[2] Don’t feel like stacking? Just place the ingredients on a plate, as in this recipe. Or, layer them in a glass dish. (photo © Live Naturally Magazine).

[3] At Raymi Peruvian restaurant in New York City, a Japanese accent is added via julienned nori (dried seaweed sheets), togarashi mayo for the chicken salad, and ponzu syrup. Here’s the recipe (photo © Star Chefs).

[4] Croquettes: the chicken is inside! Check out the recipe (photo © Sweet Cakes Toronto).

[5] Here, chicken salad is turned into an appetizer with a pretzel stick (photo © Piscomar Restaurant | Madrid).

It is served chilled or at room temperature as an appetizer or as a lunch entrée.

Make the mashed potatoes with purple Peruvian potatoes (photo #6), and you’ve got a dish that screams “Easter week!”

You can substitute other salads (crab, egg, shrimp, tuna) and add other touches as you wish. We’ve included some variations below.

The name of the dish comes from the Quechua* word kausay, which means “life” or “sustenance of life.” Potatoes originated in Peru and number hundreds of cultivars. They were the sustenance of life in pre-Hispanic Peru, as rice was in China.

Morada means purple, referring to the purple potatoes. As you can see in Photo #7 below, there are also blue potatoes.

The original dish was simply boiled potatoes eaten with slices of aji amarillo (the principal Peruvian chili). Meat was scarce in the Andes Mountains. Much of the cuisine was vegetarian.

This most basic recipe of boiled potatoes illustrates today’s tip: The simplest foods can be made more flavorful and appealing, with a few twists.

The recipe below is Adina, a modern Peruvian restaurant in Portland, Oregon. Peruvian cuisine is an interesting fusion, not just of Spanish and Inca cuisines, but of Japanese cuisine, from the immigration of Japanese laborers at the turn of the [20th] century. You’ll see how Japanese touches grace some of the variations.

This recipe came to us via Potato Goodness, the recipe website of Potatoes USA, the nation’s potato marketing and research organization.

> The history of potatoes.

> The different types of potatoes.
 
 
RECIPE: CAUSA MORADA, PERUVIAN CHICKEN SALAD

Ingredients For 6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. PLACE the potatoes in a large saucepan, cover with cold salted water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until very tender, about 20 minutes. Let cool.

2. PEEL the potatoes and pass them through a food mill or ricer (or simply mash very finely) into a large bowl. Knead lightly with gloved‡ hands, slowly drizzling in oil, as needed, to a dough-like consistency. Add the lime juice and season to taste with salt. Refrigerate until cold and firm, about 2 hours.

3. PLACE the chicken, onion, carrot, and mint into a large saucepan, adding just enough water to cover. Bring to a slow boil. Cook until the chicken is fork tender and can be pulled apart, about 20 minutes.

4. TRANSFER the chicken to a medium bowl. Once cool enough to handle, shred with fingers or a fork. Mix in the mayonnaise, aji amarillo, celery, and red onion. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until cold, about 1 hour.

5a. For individual servings, layer ring molds with potato mixture, then chicken mixture, then potato mixture. Refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

5b: For a single dish, use a 2-quart glass casserole. Layer the ingredients, as above. Refrigerate until ready to serve; let warm to room temperature first, as desired.

Color: Purple or blue potatoes add so much more punch to Causa Morada than white varieties. As another example, how about a yellow gazpacho, using yellow tomatoes and bell peppers instead of the conventional red?

Size: Turn a full dish or side into an appetizer: Causa Morada bites (chicken salad stuffed into baby potatoes) or gazpacho shots? Or gazpacho sorbet?

Format: Change the shape and purpose, like the plated Causa Morada in photo #2, the croquettes in photo #4, and the appetizers in photo #5. Can you turn it into a drink? You can make a Caprese Cocktail by reformatting the ingredients of Caprese Salad: a mix of tomato and lettuce juices, with a garnish of mozzarella balls on a pick.

Another ingredient: The avocado in photo #1 adds new personality to the dish. What about a surf and turf variation, adding something from the sea (scallops? shrimp?).

Crunch: If the dish has no crunch, add some. Anything from a side of jicama batons or radish slices to an artisan cracker or potato plantain chip on top, will do the trick. One of our secrets: Japanese rice cracker snack mix, which is also one of our favorite things to serve with wine and cocktails.

Sweetness: Add some fruit, minced into the chicken salad, grilled as an extra layer or garnish, or pureéd into a sauce.

Salty: Blend in olives or capers, for example.

Condiments: Add chutney; cornichons or gherkins; pickled vegetables; or relish to the plate.

Vegetables: For Causa Morada, some red color cherry or grape tomatoes, or some texture a bit of frisée or arugula salad.

Sauce: There are countless types of sauces for every dish. Sweet, savory, herbal, matching, contrasting.

Bread: Could bread or crackers enhance the dish? For example, Causa Morada could be served with toasts or flatbread on which to spread the soft layers. Consider what would enhance your recipe: anything from garlic crostini (garlic bread) to sesame breadsticks to

Garnish: Garnish can change the personality of a dish. Imagine Causa Morada topped with julienned nori (photo #3), honey peanuts, diced melon, and shoestring fried onions. For fun: a few Goldfish?

________________

*Quechua is the language of the Incas. It is still spoken by their ancestors in the Andes Mountains.

†You can substitute other fresh chile. If you don’t want to take the time to purée the chile, just add minced pieces to the chicken salad.

[6] Purple Peruvian potatoes (photo © Pompeian Olive Oil | Facebook).

[7] Blue Peruvian potatoes are harder to find, but you can buy seeds and grow your own (photo © Harmony Farms).

[8] Aji amarillo, the chile of Peru (photo © Peru Delights).

[1] A classic BLT. Here’s the recipe from Southern Living (photo © Southern Living).

[2] A lobster BLT. Here’s the recipe from How Sweet Eats (photo © How Sweet Eats).

[3] A turkey avocado BLT. Here’s the recipe from Culinary Hill (photo © Culinary Hill).

[4] A BLT with grilled pineapple and sriracha mayo. Here’s the recipe from Half Baked Harvest (photo © Half Baked Harvest).

[5] What we now know as a BLT began as a “club sandwich” in London mens’ clubs. We’d call it a turkey BLT. It’s shown here with spicy fries from Kiwilimón (photo © Kiwilimón).

[6] Don’t want the bread? Have a BLT salad. Here’s the recipe from Southern Living (photo © Southern Living).

[7] Gazpacho with a BLT garnish, from Munchery, a fine food delivery service (photo © Munchery).

[8] A grilled avocado BLT burger. Here’s the recipe from the California Avocado Commission (photo © California Avocado Commission).

April is National BLT Month; July 22nd is National BLT Day.

The bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with mayonnaise, often served as a triple-decker sandwich on toast, is one of America’s favorite sandwiches (and a U.K. favorite, too).

While toast, bacon and lettuce have been enjoyed at table since Roman times, two of the other ingredients took a bit longer to come together.

> The history of the club sandwich is below.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE BLT

Although its ingredients have existed for thousands of years, there is little evidence of BLT sandwich recipes before 1900. The first known mention of a BLT sandwich appears in a 1903 Ladies Home Journal. That same year, the Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book featured a recipe for a club sandwich included bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and a slice of turkey sandwiched between two slices of bread.

According to Merriam‑Webster, the first known print appearance of the acronym BLT is 1950. Historical accounts suggest the abbreviation emerged as diner shorthand during the 1940s.

The BLT became popular after World War II due to the rapid expansion of supermarkets, which made its ingredients, especially tomatoes, available year-round.

See below for creative modern variations to the classic B.L.T.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF EACH BLT INGREDIENT

The oldest of the five ingredients is bread.

The art of using yeast to leaven bread was mastered by the ancient Egyptians. Loaves of bread presented more culinary opportunities than flatbreads.

Then came lettuce.

Lettuce was first cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, who turned it from a weed into a food plant as early as 2680 B.C.E. It was taken to Greece and Rome, and by 50 C.E., many types of lettuce were grown there.

> The history of bread.
 
 
Next, the bacon.

Wild boar meat was cured be smoking, salting and drying since Paleolithic times. (The Paleolithic, also known as the Stone Age, extended from 750,000 B.C.E. or 500 B.C.E. to approximately 8,500 B.C.E. [source]).

Pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000–12,700 B.C.E. But there was nothing identifiable as modern bacon.

The modern bacon we know and love began to appear in the mid-1700s.

Previously, the word “bacon” referred to all pork, then the back meat, then all cured pork. British farmers who noticed that certain breeds of pig had much plumper sides, engendered a movement so that “bacon” was finally distinguished as the side of pork, cured with salt.

Here are the history of bacon, and the different types of bacon.

> The history of bacon.
 
 
Next, tomatoes.

Tomatoes were brought to Europe from the New World at the end of the 16th century. But not as food.

The original tomatoes were like yellow cherry tomatoes. Considered poisonous (they’re members of the Nightshade family), they were enjoyed as houseplants.

Tomatoes weren’t eaten for two more centuries, and then only because of a famine in Italy in the early 1800s.

They arrived in England in the 16th century (see the history of tomatoes).

> The history of tomatoes.
 
 
Finally, mayonnaise.

At the same time, there was no mayo for the BLT. The original mahónnaise sauce was invented in 1756, but it was not until years later that it evolved into what is recognized as modern mayo.

The great French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) lightened the original recipe by blending the vegetable oil and egg yolks into an emulsion, creating the mayonnaise that we know today.

> The history of mayonnaise.
 
 
But no one had yet invented the sandwich!

It took John Montagu, Fourth Earl Of Sandwich, to invent the eponymous food in 1762 (history of the sandwich).

A marathon gambler, he would not leave the gaming table to eat, so asked for meat and a couple of pieces of bread. He could throw dice with one hand and eat with the other, no knife or fork required. (Sushi was invented for the same reason.)

The first sandwiches were gambling food: something easy to eat without utensils. Fancier sandwiches evolved, but it took more than 100 years for someone needed to invent the club sandwich.
 
 
THE INVENTION OF THE CLUB SANDWICH

While tea sandwiches with bacon, lettuce and tomato were served during Victorian times, a search of 19th and early 20th century American and European cookbooks points to the club sandwich as the progenitor of the BLT.
According to Food Timeline, most food historians concur that the club sandwich was probably created in the U.S. during the late 19th/early 20th century.

No printed record has been found to date, so the where and who remain a matter of culinary debate. The reigning theory points to the Saratoga Club in Saratoga, New York

The club sandwich was very popular and spread to other mens’ clubs. A printed recipe appeared for the first time in the 1903 Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book. It called for bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and a slice of turkey sandwiched between two slices of bread (no one has yet discovered when the third slice of bread was added).

So, violà: the club sandwich, a turkey BLT (photo #5), hits menus and cookbooks. When no turkey was desired, the “club sandwich without turkey” became a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich—later shortened to BLT.

There’s an unsubstantiated story of a man who came home hungry after his family and servants had retired. He searched the pantry for a snack, deciding to make some toast. As he looked in the ice chest for butter for the toast, he found cooked bacon, chicken, a tomato and mayonnaise.

He made a sandwich and was so happy with his creation that he mentioned it to friends at his club. They had the kitchen recreate it, and it went onto the menu as the “club sandwich.”
 
Was it the Saratoga Club? Did an unnamed man invent it? Maybe yes, maybe no.
 
 
THE BLT TODAY

The BLT on toast has been recreated with many variations. The most prominent may be the BLTA, bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado.

But why stop there? Create your own signature BLT from these ingredients! Consider:

 
 
MORE BLT RECIPE IDEAS

Cocktails

 
Not A Sandwich

 
 
PARTY IDEAS

Get together a group and assign a different version of BLT to each. Make a whole meal of it…perhaps with chocolate-covered bacon for dessert.

Don’t restrict your thinking: A Cobb Salad is a BLT salad with some additions (avocado, blue cheese and chicken).
 
 
MORE TO CELEBRATE

April is National BLT Month and July 22nd is National BLT Day. But also take a look at:

> All the bacon holidays.

> All the sandwich holidays.
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

[1] A hot, hearty, nutritious breakfast (photo courtesy Good Eggs). [2] You can buy bone broth in multiple or individual serving sizes (photo courtesy Appetite For Health).

Over the last couple of years, bone broth—made from the bones of beef or chicken—has become the nutrition du jour, for lunch, dinner, and for breaks during the day.

How about for breakfast? In Asia, soup is a breakfast standard.

It’s hot, hearty, nourishing comfort food.

And you can make it with whatever you like.

We adapted this recipe from one by Good Eggs.

You can substitute whatever broth you prefer (miso, pho, etc.). You can buy the packaged broth, and even individual portions of it (such as with Nona Lim’s and Pacific brands).

If you have other vegetables in the crisper, or a piece of leftover chicken, just cut or shred them and toss them in.

If you’d like tofu instead of ramen, ditto.

And if you’d like to have the broth for lunch or a snack, no one will question your judgment.
 
 
RECIPE: BREAKFAST SOUP WITH BONE BROTH

Ingredients For 3 Servings

1. HEAT the broth, diluting with water as desired. When the broth boils, add the ramen and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add the greens and scallions, and any extra vegetables or proteins.

2. SIMMER for another 3-5 minutes, until the greens are bright and tender but still have texture.

3. BOIL a small pot of water, add the eggs and simmer for 7 minutes and 20 seconds. Remove from the water and place in an ice bath. Peel them when they are touchable.

4. PORTION the broth into bowls, along with halved egg. Garnish with herbs as desired.

Macaroons are a delicious cookie year-round. The originals were invented by Italian monks from ground almonds. The name derives from the Italian maccherone.

Italian Jews adopted the cookie for eight-day observation of Passover, because it was free of restricted ingredients like flour and leavening.

The macaroon was introduced to other European Jews and became popular as a year-round sweet. Over time, coconut was added to the ground almonds and, in certain recipes, replaced them.

Macaroons arrived in France in 1533 with the pastry chefs of Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henri II.

But the French macaron, a meringue sandwich, was centuries away.

The concept was invented by Pierre Desfontaines Ladurée, who, at the beginning of the 20th century, had the idea to join two meringues and fill them with ganache.

Here’s more history of macaroons and macarons.

MAKE MACAROONS FOR PASSOVER

You can make them from scratch, or pick up a box or two (or three) of King Arthur Flour’s Coconut Macaroon Cookie Mix.

It’s $5.95 per box, yielding approximately 2 dozen macaroons; and it’s certified kosher.

They’re super-easy to make: Just add water to the mix, scoop them into balls and bake.

If you love coconut, this is your cookie. Ever so slightly toasty on the outside, moist and chewy inside.

They’re as good or better than any from-scratch recipe we’ve had.

While the ingredients themselves do not have gluten, the mix is not certified gluten-free because it hasn’t been tested for the presence of gluten.

VARIATIONS

You can dress them up macaroons by:

 
BAKING TIPS

Use parchment so the white bottoms don’t get too dark or scorch, and reduce the oven temperature to 350°F,

Even so, watch them closely as they bake.

If the mix is too dry, before baking, add another 1/4 cup of water (or as needed).

All photos courtesy King Arthur Flour.

Before we start on its history, check out the different types of fruit spreads: not just jam, jelly, and preserves, but chutney, conserve, curd, fruit butter, and marmalade.

The history of jam and preserves begins with the history of food preservation. After all, it was only a few centuries ago that technology was created to store foods over long periods.
 
 
INTRODUCTION: THE HISTORY OF PRESERVING FOOD

By the Paleolithic period 2.6 million years ago*—also called the Stone Age, and marked by the earliest known use of stone tools—people were preserving food. They had already realized that if they could save food they collected in times of plenty, it would make survival easier during times of scarcity. They could also avoid having to constantly roam greater and greater distances to look for fresh food.

The earliest natural methods of preserving food were:

 
Here’s more on the preservation of foods from The National Center For Home Food Preservation..

The first steps toward modern preservation methods were spurred by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1785. He needed to send food with his armies that wouldn’t spoil but preserve the food they needed.

Thus canning came to be, enabling fruits and vegetables in all their forms to be preserved until the next year’s bounty, followed somewhat later by mason jars for home cooks.

Here’s the history of canning and the history of mason jars.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF JAM, JELLY & PRESERVES STARTS WITH THE HISTORY OF SUGAR

Credit cooks in the Middle East as the first to make jam and preserves, though historians can’t pinpoint the date. It was before the 11th century; we just don’t know how much before.

It may have been the 4th century or earlier. Recipes for fruit preserves (using honey) can be found in the oldest cookbook to survive from antiquity: De Re Coquinaria (“The Art of Cooking”).

The book is believed to be published in the late fourth or early fifth century, and is attributed to “Marcus Gavius Apicius.”*

________________

*The Paleolithic is considered to have ended around 10,000 B.C.E.

†This is considered a pseudonym of the author(s), honoring a famous epicure by that name who lived some four centuries earlier.
 
 
Sugar Travels From The Pacific To The Middle Eaast

While honey could be used to sweeten jams and preserves, it was sugar that became the sweetener of preference.

The people of New Guinea in the South Pacific domesticated sugar cane some 10,000 years ago. It was later planted in India, where growers in the Ganges Delta became adept at refining the sweet cane juice into crystallized sugar.

Darius The Great (549-485 B.C.E.) brought sugar cane back to Persia following his invasion of India. Persia became a prolific sugar-producing region, and Middle Easterners had lots of it. Not so, the countries to the north.

Jump to the 11th century and the Crusades.

Amazingly, sugar was only discovered by Western Europeans in the 11th Century C.E., as a result of the Crusades (1095 to 1291). Crusaders returning home talked of how pleasant the “new spice” was. The first recorded mention of sugar in England was in 1099 [source].

But it wasn’t cheap.

As an example, a record from 1319 C.E. cites sugar available in London at “two shillings a pound.” That’s about $50 per pound in today’s money.

So jellies, preserves, and other sugar-based foods would have been restricted to royalty and the wealthy.

Marmalade is believed to have been created in 1561 by the physician to Mary, Queen of Scots. He crushed oranges and sugar as a remedy for her seasickness.

For more pleasant uses, royal sweet tooths kept royal kitchen staff busy.

The magnificent feasts of Louis XIV always ended with marmalades and jellies served in silver dishes, eaten with silver spoons (so don’t feel guilty about dipping into the jar with your stainless steel flatware).

Not that Louis and his acquaintances watched their pennies, but sugar wasn’t cheap. It didn’t trickle down to the bourgeoisie (or the British middle classes

As an example, we have a record from 1319 C.E. citing sugar available in London at “two shillings a pound.” That’s about $50 per pound in today’s money.

Unless money knew no boundaries, sugar was a luxury.

Finally, with the enormous expansion of industry and opportunity starting with the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, most people could afford sugar for their coffee and tea.
 
 
Why Jelly Arrived Later

Jelly came centuries later. It required gelatin to set it. (In modern times, pectin derived from fruits is used.)

Gelatin (also spelled gelatine) had been made since ancient times by boiling animal and fish bones and connective tissues. It was a laborious process, undertaken largely by the kitchens of the wealthy, which had the staff resources to undertake it.‡

Aspic, made from meat or fish stock, appears in Egyptian wall paintings. It seems to have dropped from sight, sometime after the fall of Ancient Egypt (30 B.C.E.) and the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 C.E., which led to more sacking by other peoples and the Dark Ages.

No one had enough to eat of the basics, much less laboriously crafted fare.

[1] Jelly is clear. How about this pear jelly recipe (photo © Things We Make).

[2] Marmalade has a clear base, but is different from jelly in that it includes pieces of the fruit. Try this orange marmalade recipe (photo © The Suburban Soapbox).

[3] Jam is made from crushed fruit. For some tropical pizzazz, make this pineapple-passionfruit jam recipe (photo © The Flexitarian).

[4] Preserves differ from jam, in that the fruit is cooked whole (in the case of small fruit like berries) and is recognizable its syrup. In cherry season, make this cherry preserves recipe (photo © Cilantropist).

[5] In a curd, the cooked fruit is puréed and combined with butter into a creamy spread. Try this lemon curd recipe (photo © Saving Dessert).

[6] In an interesting twist, products called fruit butter have no butter or other dairy. This slow cooker apple butter recipe is a great starter recipe for fruit butter (photo © Dessert For Two). See many more types of fruit spreads in our Jam & Jelly Glossary.

Powdered gelatin was invented in 1682 by Denis Papin, a French physicist, mathematician, and inventor. It made the production of jelly so much easier and enabled the development of other foods that required stiffening.

And that’s why jelly came much later.

Interestingly, Papin’s Wikipedia page doesn’t mention gelatin—just his scientific inventions. No doubt, inventing the forerunner of the steam engine tops jelling food.

Here’s a longer history of gelatin.

By the way:

The word jelly comes from the French word gelée, meaning to congeal or gel.

The word jam appears in 18th-century English from the word meaning to press tightly.

The word marmalade appeared in the late 15th century, derived from the Portuguese word for quince jam, marmelada.

________________

‡The primary use for gelatin was as glue.

[8] Pancakes with strawberry jam (photo © Calm Belly Kitchen).

[9] Raspberry jam is the filling for liner cookies and tortes (photo © American Heritage Cooking).

Arab trade brought sugar to southern Europe through Spain, and the first Spanish explorers carried it to the New World.

It is recorded that in 1493, Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane plants to grow in the West Indies. The crop thrived, and the region became Europe’s main source of sugar, beginning around 1500.

Sugar was the main crop produced on plantations throughout the Caribbean beginning in the 18th century, leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

These plantations produced 80% to 90% of the sugar consumed in Western Europe. A by-product of refining sugar was molasses, given to the slaves for sweetening their food. One clever fellow discovered that fermenting the molasses made a delicious drink: rum.

As global trading grew, the price of sugar became affordable in the 19th century to middle and lower-income families in Europe and the U.S.

But sugar was a precious necessity. In 1888, the American folk song Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill, has railroad workers lamenting, “Oh it’s work all day for the sugar in your tay” [tea].

And that meant sugar for your jams and jellies, candies, and desserts, too.
 
 
JAM IN AMERICA

From European royalty to Americans to American pioneers, to energizing troops during battle, to making life sweeter for children and invalids, and just about everyone else:

Jams and preserves came to the U.S. with colonists.

As a teenager in 1792, John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, a nurseryman (the title in those days), moved from western Pennsylvania to Ohio. In 1805 began his apprenticeship as an orchardist with an apple grower.

He noted the U.S. surge westward in the early 1800s and decided on his life’s journey: planting apple trees throughout the Midwest, so incoming pioneers could make cider and jam.

One of those pioneers was Jerome Monroe Smucker of Orrville, Ohio, a farmer who opened a cider mill in 1897 using fruit that Johnny Appleseed had planted. Within a few years, he was also making apple butter, in a copper kettle over a wood stove.

Jerome and his wife Ella ladled the apple butter into stoneware crocks, and Ella then sold it from her horse-drawn wagon to other housewives in the county. Today their venture is worth more than $15 billion.

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