A chara, – Reading Rosita Boland’s article on the menus she found while clearing out her parents’ home in Co Clare reminded me of the pernicious fallacy that Ireland does not have a food culture or history (“Clear turtle with cheese straws? Bizarre and wonderful dishes on old Irish menus”, Magazine, October 21st).
Turtle soups were in vogue in the 18th century using large West Indian green turtles. As they were over-exploited a mock-turtle soup took their place, based on beef consommé flavoured with turtle herbs and garnished with chopped meat from a calf’s head.
Boland reminds us that Shannon Airport and Dublin Airport in the 1960s had the best restaurants in the country. Dishes such as “Stuffed Sole Sinéad” or “Fillet of Beef Cluain Tarbh” on the Shannon Airport Silver Jubilee menu (September 5th, 1962) reflect an earlier trend in the Metropole Hotel in Dublin, inspired by An Tóstal, a cultural festival in the early 1950s enticing tourists to Ireland in the Easter off-season. Irish food was being celebrated in the 1950s as part of Irish culture.
Information on turtle soup, Salamagundy (layered salad) and Manchets (type of bread) are discussed as part of the Reading Historic Cookbooks module on the MA in gastronomy and food studies in TU Dublin. The story of food in Ireland from pre-history to the present will soon be available in an edited volume titled Irish Food History: A Companion.
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This volume includes a chapter on how WT Cosgrave, Éamon de Valera and Douglas Hyde entertained friends and foreign dignitaries in restaurants, hotels, Dublin Castle and Áras an Uachtaráin, often including Irish descriptions on the menu. Perhaps “Sole Sinéad” was to honour de Valera’s wife? – Is mise le meas,
Dr MÁIRTÍN MAC CON IOMAIRE
Chair, MA gastronomy and food studies,
TU Dublin.