Bull Cook

The thing about food is that it gets eaten up, leaving not a trace, so quite a few people happily believe that food history is a blank slate they can write upon at will. The prince of these fantasy food historians was George Leonard Herter, whose three volumes titled “Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices” were published around 25 years ago (Ecco Press reprinted Volume 1 in 1995).

In Herter’s books, the great figures of history are always creative chefs. Alexander the Great came up with the idea of bananas with milk and honey. The French statesman Chateaubriand invented oatmeal meatloaf. Paul Revere used to doctor his Boston baked beans with chopped ham and mayonnaise. Herter even gives a recipe titled Spinach Mother of Christ.

Naturally, famous dishes are mostly invented by famous people. Sauerbraten was devised by Charlemagne; the 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Rupertsberg gave the world wiener schnitzel. Bouillon was the brainchild of the 11th-century Crusader Godfrey of Bouillon (kind of a sweet idea, really). Johannes Kepler’s work as an astronomer “has long been forgotten,” Herter declares, but he will live forever as . . . the inventor of liverwurst. In reality, no one knows who invented any of these things, and “bouillon” comes from the French word meaning to boil.

A lot of Herter’s “historical” recipes are Dad food--the kind of things a middle-aged man with no special cookery training might invent while puttering in the kitchen. Many are sandwiches, such as hot dogs a la Bat Masterson. The sandwich spread supposedly invented by St. Anthony of Padua consists entirely of Dad-type ingredients: blue cheese, bacon and horseradish.

In all the bizarre fantasy, Herter comes across as crustily well-meaning and totally convinced he’s wising everybody up, so his books are oddly endearing, like a visit to a pleasantly cranky bonnet just crammed with bees.