ANST - slab o'bovine ....

[Mark.S Harris]

> On 8 Sep 98, at 13:20, Decker, Terry D. wrote:
> 
> > Now there is a thought for a medieval feast, bison steak in a wine
> > marinade. Of course, we probably have to substitute Bison bison for B.
> > bonasus.  Toss in a nice rye bread, mountain mushrooms, roasted onion
> > salad, maybe a galingale sauce for the meat and a good wine or beer to
> > wash it down. Tempting idea.

This highlights the main problem I have with the Stargate feast. The main
differance between a modern steak dinner and a medieval steak was in how
it was served. 

The meat is likely better now, since we raise the cattle for their meat
and there has been a fair amount of selective breeding since medieval
times. Our cattle are also much better fed than the medieval cattle
often were. Most importantly, their beef was often either slaughtered
quite young because you couldn't afford to feed it through the winter
or it was quite old, having worn itself out as a draft animal.

Cooking grills were known and used in period. Generally called 'gridirons'.
Ever wonder where the term comes from used in football?

However, even if often ignored, the medieval theory of the humours still
affected how meat was served. In a modern steak meal, the meat is served
relatively dry in big chunks. Then the dinner may add a sauce. The medieval
meats appear to be mostly served in a sauce and often ground up finely or
in small chunks. This would particularly be the case for meals for the upper
class.

It also appears that meat was often boiled first before grilling it.

"Food and Drink in Britain" by C. Anne Wilson is a good book and interesting
for those interested in finding out more. The third chapter "Game beasts and
tame beasts", 72 pages, has a fair amount of material on meats.

> as a alternative ... have you tried ostrich?  give it a try if not, it's a lean red
> meat that tastes *awesome*, especially when marinated and grilled.
> 
> 'wolf

Ostrich was a medieval food. This was recently discussed on the SCA-Cook's
list. While I will be adding some of the discussion on this to my files,
I think there is a little on medieval ostriches in this file currently:

exotic-meats-msg  (33K)  8/ 4/98    Period and SCA exotic meats. Swans,
ostrich, 
                                       eels, peacocks, crawfish, dormice, snails

As far as green beans go, there is some discussion of these in this file, also
in the FOOD section:
vegetables-msg    (97K)  9/ 1/98    Period vegetables. Recipes.

Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.