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The Duncan & Coe History Show
Squirrel's Troublesome Little Bones
00:20:04
In this bonus episode, Alexis imagines a historic New Year's Eve menu for Mike. Karen Abbott, . Candice Millard, Malinda Russell, Jon Mooallen,
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- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to season zero of the Duncan and Company History Show. I'm Mike Duncan, my co host is Alexis Ko and we are two far flung history buddies.
- [00:09]
B
And this is our wide ranging archival mix of a show.
- [00:14]
A
And what we're doing right now is fun bonus content. And fun bonus content is the kind of thing that will be available for all of you listeners out there if you subscribe to our Patreon, which we're getting set up. And it is patreon.com duncanandco that's Duncan A N D company, Duncan and Company. But we're giving you this on the main feed so you get a flavor of what things are going to be like on the other side. And if you come and support us, that would be fantastic. And if you do, then you'll get to hear really fun, cool and interesting things like what we're doing right now, which I don't actually 100% know what we're doing right now because a lot of the bonus content is going to be Alexis throwing weird things at me and seeing what happens.
- [00:54]
B
That's not totally true, though. You're sort of crying wolf. I did tell you what we were going to discuss very briefly, right.
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A
New Year's Eve menu is the amount of information that I have.
- [01:06]
B
You're missing a word I said. Fake. Fake New Year's Eve menu.
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A
Fake New Year's Eve menu.
- [01:14]
B
Yes. I'm going to describe to you a meal I will not be making you. And here's a clue as to why everything I'm about to tell you comes from a history book.
- [01:23]
A
Okay, great. We're doing some historical recipes here.
- [01:27]
B
It's sort of like someone calling a doctor. I don't want to eat what they cooked in the past and I don't want to be cured with anything they think will help me, because it definitely won't. So first of all, I need to know what you'd like to drink.
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A
I don't know what's on the menu, Alexis, what's on the menu? What are my options?
- [01:49]
B
Okay, I've got two options. The first option is a gin. Ricky. So this came from Karen Abbott, bestselling author of, among other titles, the Ghosts of Eden park, the Bootleg King, the women who pursued him, and the murder that shocked Jazz Age America. So I imagine in the scenario that Karen Abbott is also here and Abbott would make this cocktail that George Remus, one of the most successful bootleggers during Prohibition, may have served in 1922 at the New Year's Eve party he and his Wife Imogene threw. And this party is, like, remembered for the kind of decadence that the Great Gatsby, which is three years into the future, will condemn one of the many excesses that were experienced that night. When guests departed, men were given diamond stick pins and women were given keys to a brand new car.
- [02:50]
A
So if I order the gin, Ricky, do I get a brand new car?
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B
No, absolutely not.
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A
Okay, well, then the confession I have to make is that I quit drinking quite a while ago, so I'm not going to order the gin, Ricky. I would have gotten the gin Ricky, and poured it out if. If it netted me a new car. But if it's not going to net me a new car, then. Do you have something that's non alcoholic on the menu?
- [03:08]
B
Of course there's a second option. Do you have any idea what the second option is?
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A
No.
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B
It's milk.
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A
Milk? Yes, just milk.
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B
That was James A. Garfield's drink of choice. And you will recall that our 20th president died a slow, painful death from his gunshot wound in 1881, as you surely remember and think about more often than Rome.
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A
Well, I think about it a lot because it did give us Chester A. Arthur.
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B
This is a perfect answer. It's a perfect answer. But you may not remember that while he was on his deathbed, while he was dying from a gunshot wound, a cow grazed on the White House lawn. It was this, like, bucolic scene while he was dying.
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A
Yeah, I don't know anything about that or the cow.
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B
There's a great book, I'm sure that you have read it, by Candice Millard called Destiny of the Republic. A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President. Have you read it?
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A
Of course not.
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B
Oh, it's really good.
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A
Okay, I'm gonna take the milk because what you've just told me is that the milk specifically pairs really well with whatever the main course is gonna be or the first course is gonna be, which I also don't know what it's gonna be, but let's get the history milk on my table and then serve me whatever comes next.
- [04:29]
B
You look a little. You look concerned. You look like a little bit stressed out. Your hands are just on your forehead. Yeah. Yes. So you. You're a little bit afraid and you're a little bit excited.
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A
It's history food, so it's, you know, it's one. The word look to scant might, you know, be popping into my vocabulary.
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B
Sure. Well, I am going to serve you soup. When it's placed in front of you, you Will say, this looks so good. It smells wonderful. What is it? And I will say, it's squirrel soup.
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A
Squirrel soup?
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B
Yes. Of course, once you decide on the recipe, you have to source the ingredients. So I have squirrels in my backyard, but I don't, I don't have like traps, and I don't have any inclination.
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A
I could source the ingredients for this. I got squirrels running all over my property.
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B
You don't have it in you.
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A
That's true. I'm a nice guy. I'm very live and let live with the squirrels.
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B
You're not going to murder those squatters. No. So the first line of the recipe says, and it's from 1887. It's from the White House cookbook. It directs cooks to, quote, wash and quarter three or four good sized squirrels. So I'm already in trouble.
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A
Yeah. What's a good sized squirrel?
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B
Well, I mean, where we're at, a squirrel is a good sized squirrel because we have no squirrels. But I don't actually know because the ones in my backyard, I assume the fur accounts for some, like, I don't know.
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A
Well, because I know one thing, like when you read like recipes from the past or like you read some like, Julia Child book, and she's like, use like six cloves of garlic or something. And the cloves of garlic used to be much, much smaller. And so we use these like giant, like enormous cloves of garlic that we have now. And so everything gets over garlic because. Because the size of things have grown so much. So like, I don't know if that's true of squirrels, but maybe three or four good sized squirrels is like one 21st century squirrel.
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B
When you were talking, I was thinking, he's so wrong because the more garlic, the better. So now I think the more squirrels, the better.
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A
It is hard to put too much garlic into something. That's true. I was just using that to illustrate the fact that in the past things were smaller.
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B
So we still have this problem. Where do we get squirrels? We're not going to kill them. So I, I did the next logical thing called a butcher.
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A
You really called a butcher?
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B
I'm dogged.
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A
The butcher just said, like, yeah, great. I get orders for squirrels all the time. I'll put you down for three or four good sized squirrels.
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B
No, it did not go well. No, it did not go well. And right before he hung up on me. And mind you, I wrote this down immediately so that I could quote him accurately and warmly, lest I forget these immortal words.
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A
What did he say?
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B
I don't have time for this bullshit.
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A
He's probably right. He's.
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B
He's not wrong. He's not wrong.
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A
He's not. He probably doesn't have time for this.
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B
I felt so bad about it. I left him five stars and I wrote, very helpful.
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A
Okay, so if we did have the.
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B
Squirrels, I can't source the squirrels, so I think, I think rabbit would be a decent substitute.
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A
Okay, so why don't you describe to me what else is going on in this recipe.
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B
So it starts out normalish. You wash and quarter good sized squirrels. We've discussed this. You put them in a gallon of cold water right after breakfast. You could do this in a crock pot. You could definitely do this in a crock pot. So they suggest in this recipe, corn, potatoes, lima beans. Strain the soup through a coarse colander when the meat has boiled to shreds so as to get rid of the squirrels. Troublesome little bones.
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A
Troublesome little bones.
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B
Troublesome little bones.
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A
We don't need. We don't. We do not need troublesome little bones in our squirrel soup. Do they just disappear? You gotta, like, strain them out.
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B
Yes. So you, you a coarse colander and you strain them.
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A
Okay.
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B
What do you do with the troublesome little bones? I don't know. I feel like you've won, so you should be gracious in your victory. The recipe literally ends with two words. Very good. Do you think that's true? Do you think it's very good?
- [09:18]
A
It could be. It kind of seems not very good.
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B
I'm going to add something edible, please. I would serve it with salt. Rising bread. This is something I have actually made. It's a recipe by Melinda Russell, who, who wrote A Domestic Cook, containing a careful selection of useful recipes for the kitchen. And this book, which was published in 1866, is the oldest known cookbook by a black woman. And the only known copy, the only known copy is in the Clements Library in Michigan.
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A
Okay, so what do we know about Russell?
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B
Everything. Everything we know about Russell is from the preface. A short history of the author. So it's like her. About the author. She was born free in the south before the Civil war. By the time she was 19, she was ready to quit Tennessee. She was going to Liberia. But on the way, a thief stole all her money. She couldn't leave, was forced to remain in the south where she cooked, she nursed, she kept a wash house. She did whatever she needed to do for decades. And then what happens? The civil war. She's once again a target, this time by white gorillas. They raid her home. And that was just it for her. She's a widow by then. She has a crippled son. She just lights out from Michigan. The Midwest. Never felt like home. What's interesting, though, is that she clearly made a name for herself. She's somewhat well known, it seems, because she thought the cookbook sales. This is the really heartbreaking part. She thought the cookbook sales would finance her return to Tennessee.
- [11:04]
A
Oh, boy. But it sounds like maybe the cookbook sales did not finance her return to Tennessee because you just said this is heartbreaking.
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B
Yeah, I know. I sort of spoiled it, but it's like very heartbreaking. The newspaper, the newspaper printing plant where her book was being published burned down, and with it, the entire print run except for one copy, which was probably hers. It was probably her author copy.
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A
That's a nightmare scenario for any author.
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B
Yes. I mean, in particular, if you're putting all your hopes and dreams in this publication, that's awful.
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A
But there's a good salt bread recipe in this thing and you've made it.
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B
It's like a technical challenge in the Great British baking show. Because 19th century recipes have minimally written guidance, there's the assumption that the rules have been mastered. So, like, if you are looking for a temperature to bake the bread at how long the bread will take to bake, you are not going to find it in Russell's recipe. Here's the direction. This is. This is all I've got. Bake quick and do not scorch.
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A
Yeah. If I was given the direction, bake quick but do not scorch, I can promise you what I would do is burn the outside and leave the inside raw.
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B
Well, I just, I, you know, I put it really high and then I lowered it and I remember it having like a delightful crust. So very good. Would. Would make again, particularly. I've never. I'm never making squirrel soup, so I'll just make it on its own. I'm never making squirrel soup. I did, however, go in search of something grosser.
- [12:57]
A
Something grosser than squirrel soup.
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B
Mm.
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A
Okay, what you got?
- [13:01]
B
I asked John Muellem about swamp frog thighs, which appears in this is Chance, his book about Alaskan radio host Jeannie Chance. But he did not give me the recipe for swamp frog thighs. He gave me the recipe for Jeannie Chance's crab and cheese mold, which he found in a little pamphlet of recipes collected during a call in segment for Jeannie Chance's first radio show. This is Jeannie circa 1962.
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A
What on earth is a crab and cheese mold?
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B
It's very easy compared to everything else I have described, aside from the milk. But I guess in that scenario, I am milking the cow, so it's not easy. Okay, so to make genie chances, crab and cheese mold, you dissolve gelatin, you heat chili sauce, you mix in cottage cheese, sour cream, some crab, you dump it in a mold, and I assume you refrigerate it because it somehow becomes firm. You look so distraught.
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A
This is. This is like Jell O with cottage cheese, sour cream, crab, and chili sauce.
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B
And it wiggles, I think because it's gelatin. I think it's wiggling.
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A
Okay, I'm going to stick to the salt bread, even if it is burned on the outside and raw on the inside. Oh, no, wait, you're making it, not me. The salt bread will be delightful. Crab and sour cream and cottage cheese jello. I will definitely accept this.
- [14:48]
B
I will not. I will pretend to be too busy doing hosting things because it sounds gross.
- [14:59]
A
Yeah, that sounds gross. What's for dessert? This isn't for dessert, right? I mean. I mean, it's jello. This is not. You're not trying. You're not trying to serve me this for dessert, right?
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B
It is a savory dessert.
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A
Okay.
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B
No, no, Fruitcake. Of course fruitcake.
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A
Which I've never. I've never. I don't think had fruitcake. I only know of fruitcake from, like, hackneyed jokes from, like, the 1950s because they were. They were going around and they were, like, famously inedible. When people would, like, make forts out of them, they would be handed down through the generations, like, not the recipe, but the fruitcake itself. I think there's a good joke about the fruitcake being a family heirloom, but I've never. I don't think I've ever actually had a fruitcake.
- [15:42]
B
It seems that this is divisive because FDR was a freak for fruitcake, and this, he loved it. But this also gives me an excuse to talk about Henrietta Nesbit. So Henrietta was the White house housekeeper during FDR's administration. She had no formal training in cooking or large scale household management. She just needed a job. And she was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, so they'd met in the League of Women Voters. Her husband was out of work, and Roosevelt was like, okay, you are hired. Under Nesbitt's watch, the executive dining experience went from, like, pretty sophisticated cuisine that you serve to heads of state to, like, infamously inedible creations. Because she insisted on adhering to wartime rationing even though it wasn't necessary at that point. So I guess you could blame that for unappetizing dishes. Another gelatin based concoction from her cookbook was the Shrimp Wiggle.
- [16:50]
A
The Shrimp Wiggle.
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B
The Shrimp Wiggle, which I'm not serving, just. I just feel like everyone has to have their limits. I don't know. Shrimp Wiggle really throws me.
- [17:00]
A
Well, it seems like it would go pretty okay with the crab Jell o.
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B
I think one gelatin. One gelatin dish per course.
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A
Great. Yeah. So this. So the story of Henrietta Nesbitt is not. I kind of thought when you started talking this was going to be the story of like a. She was a diamond in the rough and they, they found her and she turned out to be this like, brilliant cook. But no, she's.
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B
She's just consistent.
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A
She's just consistently awful through the entire Roosevelt administration.
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B
She's just a bad idea. But very nice of Eleanor Roosevelt.
- [17:36]
A
Well, of course, everybody deserves help, even if they can't cook. Okay, so if she. So what's in this fruitcake of hers that you're now serving me, but not serving me? Because this is all made up.
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B
Right. I love how you're like, really going with this. We've got to source the ingredients. Okay. We need two dozen eggs because we need at least 18 eggs, of course. And it would be great if we could go to one of those, like, co ops that sells things in the. From the bins because we need £6 of raisins.
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A
Oh, my God.
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B
Or at Costco, I guess.
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A
I don't think I've eaten six. That's so much raisin.
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B
I mean, it's not. It's. It's for, it's for a. Well, it's for a dense cake. It's for a very dense cake, you know?
- [18:24]
A
Yeah, I see six pounds of raisins and I don't have to sit there and eat it with a spoon. It's going into a recipe. Okay.
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B
Yeah. It's not like, it's not like a hot dog eating contest or raisin eating contest.
- [18:36]
A
Okay. So everything that you have just put in front of me, which I can't. I can't have the gin, Ricky. I'm not getting a free car. I'm having some history milk that we got from, from Garfield's Cow. We've got the squirrel soup. Ah, the squirrel. The squirrel soup is actually starting to grow on me. Like, at first I was like, ah, man, I don't know about this. But then you're trying to give me like, Jell O cram full of like, cottage cheese and crab, and then you're giving me this fruitcake with six pounds of raisins. It was made by a legendarily horrible cook. So that's how we're saying goodbye to.
- [19:18]
B
2024, with something totally, thoroughly unappetizing.
- [19:23]
A
Well, 2024 has been kind of thoroughly unappetizing, so it kind of goes with the vibe of the end of the year.
- [19:32]
B
What a great way for us to say goodbye. Before going on vacation. We had an episode mark Block, which I loved. And now a fake New Year's Eve dinner party. We'll be back in a few weeks.
- [19:48]
A
We will be back in a few weeks. This has been season zero of the Duncan & Company history show. I am Mike Duncan. My co host is Alexis Ko, and we are two far flung history buddies.
- [19:58]
B
This is our wide ranging archival mix of a show. See you in 2025.