of parmesan cheese. Finest quality
of the utmost importance, according to De la Leo, is
mixing the butter, cheese, and noodles, so every noodle is
(06:56):
evenly coated. Yeah, for anybody that hasn't made pasta, that
amount of eggs is a lot. It means that your
noodles are very, very rich in flavor. And an eighth
of a pound of butter a half stick of butter
is a lot to put in one survey. Uh. That
same year that that rite up appeared again. That was uh,
and it was in numerous papers because it was picked
(07:18):
up and syndicated. Alfredo also received a very lavish gift
from Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, a solid gold spoon
and fork set that were modeled after the ones he
used to toss his fedaccini for guests. On the handle
of one was engraved to Alfredo, the King of the Noodles,
Mary Pickford July. The other had the exact same inscription,
(07:40):
but had Fairbanks his name instead of Pickford's, and according
to the official history of the family restaurant, those words
were quote read by every famous person who had the
honor to taste the Mesto fedccini. Mesto sisim means most majestic,
and that is the name of the dish. On the
menu even today, Lave miss Sissimo fedaccini. Alfredo Alfredo and
(08:02):
his delicious pasta started getting mentions in international papers that
drew even more visitors. Before the nineteen twenties were over,
restaurateur and writer George Rector had included the recipe for
Alfredo Delileo's famed dish in his cookbook, The Rector Cookbook.
All that press, plus the cachet of having movie stars
(08:22):
tout the dishes as exceptional mint that soon everybody wanted
to try fetacchini. Alfredo and Delileo definitely leaned into his
public persona and his growing fame. He really understood that
showmanship was part of growing his business, and if you
do an image search for him online, you're likely going
to pretty quickly find photos of him feigning to feed
(08:43):
guests his fetacchini by the handful. That was sort of
part of a stick that he developed as a table
side show of having your noodles dressed. It looks a
little squirrely to me to have someone like with a
fistful of fetacchini's, But even so, it was really always
always about the food. As he told a reporter quote,
I've always been more interested in perfect cooking than anything else.
(09:06):
In ninety three, the tourist trade had evaporated thanks to
World War Two, Alfredo decided to retire. He handed the
restaurant off to his son Armando, whose birth catalyzed the
invention of this famous dish. Armando took on the moniker
Alfredo the Second as the business passed to him. In
ninety six, the Via della scroll for a restaurant was
(09:28):
sold to two members of the staff. But just a
few years later, in nineteen fifty, Alfredo the first day
Alfredo the Second had another restaurant, this time called Il
Vero Alfredo the Real Alfredo, and they opened it in
Piazza Augusto Rempert. That restaurant is where you can order
most majestic fettuccini, and it is still there and still
run by the family. It is currently run by Alfredo
(09:51):
the first grandson and granddaughter Armando, who goes by Alfredo
the third, and it is Deli Leo. The Via della
Scrofa location is also still open. Those two restaurants are
kind of competitors. You may have noticed the dish, as
originally made by Alfredo, was really simple, just butter and
cheese and that's not typically how you would make it.
(10:12):
If you looked up the recipe today, particularly here in
the US, most recipes you'll find we'll probably have heavy
cream in them, but that was never part of the
original version, and this is simply due to differences in
ingredient availability. As fedaccini Alfredo caught on in the US,
it just didn't quite have that delicious richness that it
had in Italy. And there were a few reasons for one.
(10:35):
Alfredo de la Leo, as we said, made his fedacchini
from scratch, and his recipe had more egg than most,
using a hand ground wheat flour, and that gave it
this layered, deep flavor. Additionally, the butter he was using
was richer than what would normally be available in most
North American grocery stores. And of course the cheese. Alfredo
(10:56):
was using parmesanio reggiano. It's parmesan cheese. But just as
champagne is a sparkling wine from the Champagne area in France,
parmegiano reggiano can only come from particular parts of Italy.
Its ingredients are specific and it must have been aged
for between one and three years, so to approximate the
richness of flavor of all of those ingredients. Fans of
(11:18):
Alfredo's dish outside of Italy added other ingredients, just why
we have heavy cream usually in American versions. And today
it's actually pretty simple to acquire Parmesiano riggiano in a
grocery store in the US. You'll also find garlic on
the list of ingredients and Alfredo sauce. But that's something
that Alfredo Dlalio would be really lived about. In ninett
(11:41):
an article appeared in papers across the US under the
title cooks in Rome denied garlic is Italy's favorite. This
quoted several prominent Italian chefs and restaurateurs who were just
beyond irritated that there was a rumor that Italians ate
copious amounts of garlic. He insisted that garlic did not
come within a mile of his signature dish, and of
(12:03):
the rumor itself, he said, quote, it's a lopsided ragout
and has to stop. Alfredo de la Leo died of
a heart attack in ninety nine at the age of
seventy seven, and in the US National Fertuccini Alfredo Day
is celebrated on February seven. We are going to move
on to a dish that's often associated with brunch, but
before we do that, we'll have a minute and pause
(12:25):
for a sponsor break. The next epon hymous food we're
covering is a little tricky because it's not clear exactly
for whom it is named, although there are many contenders.
But we can tell you for certain that eggs Benedict
(12:46):
is not named for Benedict Arnold, even though that seems
like a pretty common misconception that people make. Although there
are many many variations on this dish, the base recipe
for eggs Benedict calls for Canadian bacon and poached eggs
sitting on top of the two split halves of an
English muffin, with a generous drizzle of hollandaise sauce to
(13:08):
top that all off. So before we get into the
debates over who eggs Benedict is named for, let's talk
first about hollandaise, just to get that out of the way.
Hollandaise sauce, or a sort of proto version of it,
dates back at least to the mid seventeenth century. In
the cookbook Li Cuisinier Francois Francois Pierre de la Verne
(13:28):
gives the basic recipe, although his lax lemon juice. In
a recipe for asparagus in a sweet sauce, he writes,
make a sauce with very fresh butter, a little vinegar, salt, nutmeg,
and an egg yolk to thicken the sauce, being careful
that that doesn't turn as an aside. This is from
the Terence Scully translation of that cookbook. There are others
(13:50):
that may have slightly different wording because the translation is
just a little different. Uh Today, a hollandaise would include
lemon juice and perhaps even cayenne pepper, but it was
probably around even before that. That name. Hollandaise means Dutch sauce,
and it's believed by some to have traveled to France
via Hugueno who were returning to their home country after
(14:12):
having been exiled. There's a difference of opinion on that
last point, though. The sauce is sometimes attributed to Normandy
as the place of origin and to the town Isigny specifically.
The town is known for its butter, and you can
find the same recipe listed in some places as Sauce
isign Yee. It became known as Hollandaise thanks to prior
(14:34):
podcast subject august Escoffier, who listed it in his book
as the fifth mother sauce, although his predecessor and another
podcast subject, Marie Antoine Karem, had also used it and
called it that Karem did not listed as a mother sauce.
One possible reason for the change in name to Hollandaise
sauce may have been as simple as the change of
(14:54):
butter sauce from using butter that was made and is
an yee to butter that was made in Hollo and
so getting back to eggs Benedict. One claim to the
name origin of the dish is stockbroker Lemuel Benedict. Benedict
was successful and a ladies man, and a bit of
a dandy when it came to his appearance. He was
not a man who buried himself in work and laid
(15:16):
low in his downtime. He was from a wealthy and
conservative family, a family which did not appreciate the fact
that lem was kind of a New York party person,
very outgoing with the very flamboyant style. If you've ever
seen photos of wealthy folks out in the cold wearing
a raccoon skin coat limb was one of those. He
also allegedly carried a cane that had a flask built
(15:38):
into it, so no surprise based on that description, Lemuel
Benedict had a reputation for a fun waite. Staff in
the restaurants that he frequented loved him because he tipped
really generously. He was seen about town with a variety
of beautiful dates, and sometimes all of that party and
caught up to him in the form of an epic hangover.
(15:58):
According to the Lemue Little Benedict version of the Eggs
Benedict origin story, one morning in he sat down for
breakfast at the Waldorf Hotel, and he was feeling the
previous night's indulgence, and so he ordered a variety of
breakfast items, buttered toast, two poached eggs, and some bacon,
and also a picture of hollandaise sauce. I've paused because
(16:23):
I'm just thinking about how if I had a hangover,
this is not at all what would help me. Once
Lemuel had been brought his order, he said to have
assembled the items into two stacks and then poured the
sauce over them. So, according to this tale, he invented
this himself at his table. When Oscar Stirky, the major
(16:47):
d of the hotel, saw what the stockbroker had put together,
he duplicated that in the kitchen and found it to
be delightful, so subbing out an English muffin instead of
the toast, and Canadian bacon or ham instead of bacon
that went on to the menu. That version of the
origin story was repeated by The New Yorker on December eleven,
(17:07):
ninety two, in an article written by Thomas Dormus and
Russell Maloney that was simply titled Benedict. At that point,
Lemuel Benedict was still alive. He had married an opera
singer named Carrie Bridewell in nineteen o eight. He had
known all manner of famous and important people, and according
to the New Yorker quote, Benedict's has been a full
and happy life. He gave an interview for it as well,
(17:31):
and he died the year after that article came out
in three at the age of seventy six. He apparently
never transitioned over to the English muffin version of eggs Benedict.
He always preferred toast, and in that article about him
in the New Yorker. He gave the quote English muffins
are unpalatable, no matter how much they are toasted or
how they are served. Disagree. Uh. There is of course
(17:57):
a different story to how this dish got its name.
In article ran in Bonapaty about the dish, and in
that story there's a couple Mr and Mrs La gram Benedict,
for whom the dish is allegedly named. In this case,
this was invented at Delmonico's. That's a restaurant Lemuel was
said to have visited frequently. But this attribution actually predates
(18:19):
the Lemuel Benedict story by about thirty years, and this
version is one which Delmonico's continues to assert is true.
In the Delmonico's head cheft, Bill Olivia told her reporter quote,
what I know is simply that Mr and Mrs La
Grand Benedict came all the time. They had eaten everything
on the menu, and they were tired of the menu,
(18:39):
and they asked the brothers to create something new. In
this version of the story, the chef at the time,
Charles Ranhofer, conferred with the brothers who owned the restaurant
and they all came up with this dish. So rand
Hoffer had published a cookbook in titled The Epicure in
this had an eggs Benedict recipe in it, although it
(19:01):
was called eggs Alla Benedict. That recipe reads quote cuts
some muffins and halves cross wise, toast them without allowing
to brown. Then place a round of cooked ham an
eighth of an inch thick and of the same diameter
as the muffins on each half heat in a moderate oven,
and put a poached egg on each toast to cover
(19:22):
the whole with hollandaise sauce. Yeah, and that the spelling
of that, in case she couldn't hear, is different. It's
not Benedict with a T on the end, but Benedict
d I c K is the end of the name.
So that only muddles the story a bit more. For
a long time, a very long time, Lemuel Benedict's family,
primarily his cousin's son, Jack Benedict, really advocated for Lemuel
(19:44):
to be recognized as the originator of the dish. Jack
Benedict also operated a restaurant in Colorado for a while
called LC Benedict Restaurant in Tavern and he offered both
Lemuel's version of the dish with bacon and toast and
Oscar's version with ham in an English FM. So here's
a tidbit for a little extra intrigue. Those two stories
(20:05):
share more DNA than it initially appears. Oscar Sharkey worked
at Delmonico's as a waiter before moving on to the Waldorf,
and it's believed that he and Charles Ranhoff are worked
together for at least some period of time, So it
could have been a recipe that he already knew or
that he remembered once he saw Lemuel Benedict put something
(20:25):
similar together. We'll never really knew. Sharkey, who may be
the subject of a future episode, never confirmed or denied
the Lemuel version of the story during his lifetime. Yeah,
that four year is the key one where there's both
the Delmonico's recipe book and the invention at the Waldorf.
Uh So it's a little fuzzy. There is, though, also
(20:49):
a third and much older possible attribution of the name.
Pietro Orsini, better known as Pope Benedict the thirteen was
said to have been put on a dietary regiment of
toast and eggs because of chronic digestive issues, and he
is said to have added a lemon based sauce to
the otherwise rather boring dish. This version, devised during the
(21:11):
time that Benedict the thirteen was head of the Catholic
Church that was from seventeen thirty, is of course lacking
the delicious bacon or ham component, and was like Lemuels
on toast instead of English muffins. This was probably not
called eggs Benedict either, and sodent only. The word brunch
first appeared in print in eight and a Hunter's Weekly
(21:34):
article in which author Guy Berenger made a case for
a meal that offered an alternative to the usual traditions
of early breakfasts or heavy Sunday dinners. Advocated that brunch
was quote cheerful, sociable, and inciting. It is talk compelling.
It puts you in a good temper. It makes you
satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings. It sweeps away
(21:58):
the worries and cobwebs of the week. This article was
printed with a ps that read quote beer and whiskey
are admitted as substitutes for tea and coffee. Berenger might
be shocked at just how heavy brunch menus have become
over the years. But the timing of this article and
the timing of the Lemuel Benedict's story being so close
together might explain how the egg dish became such a
(22:22):
brunch standard. April sixt is incidentally Eggs Benedict Day. I'm
gonna market on my calendar, and you better believe I'm
making some. You can have it all woo, and I will.
When we come back, we will cover another eponymous food.
It is a salad and involves some seafood, and we'll
do that right after we pause to hear from the sponsors.
(22:42):
To keep stuff you missed in history class. Going next
up is another food with a hotly contested origin story,
and that is crab louis. You might see it spelled
like Louis with an S or Louie with an E,
(23:04):
but it is the same dish with either spelling, and
it is pretty much always pronounced crab louie. It starts
with a bed of iceberg lettuce, and on top of
that is usually a combination of tomato, hard boiled eggs, asparagus,
and crab. Some people also like to have lemon wedges,
but the crab is dressed in Louie dressing, and that
is where the magic happens. One very popular but now
(23:27):
defunct San Francisco restaurant, so Laria's Grill described the crab
and dressing preparation this way, quote take meat of crab
in large piece, and dress with the following one third mayonnaise,
two thirds chili sauce, small quantity chopped English chow chow,
a little Worcester sauce, and minced tarragon, shallots and sweet parsley,
(23:49):
season with salt and pepper, or keep on ice chow
chow if you don't know, that's a pickled relish. It
is fairly certain that Crab Louis popped up on the
West Coast, because it is his storyally been made with
Dungeoness crab, which comes from the waters off the west
coast of North America, but exactly where it started depends
on whose story you believe. There are several, although these
(24:11):
ones mostly lack the level of details some of our
other food origin stories include. So the first version we're
gonna look at is the Washington State origin. There are
two versions set there. One is pretty easily disproven with
a quick fact check so that one claims that crab
Louis existed in Seattle before nineteen o four. That data
(24:31):
is used in a story that Enrico Caruso, the Operatic Tenor,
visited Seattle on tour that year and eight at the
Olympic Hotel. Sometimes this is told with the Olympic Club
as the location. In this story, he was served crab
Louis and then immediately was enamored of it. He said
to have kept ordering more and more of it until
(24:53):
the kitchen ran out of ingredients. But the problem is
that Crusoe was not in Seattle in nineteen o four,
he actually ever performed there. This version, though, doesn't offer
any clues as to where the name would have come from.
The second Washington State version places crab Louie's origin about
two hundred seventy miles east of Seattle in Spokane, Washington. There,
(25:16):
the Davenport Hotel opened in nineteen fourteen, and it had
crab Louis on the menu when it opened. That was
named for the owner, Llewellyn Louis Davenport, who moved to
the Spokane Falls area from San Francisco in eighteen eighty nine.
The Davenport, incidentally, is also still around, although it is
now the Historic Davenport and it's part of a bigger
(25:36):
hotel group, and they still serve crab Louis and they
keep their dressing recipe a secret to this day. San
Francisco is a fairly serious claim to the invention of
this crab salad with pink dressing. A menu from a
restaurant called Burge Frank's Old Poodle Dog from nineteen o
eight had crab leg A Lla Louie on the menu.
(25:58):
It got the name from the chef Fluis Coutard, and
then Coutart had actually died before the restaurant opened, so
this was probably named in honor of him to keep
the public associating his established name on the San Francisco
food scene with this new eatery. But calling the Old
Poodle Dog Knew is not entirely accurate. So the Old
(26:19):
Poodle Dog was a sort of phoenix from the Ashes story.
There had been a Poodle Dog restaurant before the earthquake
and fires of nineteen o six, which we have talked
about on the show. Before. Burget Frank's Old Poodle Dog
was a joint venture of several restauranturs who had lost
their businesses in the fire. Louis Quittard had made a
name for himself as the head chef at Frank's Rotisserie,
(26:41):
the other burned restaurants that had been reborn in this
collaborative effort where the Bourget and the Poodle Dog. Another
San Francisco restaurant also laid claim to the invention of
crab Louis, and that was so Lari's grill. That's the
one that we mentioned at the beginning of this segment.
The year nine teen ten is sometimes mentioned here, but
(27:02):
the first time we can prove it was served there
was in nineteen fourteen, regardless though that link to Louis
Guitard would have been already established at that point. Yes,
so that seems a little late. Uh. Food historian Erica J. Peters,
who wrote the book San Francisco, a Food History, gave
a talk at the San Francisco Public Library and Feen
about the origins of crab Louis. You can actually find
(27:25):
that online. She talked about Louis Coutard and the belief
that he had actually started using chili sauce with creamy
mayonnaise to dress crab way back at Frank's rotisserie, even
before the earthquake and fires, although that dish was not
yet named for him. Then. In nineteen nineteen, another San
Francisco chef, Victor Herzler, wrote the Hotel St. Francis Cookbook
(27:47):
in that he included a variation on crab Louis, which
he called crab a la Louise. His recipe directs cooks
to quote use small fancy fish plates or salad plates
lay on each plates. Slices of the white hearts of
firm heads of lettuce lay on top. Some canned Spanish
pimentos using the brilliant red variety, which is sweet. On
(28:10):
top of this placed the crab meat, taking care not
to break it too small. Overall poor French dressing made
with tarragon vinegar well seasoned with freshly ground pepper. That
version obviously switches out chili sauce for pimentos, which is
probably why Hurzler shifted the name to Louise instead of Louis.
(28:30):
An earlier variation, published in the pan Pacific Cookbook in
nineteen fifteen, to coincide with the Panama Pacific International Exposition,
made another switch out. That one calls for ketchup instead
of chili sauce. There's another contender here, though, that is Portland, Oregon.
In Lve, the Portland Council of Jewish Women's Neighborhood cookbook
(28:51):
featured a recipe for crab Louis. This one just had lettuce,
hard boiled eggs and crab meat, and the Louis dressing
is a little of frint. That is three tablespoons of oil,
one tablespoon of vinegar, half a tablespoon of ketchup, two
tea spoons of Worcestershire sauce, paprika salt, and a tad
of English mustard. Fame chef and cookbook author James Beard
(29:14):
believed that the dish probably wasn't invented in Portland, but
it was at its finest in Portland at a restaurant
called The Bohemian that he frequented, and he included this
dish in his cookbook Or Derves and Kind of Bays,
as well as subsequent books, making little tweaks to the
recipe each time. So the earliest written evidence for crab
(29:35):
Louie's origin does indeed seem to be San Francisco. In
the nod to Louis guitar, but the dish spread and
popularity really quickly in the early nineteen hundreds. How he
found a nineteen fifteen newspaper ad for a Thanksgiving feast
in Bakersfield, California, almost three hundred miles south of San Francisco,
which featured Crab Louis Is one of its offerings. So
(29:57):
by that time that was well known enough to he
considered a draw for holiday customers that was incidentally at
the St. Francis Cafe, different apparently from the Hotel St.
Francis in San Francisco, though the proprietor was named Louis Allen.
There's so many Louis. There are also some theories that
(30:19):
you'll see that it was actually named for Louis the
fourteenth because of his exceptional love of food, but we
don't have any evidence that it actually exists in them
or that anybody named it specifically after him. I did
not find any sort of international or national day that's
Crab Louis Day, but that seems like a horrible oversight
on on the world's first. Every day is Crab Louis Day. Um.
(30:45):
I love talking about food. I have so many things
to talk about in the behind the scenes on this one,
including an idea I had while we were reading. But
before we do that, I'm gonna do a listener mail.
And this is from our listeners, Zach, who writes high
there and Happy New Year. I loved y'all's recent episode
about snowflake photography. While listening to it, I remembered an
odd book of water crystal photos on my art shelf,
(31:08):
but I couldn't recall if it was by Bentley or not.
Then when I went to have a look, it was
so much weirder than I remembered that I've felt I
had to share it with you. These are photos taken
of individual water crystals formed after being exposed to various
stimuli such as music, semi plausible and abstract concepts such
as beauty, truth, et cetera. Somehow, I think this whole
(31:31):
concept fits rather nicely into Bentley's worldview. I can almost
imagine him writing about this project in a scientific magazine.
I'm attaching a few pictures for your enjoyment. Also one
of my cats, Johnny, is seventeen and an operatic countertenor,
among many other professions. Here he is reading Sherlock Holme
stories there's another cat, Ruby and intrepid tripod Tabby. She
(31:52):
does not like to have her picture taken. I hope
y'all are having a lovely holiday season and that two
starts off with ease. Thanks for keeping the podcast going, Zach,
thank you so much because one adorable kiddies, but too,
This is very cool and I think you're right. I
think Bentley would be delighted as heck over these strangely
stimulated ice crisp um. It kind of reminds me of
(32:17):
the experiment that you we have all probably seen pictures
of online at various points where spiders were given various
different um drugs or stimulants and then they did their webs.
It's like that, except it's ice. Uh, there's no actual
animal involved of any kind. But it's very fascinating. If
you would like to write to us with fascinating things
(32:38):
or just mundane things that you think might be interesting
to us, that's cool. You can do that at History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find
us on social media as Missed in History, and you
can subscribe to the podcast on the I heart radio
app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff
(32:59):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Listen, Tracy.
We have really had some downers lately, some murders. Yeah,
(00:23):
not the most fun topics going on. Last week's recording
session was particularly grim, which is great because this week
we've kept it pretty late. We both have been promising
some more fun stuff, which we are delivering on. I
went marching right back to eponymous food because to me,
it's the gift that keeps on giving. It's fun. There
are weird side streets you can go down. It kind
(00:45):
of hits all of my curiosity points, and so far
I have not discovered a murder involved in any of
the food. So today we are going to cover a
super yummy comfort food from Italy and two ishes with
a lot of debate as to their origin. One of
them is associated with the U. S. East Coast and
(01:06):
one on the West coast. All of them, in my opinion,
are delicious. If you think there's nothing quite so delicious
and comforting as a giant bowl of fettuccini alfredo, I
sure love it. We'll talk more about that on Friday.
You're not alone. Although if you were to order this
by name in Italy, people might give you an odd look.
(01:29):
This dish would normally show up on menus in Italy
as fettuccini al treplo, the fettuccini with three butters. You
might see this as fettuccini albero or fettuccini a la crema.
And the beauty of this one is really as simplicity.
The story of its origin is known really well. This
(01:51):
starts with a family with a husband cooking for his wife.
In nineteen o eight, Alfredo de la Leo was working
at the family restaurant that was a little Trittoria and
Piazza Rossa in Rome, run by his mother Angelina, and
night was a very big year for de la Leo
because he and his wife Inez had their first child, Armando.
But as the story goes, after Armando was born and
(02:12):
as was very sick, she was quite weak. She had
no appetite, and Alfredo understandably was very worried about his wife,
so the restaurant tour tried to make her something that
would appeal to her palate and stimulate her appetite. And
give her some energy, maybe a tall order. He made
a bowl of fettuccini and then added in butter and parmesan,
(02:35):
and then, according to the Delileo family legend, he prayed
to one of the patron saints of mothers, which was St. Anne,
and then presented his wife with this dish and told
her that if she did not like it, he would
eat it. He did not get to eat it. Not
only didn't as love it. She thought that her husband
should add it to the restaurant's menu, and he did,
(02:56):
and thus one of the yummiest foods of all time
was born. So the was surely not the first time
that somebody had combined pasta, butter, and parmesan. But there
were some aspects of Alfredo's version that were a little
different than other Italian dishes that have similar ingredients. We'll
talk about that secret in just a moment, uh and
some other aspects of his dish that would have separated
(03:19):
it from those other precursors. Alfredo opened his own restaurant
in nineteen fourteen in Via della Scrofa, and he simply
called it Alfredo, and he continued to build on the
success that he had already achieved and his reputation for
exceptionally delicious pasta. He also started to get the attention
of hungry diners from well outside of Rome, as wealthy tourists,
(03:40):
some very notable started to visit his place. A lot
of travelers from the United States landed in Alfredo's during
a tour of Europe in the early years of his restaurant.
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford famously visited Alfredo's restaurant on
their honeymoon that was in n and they loved it
so much they reported eight their every single day that
(04:01):
they were in Rome. Prohibition in the US contributed to
a bump in tourism in the nineteen twenties as American
tourists sought out vacation destinations where they could get a
drink with their meals. In nine seven, Alfredo was knighted
for the excellence of his beettettini, and an interview Delai
Leo gave to a journalist at the time, he said
(04:23):
this was because he always used the very best ingredients
to make his pasta, even in the most difficult times.
Quote during the war, he said, I found a way.
He was not especially secretive about what made his way
of dressing fettuccini special, saying quote double quantity of butter
and cheese and well mixed. That is my secret. Yes,
(04:47):
so his secret was just more more of the fatty
things that make it delicious. We'll also talk about how
he made his noodles, which is a little different too.
Alfredo was really really proud of the name that he
had made for himself and of his dedicated and impressive patrons,
noting in that interview quote, kings, princes, ministers have eaten here.
(05:07):
The Crown Prince of Sweden is one of my patrons.
The journalist conducting the interview, Alice Wrote wrote of his
table side manner quote, people go to Alfredo's not only
to eat his delicious fetacchini, but to see him prepare it.
After it has been cooked, a waiter brings it from
the kitchen. Alfredo approaches with a spoon and fork, as
(05:27):
though advancing to a sacrificial right. He poises fork and
spoon aloft esthetically, and then begins to mix into the
fetaccini a generous supply of the best butter and grated
parmesan cheese. But even beyond disclosing his double the butter
and cheese secret Alfredo gave Row the entire recipe for
his fetacchini noodles as well. Here it is quote, Sift
(05:51):
upon the mixing board a kilo of fine white flour,
make a hole in the center of the mound of flower,
and into this breaks seven eggs. Then, with your hands,
never with a spoon, gradually worked the flour into the
eggs until no more can be assimilated. Then add a
tumbler of water and a dash of salt, and gradually
(06:11):
need the entire mixture into a smooth paste. Work it thin,
and when all is perfectly smooth, roll it into a
thin sheet. Then cut the paste in narrow strips a
third of an inch wide. This is enough for eight
persons served abundantly, or nine served cocy cosy enough. He
recommended boiling his homemade noodles for exactly eight minutes and
(06:35):
leaving them damp instead of draining them dry. He said
that he used an eighth of a pound of butter
for each individual serving. That's half a stick of butter,
and quote an ample sprinkling of parmesan cheese. Finest quality
of the utmost importance, according to De la Leo, is
mixing the butter, cheese, and noodles, so every noodle is
(06:56):
evenly coated. Yeah, for anybody that hasn't made pasta, that
amount of eggs is a lot. It means that your
noodles are very, very rich in flavor. And an eighth
of a pound of butter a half stick of butter
is a lot to put in one survey. Uh. That
same year that that rite up appeared again. That was uh,
and it was in numerous papers because it was picked
(07:18):
up and syndicated. Alfredo also received a very lavish gift
from Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, a solid gold spoon
and fork set that were modeled after the ones he
used to toss his fedaccini for guests. On the handle
of one was engraved to Alfredo, the King of the Noodles,
Mary Pickford July. The other had the exact same inscription,
(07:40):
but had Fairbanks his name instead of Pickford's, and according
to the official history of the family restaurant, those words
were quote read by every famous person who had the
honor to taste the Mesto fedccini. Mesto sisim means most majestic,
and that is the name of the dish. On the
menu even today, Lave miss Sissimo fedaccini. Alfredo Alfredo and
(08:02):
his delicious pasta started getting mentions in international papers that
drew even more visitors. Before the nineteen twenties were over,
restaurateur and writer George Rector had included the recipe for
Alfredo Delileo's famed dish in his cookbook, The Rector Cookbook.
All that press, plus the cachet of having movie stars
(08:22):
tout the dishes as exceptional mint that soon everybody wanted
to try fetacchini. Alfredo and Delileo definitely leaned into his
public persona and his growing fame. He really understood that
showmanship was part of growing his business, and if you
do an image search for him online, you're likely going
to pretty quickly find photos of him feigning to feed
(08:43):
guests his fetacchini by the handful. That was sort of
part of a stick that he developed as a table
side show of having your noodles dressed. It looks a
little squirrely to me to have someone like with a
fistful of fetacchini's, But even so, it was really always
always about the food. As he told a reporter quote,
I've always been more interested in perfect cooking than anything else.
(09:06):
In ninety three, the tourist trade had evaporated thanks to
World War Two, Alfredo decided to retire. He handed the
restaurant off to his son Armando, whose birth catalyzed the
invention of this famous dish. Armando took on the moniker
Alfredo the Second as the business passed to him. In
ninety six, the Via della scroll for a restaurant was
(09:28):
sold to two members of the staff. But just a
few years later, in nineteen fifty, Alfredo the first day
Alfredo the Second had another restaurant, this time called Il
Vero Alfredo the Real Alfredo, and they opened it in
Piazza Augusto Rempert. That restaurant is where you can order
most majestic fettuccini, and it is still there and still
run by the family. It is currently run by Alfredo
(09:51):
the first grandson and granddaughter Armando, who goes by Alfredo
the third, and it is Deli Leo. The Via della
Scrofa location is also still open. Those two restaurants are
kind of competitors. You may have noticed the dish, as
originally made by Alfredo, was really simple, just butter and
cheese and that's not typically how you would make it.
(10:12):
If you looked up the recipe today, particularly here in
the US, most recipes you'll find we'll probably have heavy
cream in them, but that was never part of the
original version, and this is simply due to differences in
ingredient availability. As fedaccini Alfredo caught on in the US,
it just didn't quite have that delicious richness that it
had in Italy. And there were a few reasons for one.
(10:35):
Alfredo de la Leo, as we said, made his fedacchini
from scratch, and his recipe had more egg than most,
using a hand ground wheat flour, and that gave it
this layered, deep flavor. Additionally, the butter he was using
was richer than what would normally be available in most
North American grocery stores. And of course the cheese. Alfredo
(10:56):
was using parmesanio reggiano. It's parmesan cheese. But just as
champagne is a sparkling wine from the Champagne area in France,
parmegiano reggiano can only come from particular parts of Italy.
Its ingredients are specific and it must have been aged
for between one and three years, so to approximate the
richness of flavor of all of those ingredients. Fans of
(11:18):
Alfredo's dish outside of Italy added other ingredients, just why
we have heavy cream usually in American versions. And today
it's actually pretty simple to acquire Parmesiano riggiano in a
grocery store in the US. You'll also find garlic on
the list of ingredients and Alfredo sauce. But that's something
that Alfredo Dlalio would be really lived about. In ninett
(11:41):
an article appeared in papers across the US under the
title cooks in Rome denied garlic is Italy's favorite. This
quoted several prominent Italian chefs and restaurateurs who were just
beyond irritated that there was a rumor that Italians ate
copious amounts of garlic. He insisted that garlic did not
come within a mile of his signature dish, and of
(12:03):
the rumor itself, he said, quote, it's a lopsided ragout
and has to stop. Alfredo de la Leo died of
a heart attack in ninety nine at the age of
seventy seven, and in the US National Fertuccini Alfredo Day
is celebrated on February seven. We are going to move
on to a dish that's often associated with brunch, but
before we do that, we'll have a minute and pause
(12:25):
for a sponsor break. The next epon hymous food we're
covering is a little tricky because it's not clear exactly
for whom it is named, although there are many contenders.
But we can tell you for certain that eggs Benedict
(12:46):
is not named for Benedict Arnold, even though that seems
like a pretty common misconception that people make. Although there
are many many variations on this dish, the base recipe
for eggs Benedict calls for Canadian bacon and poached eggs
sitting on top of the two split halves of an
English muffin, with a generous drizzle of hollandaise sauce to
(13:08):
top that all off. So before we get into the
debates over who eggs Benedict is named for, let's talk
first about hollandaise, just to get that out of the way.
Hollandaise sauce, or a sort of proto version of it,
dates back at least to the mid seventeenth century. In
the cookbook Li Cuisinier Francois Francois Pierre de la Verne
(13:28):
gives the basic recipe, although his lax lemon juice. In
a recipe for asparagus in a sweet sauce, he writes,
make a sauce with very fresh butter, a little vinegar, salt, nutmeg,
and an egg yolk to thicken the sauce, being careful
that that doesn't turn as an aside. This is from
the Terence Scully translation of that cookbook. There are others
(13:50):
that may have slightly different wording because the translation is
just a little different. Uh Today, a hollandaise would include
lemon juice and perhaps even cayenne pepper, but it was
probably around even before that. That name. Hollandaise means Dutch sauce,
and it's believed by some to have traveled to France
via Hugueno who were returning to their home country after
(14:12):
having been exiled. There's a difference of opinion on that
last point, though. The sauce is sometimes attributed to Normandy
as the place of origin and to the town Isigny specifically.
The town is known for its butter, and you can
find the same recipe listed in some places as Sauce
isign Yee. It became known as Hollandaise thanks to prior
(14:34):
podcast subject august Escoffier, who listed it in his book
as the fifth mother sauce, although his predecessor and another
podcast subject, Marie Antoine Karem, had also used it and
called it that Karem did not listed as a mother sauce.
One possible reason for the change in name to Hollandaise
sauce may have been as simple as the change of
(14:54):
butter sauce from using butter that was made and is
an yee to butter that was made in Hollo and
so getting back to eggs Benedict. One claim to the
name origin of the dish is stockbroker Lemuel Benedict. Benedict
was successful and a ladies man, and a bit of
a dandy when it came to his appearance. He was
not a man who buried himself in work and laid
(15:16):
low in his downtime. He was from a wealthy and
conservative family, a family which did not appreciate the fact
that lem was kind of a New York party person,
very outgoing with the very flamboyant style. If you've ever
seen photos of wealthy folks out in the cold wearing
a raccoon skin coat limb was one of those. He
also allegedly carried a cane that had a flask built
(15:38):
into it, so no surprise based on that description, Lemuel
Benedict had a reputation for a fun waite. Staff in
the restaurants that he frequented loved him because he tipped
really generously. He was seen about town with a variety
of beautiful dates, and sometimes all of that party and
caught up to him in the form of an epic hangover.
(15:58):
According to the Lemue Little Benedict version of the Eggs
Benedict origin story, one morning in he sat down for
breakfast at the Waldorf Hotel, and he was feeling the
previous night's indulgence, and so he ordered a variety of
breakfast items, buttered toast, two poached eggs, and some bacon,
and also a picture of hollandaise sauce. I've paused because
(16:23):
I'm just thinking about how if I had a hangover,
this is not at all what would help me. Once
Lemuel had been brought his order, he said to have
assembled the items into two stacks and then poured the
sauce over them. So, according to this tale, he invented
this himself at his table. When Oscar Stirky, the major
(16:47):
d of the hotel, saw what the stockbroker had put together,
he duplicated that in the kitchen and found it to
be delightful, so subbing out an English muffin instead of
the toast, and Canadian bacon or ham instead of bacon
that went on to the menu. That version of the
origin story was repeated by The New Yorker on December eleven,
(17:07):
ninety two, in an article written by Thomas Dormus and
Russell Maloney that was simply titled Benedict. At that point,
Lemuel Benedict was still alive. He had married an opera
singer named Carrie Bridewell in nineteen o eight. He had
known all manner of famous and important people, and according
to the New Yorker quote, Benedict's has been a full
and happy life. He gave an interview for it as well,
(17:31):
and he died the year after that article came out
in three at the age of seventy six. He apparently
never transitioned over to the English muffin version of eggs Benedict.
He always preferred toast, and in that article about him
in the New Yorker. He gave the quote English muffins
are unpalatable, no matter how much they are toasted or
how they are served. Disagree. Uh. There is of course
(17:57):
a different story to how this dish got its name.
In article ran in Bonapaty about the dish, and in
that story there's a couple Mr and Mrs La gram Benedict,
for whom the dish is allegedly named. In this case,
this was invented at Delmonico's. That's a restaurant Lemuel was
said to have visited frequently. But this attribution actually predates
(18:19):
the Lemuel Benedict story by about thirty years, and this
version is one which Delmonico's continues to assert is true.
In the Delmonico's head cheft, Bill Olivia told her reporter quote,
what I know is simply that Mr and Mrs La
Grand Benedict came all the time. They had eaten everything
on the menu, and they were tired of the menu,
(18:39):
and they asked the brothers to create something new. In
this version of the story, the chef at the time,
Charles Ranhofer, conferred with the brothers who owned the restaurant
and they all came up with this dish. So rand
Hoffer had published a cookbook in titled The Epicure in
this had an eggs Benedict recipe in it, although it
(19:01):
was called eggs Alla Benedict. That recipe reads quote cuts
some muffins and halves cross wise, toast them without allowing
to brown. Then place a round of cooked ham an
eighth of an inch thick and of the same diameter
as the muffins on each half heat in a moderate oven,
and put a poached egg on each toast to cover
(19:22):
the whole with hollandaise sauce. Yeah, and that the spelling
of that, in case she couldn't hear, is different. It's
not Benedict with a T on the end, but Benedict
d I c K is the end of the name.
So that only muddles the story a bit more. For
a long time, a very long time, Lemuel Benedict's family,
primarily his cousin's son, Jack Benedict, really advocated for Lemuel
(19:44):
to be recognized as the originator of the dish. Jack
Benedict also operated a restaurant in Colorado for a while
called LC Benedict Restaurant in Tavern and he offered both
Lemuel's version of the dish with bacon and toast and
Oscar's version with ham in an English FM. So here's
a tidbit for a little extra intrigue. Those two stories
(20:05):
share more DNA than it initially appears. Oscar Sharkey worked
at Delmonico's as a waiter before moving on to the Waldorf,
and it's believed that he and Charles Ranhoff are worked
together for at least some period of time, So it
could have been a recipe that he already knew or
that he remembered once he saw Lemuel Benedict put something
(20:25):
similar together. We'll never really knew. Sharkey, who may be
the subject of a future episode, never confirmed or denied
the Lemuel version of the story during his lifetime. Yeah,
that four year is the key one where there's both
the Delmonico's recipe book and the invention at the Waldorf.
Uh So it's a little fuzzy. There is, though, also
(20:49):
a third and much older possible attribution of the name.
Pietro Orsini, better known as Pope Benedict the thirteen was
said to have been put on a dietary regiment of
toast and eggs because of chronic digestive issues, and he
is said to have added a lemon based sauce to
the otherwise rather boring dish. This version, devised during the
(21:11):
time that Benedict the thirteen was head of the Catholic
Church that was from seventeen thirty, is of course lacking
the delicious bacon or ham component, and was like Lemuels
on toast instead of English muffins. This was probably not
called eggs Benedict either, and sodent only. The word brunch
first appeared in print in eight and a Hunter's Weekly
(21:34):
article in which author Guy Berenger made a case for
a meal that offered an alternative to the usual traditions
of early breakfasts or heavy Sunday dinners. Advocated that brunch
was quote cheerful, sociable, and inciting. It is talk compelling.
It puts you in a good temper. It makes you
satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings. It sweeps away
(21:58):
the worries and cobwebs of the week. This article was
printed with a ps that read quote beer and whiskey
are admitted as substitutes for tea and coffee. Berenger might
be shocked at just how heavy brunch menus have become
over the years. But the timing of this article and
the timing of the Lemuel Benedict's story being so close
together might explain how the egg dish became such a
(22:22):
brunch standard. April sixt is incidentally Eggs Benedict Day. I'm
gonna market on my calendar, and you better believe I'm
making some. You can have it all woo, and I will.
When we come back, we will cover another eponymous food.
It is a salad and involves some seafood, and we'll
do that right after we pause to hear from the sponsors.
(22:42):
To keep stuff you missed in history class. Going next
up is another food with a hotly contested origin story,
and that is crab louis. You might see it spelled
like Louis with an S or Louie with an E,
(23:04):
but it is the same dish with either spelling, and
it is pretty much always pronounced crab louie. It starts
with a bed of iceberg lettuce, and on top of
that is usually a combination of tomato, hard boiled eggs, asparagus,
and crab. Some people also like to have lemon wedges,
but the crab is dressed in Louie dressing, and that
is where the magic happens. One very popular but now
(23:27):
defunct San Francisco restaurant, so Laria's Grill described the crab
and dressing preparation this way, quote take meat of crab
in large piece, and dress with the following one third mayonnaise,
two thirds chili sauce, small quantity chopped English chow chow,
a little Worcester sauce, and minced tarragon, shallots and sweet parsley,
(23:49):
season with salt and pepper, or keep on ice chow
chow if you don't know, that's a pickled relish. It
is fairly certain that Crab Louis popped up on the
West Coast, because it is his storyally been made with
Dungeoness crab, which comes from the waters off the west
coast of North America, but exactly where it started depends
on whose story you believe. There are several, although these
(24:11):
ones mostly lack the level of details some of our
other food origin stories include. So the first version we're
gonna look at is the Washington State origin. There are
two versions set there. One is pretty easily disproven with
a quick fact check so that one claims that crab
Louis existed in Seattle before nineteen o four. That data
(24:31):
is used in a story that Enrico Caruso, the Operatic Tenor,
visited Seattle on tour that year and eight at the
Olympic Hotel. Sometimes this is told with the Olympic Club
as the location. In this story, he was served crab
Louis and then immediately was enamored of it. He said
to have kept ordering more and more of it until
(24:53):
the kitchen ran out of ingredients. But the problem is
that Crusoe was not in Seattle in nineteen o four,
he actually ever performed there. This version, though, doesn't offer
any clues as to where the name would have come from.
The second Washington State version places crab Louie's origin about
two hundred seventy miles east of Seattle in Spokane, Washington. There,
(25:16):
the Davenport Hotel opened in nineteen fourteen, and it had
crab Louis on the menu when it opened. That was
named for the owner, Llewellyn Louis Davenport, who moved to
the Spokane Falls area from San Francisco in eighteen eighty nine.
The Davenport, incidentally, is also still around, although it is
now the Historic Davenport and it's part of a bigger
(25:36):
hotel group, and they still serve crab Louis and they
keep their dressing recipe a secret to this day. San
Francisco is a fairly serious claim to the invention of
this crab salad with pink dressing. A menu from a
restaurant called Burge Frank's Old Poodle Dog from nineteen o
eight had crab leg A Lla Louie on the menu.
(25:58):
It got the name from the chef Fluis Coutard, and
then Coutart had actually died before the restaurant opened, so
this was probably named in honor of him to keep
the public associating his established name on the San Francisco
food scene with this new eatery. But calling the Old
Poodle Dog Knew is not entirely accurate. So the Old
(26:19):
Poodle Dog was a sort of phoenix from the Ashes story.
There had been a Poodle Dog restaurant before the earthquake
and fires of nineteen o six, which we have talked
about on the show. Before. Burget Frank's Old Poodle Dog
was a joint venture of several restauranturs who had lost
their businesses in the fire. Louis Quittard had made a
name for himself as the head chef at Frank's Rotisserie,
(26:41):
the other burned restaurants that had been reborn in this
collaborative effort where the Bourget and the Poodle Dog. Another
San Francisco restaurant also laid claim to the invention of
crab Louis, and that was so Lari's grill. That's the
one that we mentioned at the beginning of this segment.
The year nine teen ten is sometimes mentioned here, but
(27:02):
the first time we can prove it was served there
was in nineteen fourteen, regardless though that link to Louis
Guitard would have been already established at that point. Yes,
so that seems a little late. Uh. Food historian Erica J. Peters,
who wrote the book San Francisco, a Food History, gave
a talk at the San Francisco Public Library and Feen
about the origins of crab Louis. You can actually find
(27:25):
that online. She talked about Louis Coutard and the belief
that he had actually started using chili sauce with creamy
mayonnaise to dress crab way back at Frank's rotisserie, even
before the earthquake and fires, although that dish was not
yet named for him. Then. In nineteen nineteen, another San
Francisco chef, Victor Herzler, wrote the Hotel St. Francis Cookbook
(27:47):
in that he included a variation on crab Louis, which
he called crab a la Louise. His recipe directs cooks
to quote use small fancy fish plates or salad plates
lay on each plates. Slices of the white hearts of
firm heads of lettuce lay on top. Some canned Spanish
pimentos using the brilliant red variety, which is sweet. On
(28:10):
top of this placed the crab meat, taking care not
to break it too small. Overall poor French dressing made
with tarragon vinegar well seasoned with freshly ground pepper. That
version obviously switches out chili sauce for pimentos, which is
probably why Hurzler shifted the name to Louise instead of Louis.
(28:30):
An earlier variation, published in the pan Pacific Cookbook in
nineteen fifteen, to coincide with the Panama Pacific International Exposition,
made another switch out. That one calls for ketchup instead
of chili sauce. There's another contender here, though, that is Portland, Oregon.
In Lve, the Portland Council of Jewish Women's Neighborhood cookbook
(28:51):
featured a recipe for crab Louis. This one just had lettuce,
hard boiled eggs and crab meat, and the Louis dressing
is a little of frint. That is three tablespoons of oil,
one tablespoon of vinegar, half a tablespoon of ketchup, two
tea spoons of Worcestershire sauce, paprika salt, and a tad
of English mustard. Fame chef and cookbook author James Beard
(29:14):
believed that the dish probably wasn't invented in Portland, but
it was at its finest in Portland at a restaurant
called The Bohemian that he frequented, and he included this
dish in his cookbook Or Derves and Kind of Bays,
as well as subsequent books, making little tweaks to the
recipe each time. So the earliest written evidence for crab
(29:35):
Louie's origin does indeed seem to be San Francisco. In
the nod to Louis guitar, but the dish spread and
popularity really quickly in the early nineteen hundreds. How he
found a nineteen fifteen newspaper ad for a Thanksgiving feast
in Bakersfield, California, almost three hundred miles south of San Francisco,
which featured Crab Louis Is one of its offerings. So
(29:57):
by that time that was well known enough to he
considered a draw for holiday customers that was incidentally at
the St. Francis Cafe, different apparently from the Hotel St.
Francis in San Francisco, though the proprietor was named Louis Allen.
There's so many Louis. There are also some theories that
(30:19):
you'll see that it was actually named for Louis the
fourteenth because of his exceptional love of food, but we
don't have any evidence that it actually exists in them
or that anybody named it specifically after him. I did
not find any sort of international or national day that's
Crab Louis Day, but that seems like a horrible oversight
on on the world's first. Every day is Crab Louis Day. Um.
(30:45):
I love talking about food. I have so many things
to talk about in the behind the scenes on this one,
including an idea I had while we were reading. But
before we do that, I'm gonna do a listener mail.
And this is from our listeners, Zach, who writes high
there and Happy New Year. I loved y'all's recent episode
about snowflake photography. While listening to it, I remembered an
odd book of water crystal photos on my art shelf,
(31:08):
but I couldn't recall if it was by Bentley or not.
Then when I went to have a look, it was
so much weirder than I remembered that I've felt I
had to share it with you. These are photos taken
of individual water crystals formed after being exposed to various
stimuli such as music, semi plausible and abstract concepts such
as beauty, truth, et cetera. Somehow, I think this whole
(31:31):
concept fits rather nicely into Bentley's worldview. I can almost
imagine him writing about this project in a scientific magazine.
I'm attaching a few pictures for your enjoyment. Also one
of my cats, Johnny, is seventeen and an operatic countertenor,
among many other professions. Here he is reading Sherlock Holme
stories there's another cat, Ruby and intrepid tripod Tabby. She
(31:52):
does not like to have her picture taken. I hope
y'all are having a lovely holiday season and that two
starts off with ease. Thanks for keeping the podcast going, Zach,
thank you so much because one adorable kiddies, but too,
This is very cool and I think you're right. I
think Bentley would be delighted as heck over these strangely
stimulated ice crisp um. It kind of reminds me of
(32:17):
the experiment that you we have all probably seen pictures
of online at various points where spiders were given various
different um drugs or stimulants and then they did their webs.
It's like that, except it's ice. Uh, there's no actual
animal involved of any kind. But it's very fascinating. If
you would like to write to us with fascinating things
(32:38):
or just mundane things that you think might be interesting
to us, that's cool. You can do that at History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find
us on social media as Missed in History, and you
can subscribe to the podcast on the I heart radio
app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff
(32:59):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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