Professor Butter Beard and the Lamassu
“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” ― T.H. White, “The Once and Future King”
I absolutely love learning. Especially during a recent Saturday daybreak when the wind was screeching and the initially innocent “splash puddles” morphed into up-to-your-knees floods as a surprise September Nor’easter barreled in with bull-like rage. Nels and I were delightfully cozy on the sofa, wrapped in Scottish blankets. She cutely dog-snored while I devoured some of Gramma’s buttermilk biscuits with my homemade strawberry jam and sank deeply into the Metropolitan Museum’s Autumn Art Bulletin.
“Visitors to The Met have long admired the monumental Assyrian human-headed winged bull and lion that guard a gallery entrance on the second floor.”
Boom! I’m hooked!
“….works soon to be presented anew within beautifully redesigned galleries for the art of Ancient West Asia,” continued Max Hollein, CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My heart fluttered…. Did he actually just say that? May I now finally rename my lectures on “Ancient Near Eastern Art” to the highly longed for more correct title of “Ancient West Asian Art?” Oh Max! You just cleared the skies!
This autumnal edition of the Bulletin centers on two topics. First, the art of the Neo-Assyrian Empire centered in northern Iraq between the ninth and seventh centuries BCE. And second, Britain in the nineteenth century CE, as ancient sculptures unearthed in the 1840’s and 1850’s became explosive journalistic stories and the focus of religious and cultural fascination.
“In 1840, few visible remains of ancient Mesopotamia (the land around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, including all of what it today Iraq) were known to Europeans,” writes Michael Seymour, Curator of Ancient West Asian Art at the Met. “These artifacts consisted mainly of clay tablets bearing mysterious inscriptions in as-yet undeciphered cuneiform scripts, inscribed ancient bricks, and cylinder seals dubbed “Persian gems” that occasionally entered European collections.”
And then, in 1842, the naturalist Paul-Émile Botta was appointed French consul in Mosul. He was soon joined by a young British Austen Henry Layard. Together, they began excavating large, buried mounds in Nineveh and Khorsabad. What they uncovered would turn out to be the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II, built within the Fortress of Sargon, a capital constructed for the king but abandoned after his fateful death on a military campaign.
The French and British excavators exported their finds on a monumental scale, including pairs of massively fearsome sculptures depicting human-headed winged bulls and lions. The arrival of the sculptures at the British Museum captured the public imagination and rapidly increased visitor numbers at an unprecedented rate. When the original Crystal Palace was rebuilt in the South London suburb of Sydenham in 1854, it included a “Ninevah Court” designed by the architectural historian James Ferusson, but now “Lord Layard” himself consulted and even wrote the visitor guide.
Center stage of the Court was rightfully reserved for the pair of grandly intimidating “guardian hybrid beasts.”
Lord Layard wrote, “What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature, by men who sought, unaided by the light of revealed religion, to embody their conception of the wisdom, power and ubiquity of a Supreme Being? They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge than the head of the man; of strength, than the body of the lion; of ubiquity, than the wings of the bird.”
According to current thought, the ancient Akkadian name for these figures, “Lamassu,” is not really the term for a winged bull or lion, but rather a name for a conceptual type of supernatural guardian that could take many forms, and the particular qualities of the unearthed Assyrian winged bulls and lions are material expressions for that ancient belief. It’s fascinating how this conception moved forward with time – think of the two stone lions guarding the knowledge of New York City held within its 5th Avenue Library.
And now a little lesson in “provenance.” While most of the excavated sculptures were divided between the Louvre and British Museum, some stayed in private hands. A large group of reliefs and a winged bull and lion were given by Lord Layard to his cousin and patron Lady Charlotte Guest. In the 1920’s, these sculptures were sold to the antiquities dealer Diran Kelekian and in turn to John D. Rockefeller Jr., who in 1930 granted them to the Metropolitan Museum where they now form the core of the museum’s Ancient West Asian sculpture collection.
So, you may ask, what is the connection to Apple Cider Doughnut Holes? While some may interpret the link to be a rather sweet re-interpretation of the beast’s digestive system end product, I’d much rather concentrate on the “extension of learning.” After multiple trials and errors, I now present my “blog-ready” version of baked (rather then fried) autumnal doughnut mini-delights – just in time for the next nor’easter-inspired learning session on the sofa. If you scratch her neck below her collar, Nels may even, rather reluctantly, share one or two!
Professor Butter Beard’s Apple Cider Doughnut Holes
Six dozen doughnut holes – Believe me – They will all be eaten!!!!
Batter:
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
Zest of one lemon or orange
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup neutral oil
3 large eggs, room temperature
Vanilla paste to taste
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground allspice
1 ½ tsp kosher salt
2 ¼ tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp baking soda
1 ½ cups buttermilk
¼ cup fresh apple cider
Topping:
2 cups granulated sugar
2 Tbsp ground cinnamon
16 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup fresh apple cider
1) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and lightly grease three mini-muffin pans (24 per pan),
2) In the bowl of a standing mixer, mix together the two sugars and zest. Add the butter and oil and cream until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring between each. Stir in the vanilla paste.
3) While the batter is creaming, in another bowl, whisk together the flour, spices, salt, baking powder and soda. In another small bowl, or measuring cup, whisk together the buttermilk and cider.
4) Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture in three additions, alternating with buttermilk/cider mixture. Mix until smooth, scraping the bowl as needed.
5) Using a Tbsp scoop, portion the batter into the prepared pans. Bake the pans, one at a time, for 9-10 minutes, until lightly golden brown.
6) Set up your topping station. In one bowl, whisk together the melted butter and cider. In another bowl, whisk together the sugar and cinnamon.
7) As soon as the doughnut holes are cool enough to handle, dip each hole into the butter mixture and then roll in sugar/cinnamon mixture.
8) Let the holes continue to cool on a wire rack. Serve slightly warm or room temperature.
