"Dice a little onion, carrot and celery to the size of Dolly Mixtures."
Nigel Slater
A typically wry kind of simile from Nigel and the opening words to one of his 'almost' recipes - Chicken breasts, garlic, thyme, a sweet glaze of Muscat wine. It's all in the title really. I was actually looking for inspiration for dinner tonight, or lunch on Saturday with visiting friends. So I was flicking through Nigel's book Eat, which is festooned with my little yellow stickers and was caught by one which pointed to this recipe. I'm guessing it was the word 'Muscat' that sucked me in - and I will come to that - but for now it was the Dolly Mixtures which really got me going on a blog.
I was actually going to continue with my kitchen exploration, but found that my phone - my camera - had a flat battery and so I needed to think again. Hence the detour into recipe searching. But yes, dolly mixtures. I remember them. One reminiscer reminded me that kids of the 40s and 50s would buy them with their pocket money by the ounce. Then you would eat them one by one - leaving the best for last probably - 'the best' of course, varying from child to child. Interestingly whilst I was trying to find out more about dolly mixtures I found one marketing strategist seizing on dolly mixtures as a metaphor for building your customer base:
"Dolly mixtures are how far too many businesses view their next customer. A mix of all sorts. ... There seems to be a paranoia that somehow, we can’t afford to miss out on anyone, so we try everyone. You will never be all things to all people so stop trying. ... You need to singularly take out your favourites ... take out all your favourites and throw away the rest." Michael Butler/Strategic Specialists Group
Now he was talking about business strategies, but some of those comments could apply to real life too could they not? - beginning with decluttering the house. And my kitchen - the next section to talk about is my 'reserve drawers' which definitely need the dolly mixtures approach.
So Dolly mixtures - how and when did they come to be and why are they called Dolly mixtures? Well the general origin date seems to be the 1920s although a couple of the naming suggestions imply Victorian times. And here I defer to Wix's AI and also to an online sweet shop - A Quarter Of for the last one:
"Confectioner's Daughter: One theory suggests the name came from a confectioner's daughter named Dolly who loved mixing different sweets together.
Victorian Doll Inspiration: Another theory proposes that the name was inspired by a Victorian doll's dress, made of colorful fabric patches, reflecting the candy's vibrant assortment.
Small "Dolly-Sized" Bags: A third theory suggests that Dolly Mixtures were originally sold in small, "dolly-sized" bags, making it a perfect treat for children.
Family History: Some family history claims that the name came from the daughter of one of its salesmen, Mr. Charlie Clayton, who managed to secure a large order when they were being shown to potential buyers ("Dolly" was the pet name for his eldest daughter, Dorothy). This is the one that Wikipedia and its copiers go for.
Many believe that they originated around the time of the British Raj in India. Dal or Dahl in India are pulses (beans, peas, legumes) which are often made up of different sizes and colours.... so could Dally Mixture have led to Dolly Mixture? A long shot I know, but we love a bit of intrigue here!"
Moving on to something completely different - silverfish. (Today's post is a real ramble.)
I mentioned that Nigel's book has a number of yellow stickers poking out of it for recipes I fancied making some day. Well they all have big holes in them, having been nibbled by silverfish, and when I opened the page under discussion today a rather large silverfish rushed to the edge of the page. So I slammed the book shut, thus squashing it - and hopefully any others also residing in the pages elsewhere in the book. I won't say my bookshelves are really infested by silverfish, but there are certainly many of them. I often find them when I open up a cookbook - particularly those with the yellow stickers, which perhaps is a reason not to pursue that practice any more, particularly as the bits that stick out have almost been chewed out of existence, thus losing their usefulness.
So I looked up silverfish and found a few interesting things. Most interesting perhaps is that it's not really the paper they are after:
"These wingless insects once made themselves at home in books (since books are bound with glue), but not so much now. Years ago, most glues were produced using animal byproducts or other natural materials that contained a high starch, sugar or animal protein content. "Newer types of glue are products of modern chemistry and would be of no interest to silverfish because they have no nutritional value," because "Silverfish like to chew on things, especially paper or fabrics that may have starch or sugar residues embedded in them" Alia Holt and Doug Webb (Terminex)/How Stuff Works
It's the starch they are after, not the paper.
Silverfish are ancient - over 400 million years old, ane yet they have barely evolved at all.
"They are impressive survivors which may explain why they have had little need to evolve. Some sources claim they can live up to 6 months without food or water so long as they have one or the other." Scot Hodges - Arrow Exterminaters/How Stuff Works
They like dark places, and come out at night, so keep those places vaccuumed - at least now and then because: "To prevent silverfish infestations, it's best to minimize your accumulation of junk." Oh dear, oh dear. I might get out the dust bug when I've finished this post and vaccuum around the corners and back spaces of all our bookshelves. They're not dangerous to us though - just horrible and they destroy our books - especially the older ones. But then many of the pages of those older books are disintegrating over time anyway. Oh dear, oh dear again. I'm seriously reconsidering my yellow stickers though. One assumes they don't continue nibbling the stickers into the book because the pages are jammed so close together - too tight a space even for them.
But sort of back to Nigel. Muscat. Not liqueur muscat as we have here but wine, sometimes a dessert wine, sometimes not. Somebody who made the particular recipe I am about to write about used Muscat from Beaumes de Venise - the most famous of the French manifestations of the wine variety. And it probably deserves a post all of its own.
However, this sent me into one of those indulgent bits of nostalgia - similar to yesterday's and also to more worry about my deteriorating brain. For I confused Beaumes with Bormes les Mimosas a small French town almost on the coast. In fact just along the coast from Saint Tropez and yesterday's nostalgic spot. But I won't go on about Bormes other than to say that it is a lovely place and it was a great week, spent with super artistically talented friends from university - three of them. This is one of their efforts but also because I am very lackadaisical about giving my photographs titles, I don't know for sure which one painted this. I think Sue. It's beautiful.
Finally that recipe. It's from his book Eat which is full of tiny recipes, being an updated version of Real Fast Food. Most of these tiny recipes shares a double spread with two or three variations, or suggestions, which are even less of a recipe than the featured one - in this case Cider thighs, as he calls it in Eat, and shown here. A simple braised chicken with mushrooms, onions, potatoes, rosemary, black peppercorns, bay leaves - and most importantly cider. The sort of thing that any only slightly experienced cook could put together on the fly.
It appears here and there, both with very slight variations from Nigel himself and also as here on Instagram by Tracy Valentina Wood, who uses dill instead of the rosemary and bay leaves. This may be Nigel himself who made the change but then again it may be he, because the basic recipe appears here and there on various websites, and also, I suspect in various cookbooks. But that's the sort of cook he is - the sort of cook we all are probably. Fundamentally the same dish but with a very minor variation every now and then. I mean you could go the creamy route at the end couldn't you, by adding a bit of cream or crème fraïche, and, as we have seen - with different herbs, different mushrooms. The original choice was chestnut mushrooms - whatever they are. I don't think we have them here. Which reminds me I have mushrooms in the fridge which I really must use up somehow.
Nigel did have a recipe with a slightly more radical change - Chicken in cider - almost the same title but different because this is a dish which features bacon and apples as well as the chicken. No herbs just an onion. Simple, simple, simple. To be served, he says with his favourite mashed potato.
And what about the muscat and the dolly mixture sized vegetables? I cannot find a picture of this. There is no recipe online and the only person who tried it, meddled with it somewhat and ended up with something that had the word FAIL in capitals, in the title to her post and a really dismissive summary near the end:
"The sauce was disgusting. Stephen had added some white wine to dilute the sweetness of the muscat but it didn’t work. He then tried to blend the liquid and the vegetables together but that didn’t work either and it went down the sink. The vegetables tasted fine though so we plated those up with the chicken and hoped for the best. Despite our best efforts to rescue things, the chicken was completely tasteless and I gave up after two bites. Stephen finished his vegetables but the rest ended up in the bin."
The vegetables were nothing to do with Nigel's recipe, just those she chose to serve it with. Which just goes to show that not everyone loves Nigel, and recipes don't always work out how you think they will. Although she did confess that she, like me, had not read the recipe properly before diving in.
One last word - he also had another 'variation' Crisp golden chicken skin, soft green leaves, salt flakes - which is actually just a plain baked or grilled chicken which is then tossed with lettuce for a salad. I suppose you could say, 'what's to get excited about here'? But then again that's because we are now in 2025, and bombarded on all sides with all manner of variations on braised chicken. Just remember the world that Elizabeth David was writing in. She probably has a similar recipe to that last on in one of her books. And we would have thought it revolutionary.
YEARS GONE BY
March 20
2024 - Crudités extremes
2023 - Nothing
2020 - Deleted
2017 - Vegetarian extremes - idlee
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