Whenever human beings gather to celebrate, food and drink is there - wetting babies' heads, birthday cakes, parties, the Christmas dinner, the wedding breakfast. But it's also there at the more wan and sorrowful times, often in a quieter, more humbler guise; it has a part to play in healing the sick, and eventually, in the final commemoration of our lives.
Before the establishment of the NHS and modern hospitals, convalescents and the sick were often nursed at home by the extended family. Consequently many late nineteenth and a few twentieth century cookery books feature a chapter detailing how to care for an invalid (a section somewhat missing from today's foodie best sellers I feel). Most of these menus feature of soup, and it is probably this fact more than any other that has damaged the reputation of that dish in this country. Soup then, is what you got when you were ill. If you couldn't manage soup, there was always the kill-or-cure-all of the Victorian era, toast water. This sees a slice of toast placed in a large mug on to which boiling water is poured, before being allowing to go cold. The liquid is strained and the resulting brown water is sipped by the patient. It sounds dreadful, but if you're of a weak disposition, it's probably all you can stomach. The great chef Alexis Soyer in his book The Modern Housewife Or Menagere (1850) gives us explicit directions on its creation, stating 'The idea that bread must be burnt black to make toast and water is quite a popular delusion, for nothing nourishing could come from it'.
Others went further still in convalescence cuisine. In 1893 Mary A. Boland wrote 'A Handbook Of Invalid Cooking,' aimed primarily at nurses in training-schools but also the general public who had to care for the sick at home. Soups and other liquid meals feature, including a recipe for oysters simmered in milk with just a little seasoning. Now I love an oyster as much as the next chap but even I would be hard pushed to swallow one down when I've got a bad case of man flu. On the giving of food to the patient Boland writes 'If cooking be a science, then serving is an art. It perhaps more closely resembles painting than any other. The invalid's tray should be a dainty Dresden water-colour of delicate hues and harmonious tints'. Fast forward to today and most hospital food resembles Dresden after Arthur 'Bomber' Harris' squadrons had paid a visit.
But what about the food needs of carers and the rest of the family? When a loved one is moribund, the last thing everyone will admit to thinking about is food. If you find yourself preparing food in this sort of situation, there's a few things to consider. The first will be emotions, which will be running high. What you cook might end up untouched, pushed around the plate or thrown against a wall. Also the person in question may be conspicuously absent from the table and people are apt to dwell on that. People will sit down in their own good time, they might be on the phone to a relative, or crying, so make food that can sit a while. What they don't want to hear is 'come and get it!'
But in the midst of life we are in death, and eventually his boney hand touches us all. The 2nd November is All Souls Day in the Catholic Church, where the faithfully departed are prayed for and remembered. In Latin America the grief is often tempered by specially made sugar cakes, treats and bread - Pan De Muertos - flavoured with orange water or aniseed. Little shrines containing the favourite food and drink of the deceased are built and the whole thing takes on a much more celebratory feel.
A dish inspired - if that's the right word - by death is 'chicken in half mourning' found in Southern France. Half mourning was particularly popular in Victorian times, and saw widows beginning to reintegrate themselves into society. The custom allowed for grey and lavender coloured clothes to be worn rather than solely all black. The recipe for our lamenting chuck calls for slivers of truffles to be placed under the skin, which, when cooked, give the bird its respectful attire. To wash it down you could serve black velvet, created by the steward at Brooks's club, London, who on the death of the Prince Albert on the 14th of December 1861 informed members that champagne wasn't to be served unless 'dressed' in black. So he promptly added Guinness, which, because it is more dense than champagne, remains mournfully separate at the bottom of the glass.
But should you find yourself bereft and your beloved gone before you, organising the wake will eventually hove into view, and the dreaded curly sandwich will no doubt offer you its condolences along with the big-eyed vicar. For as Victoria Wood once observed 'In India if a man dies the widow flings herself onto the funeral pyre. In this country she says '72 baps, Connie, you slice, I'll spread'.