Professor Butter Beard and a Prehistoric “Hybrid Figure”
“Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?”
- Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz”
Courage, my furry friend. Courage! It must have taken a lot of courage for Bert Lahr to endure the two hours of makeup, step into the weighty costume fashioned from real lion skins and let loose that delicious baritone vibrato, the boxing bravado and woozy body language day after day after day of filming. He lovingly created one of the most memorable hybrid figures of all time. But he was not the first.
Over 30,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic period, the Swabian Jura (a mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, Germany) was part of the landscape inhabited by early, physically modern humans (homo sapiens). In small groups, they survived by moving throughout the valleys scarred by the last ice age. They were hunting mammoth, reindeer, bison, wild horse and other prey. Archeologists have found evidence of human occupation of caves in this area from the trace remains of campfires, and from tools, weapons and jewelry made from stone, bone, antler and ivory.
Excavation of dark deep caves in the area has revealed a number of small, sculpted objects. Carved in mammoth ivory using stone tools are effigies of large animals which scholars believe were of great importance to the hunters of that era. A number of these figurines show cave-bears and cave-lions, considered then to be the most dangerous predators of humans. A sculpture representing an archaic female form (referred to as "Venus") is the only object found which depicts a solely human figure. But that is a different story and a different bake.
At just under a foot high, my featured hybrid figure represents a standing creature, half human and half feline, carved out of mammoth ivory. Although it is now restored (over 200 fragments were rejoined), the creation of this lion-man, with rudimentary stone tools, was clearly an arduous business for the artisan. The dried mammoth tusk was split and then scraped it into a preliminary shape using a sharp flint blade to incise such features as the striations on the arm and the muzzle. It was then soulfully polished using powdered hematite (an iron ore) as an abrasive. Scholars now believe that this creation process could have taken close to 400 hours to complete. Jill Cook, Curator of Paleolithic collections at the British Museum, suggests that “unless the sculpture was created slowly at odd moments over several months, someone as skilled as an artist may have been excused from other subsistence tasks to work specially on this piece.”
There are so many theories as to the meaning of this lion-man (or woman). Like the hybrid figures hand-painted on cave walls in France and Spain, it may represent a human dressed as an animal, possibly to inspire and bless the upcoming hunt. Some historians go further and name these composite creatures shamans or “sorcerers,” who could contact the spirit world through rituals and visions as they traveled within the beast’s soul. The curator of the Ulm Museum writes, “Even though this unique relic is a fantastical creature which draws us intuitively towards the spiritual world of early humans living in the grip of the last ice age, we will never be able to decipher their clearly highly complex world view.”
Is it a lion? Or, is it a man? Maybe just both. Either way, this lion-man did inspire this week’s “hybrid” bake. I recently discovered plumcots and have been smitten ever since. A plumcot is the result of cross-breeding between plum and apricot trees. The delicious new fruit is an even 50-50 cross between plums and apricots. A true tutti-fruity hybrid! I then took it one bold step further by cross-breeding a cheesecake with a classic fruit tart.
Is it a plum, or is it an apricot? Is it a tart, or is it a cheesecake? It is a lion, or is it a man? Gather your courage and let them all be whatever they want to be. With that kind of freedom, how could they not be delicious.
Plumcot Cheesecake Tart
One delicious ten-inch tart
Your favorite tart base (For this tart, I use Dori Greenspan’s Shortbread Tart Shell recipe)
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 Tbsp Greek yogurt
½ cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
½ tsp spice of choice (I suggest Chinese Five Spice, but try ginger, allspice, cinnamon or even black pepper)
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
2 whole eggs and one additional yolk
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar
6 plumcots, halved, pitted and cut into eight slices each
¼ cup toasted almond slices for garnish
1) Make your tart dough of choice. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. Roll to fit a 10” tart pan. Bake in a 400 degree oven for twenty minutes until golden and dry. Let cool slightly.
2) Lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees.
3) In a standing mixer on low speed, mix together the cream cheese, yogurt and granulated sugar until smooth. Stop the mixer and add the vanilla, spice, salt and eggs. Mix again on low until everything is evenly incorporated.
4) Prep the plumcots by cutting them in half, removing the pit and slice them into eight slices each. Toss them in a medium bowl with the dark brown sugar. Arrange the plumcot slices in a circular pattern in the tart shell. They should fit snuggly without overlapping or leaving gaps.
5) Pour the cheesecake batter over the plumcots and bake for 25-30 minutes until the sides of the cheesecake are set and starting to color, but the middle still has a slight wobble when shaken. Turn off the oven. Leave the tart in the oven and prop the oven door open slightly with a wooden spoon for one to two hours.
6) Remove the tart from the oven. Let cool fully on a wire rack. Garnish with the toasted almonds.
7) Let the tart sit at room temperature, or chilled in the refrigerator for at least three hours before serving.
