A Vegan Called Bacon

I like the Victorians. I like moustaches and pommade; malacca canes and locks of hair in brooches; candlesticks and napkin rings; claret decanters and fish knives.

my great-great-grandfather, plus crazy beard policy

There was an explosion of Victorian vegetarianism at end of the nineteenth century.  By 1910, London was awash with veggie restaurants, and could boast what was claimed to be “the largest vegetarian restaurant in the world”, equipped with “modem three-tier steamers capable of steaming … 350 cup puddings at one time”, and two ladies’ dining rooms where “as many as 250 business girls avail themselves of the advantage  of a vegetarian meal nearly every day”.

The Order of the Golden Age, a leading voice of vegetarianism during this period, was delighted in 1911 to be able to reprint an article from the Meat Trades Journal stating “vegetarianism is spreading across the country like some loathsome disease.”

I recently came across the Golden Age Cook Book, published in 1898, and packed with Victorian recipes such as “A Border Timbale Of Mock Chicken” and “Cucumber Jelly” (weirdly containing half a pound of gelatine). An irresistible opportunity to do culinary time travel.

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The other day, with my earnings from cooking at Dub and Grub, I bought myself a big new stack of cookery books.

One of my purchases was The Uncheese Cookbook. Like many vegans, I take obsessive delight in making obtuse veganisations of unlikely foods.  Cheese, of course, is one of the most difficult; there’s really nothing that approximates to the flavour of cheese (nutritional yeast doesn’t do it for me).  And as for making something with the right texture and stringy, gooey melting properties, forget it.

The cheese orgy, from my favourite Asterix book

But I like a challenge, and I fancied making something unusual for the Scottish Vegans potluck last weekend (which was great - check out the spread), so I tested a “brie”, a “swizz” cheese, a “gruyère” and a “boursin”.  It seems that the Uncheese Cookbook staple method is to suspend a variety of “creamy” things in agar.  Here they are:

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