SC - Crustade Lombard - a redaction

[Cindy Renfrow]

I wrote:
>> I have now over-analysed this to a ridiculous point. Talk about your recipe
>> challenge! I surrender, I surrender.

And Adamantius replied:
>We have not yet BEGUN to overanalyze!!! I actually had a thort this
>morning (evil chuckle): I wonder if it would make a difference to use
>some other eggs than hen's? Duck eggs make very lovely custards indeed,
>a fact that I discovered from reading Mrs. Beeton and then
>experimenting. Perhaps this might work with duck or goose eggs...
>
For that matter, who says that our cream was the consistency of their cream,
and who says that our parsley (either curly or flat) was a: the same plant
and b: posessed the same properties.Of course now you realize I have to go
and puree some parsley. I suppose (Aoife puts on her Sci-Fi cook's helmet,
complete with propeller) letting parsley juice ferment first before adding
to the cream is right out? But the receipt does say leaves, as opposed to ,
I guess, roots, which were often used as well.

I have actually really gone to ridiculous lengths over this, but fortunately
had the dignity not to post most of my torments here.

I probably wouldn't have gotten so over-excited about the curds thing, but
suddenly we were faced with a new recipe for.....CHEESECAKE.....of all things. 
I still need to try the 'clowted' thing (which some folks have confused with
whipped cream, which is another thing all together. We can prove Clowted
cream existed in period--but that early?-- and straining until the clowted
cream will 'bere him-self' can make a sort of sense here, since it must be
strained from the milk very gently. So that leads us to question what 'gode'
cream means).
Shall we clowt it with the parsley incorporated?

>Other impressions for what they're worth: I suspect this is a pretty
>shallow custard, with the actual custard mixture playing a relatively
>secondary role. The Lenten instructions are to use cream, parsley, and
>the fruit. Reminds me of some account I read of early quiches (meaning
>the dishes from northwestern France, not just any savory custard pie)
>which appear to have been made as a sort of pizza with a topping of very
>thick (i.e. Devonshire or whatever the French equivalent would be)
>cream. I can't see that getting deeper than 1/2 inch, maximum. I see no
>reason why the visual effect of height would differ too strongly between
>Lenten and meatday versions of the dish, which would only serve to make
>the dish even more unrecognizable in its Lenten form.

Good point. I had wondered about the other lenten version (from the second
very similar receipt) , which has us using almond milk, which when thickened
becomes almond cheese or almond butter. All these things could concievably
work equally well, and being bland wouldn't have too pronounced an effect on
taste and appearance for lenten observances.

>
>All this would seem to indicate that if we simply ignore the
>instructions about the straining the liquor till thick, we would get a
>perfectly fine (if not necessarily authentic in this case) custard. Of
>course, it's quite galling to think that the instructions are there, in
>recognizable English, and just out of reach anyway for no apparent
>reason. This isn't my normal way of solving problems like this. I offer
>it only as a consolation prize... .

My last question was whether this could have been a scribal error (the
'strayne' part, I mean). It is entirely possible that the scribe mistook
parts of this receipt for another, similar one. If the receipt ms was
handwritten, this becomes more likely than if it was printed, but even then
stuff happens.....

And then, we have the possibility that an ingredient (of the curdling type)
was left out in transcription. However, I'm willing to bet that the true
answer goes something like this:

Given that we have two seperate receipts for the same dish seperated by
time, we can guess that it was not a rare dish. Since the receipts are
nearly identical, we must assume that it made obvious sense to cooks of the
time (or, enough sense so that one cook copied it from another source). In
fact, we have, in the later receipt, an added variation on the former
formula. This leads me to believe that the second cook not only understood
those original directions, he/she also knew them well enough to play with
the recipe, making other variations on a theme. Thus I am forced to conclude
that there is some process unknown to modern cooks inherant in the recipes
that eludes me because I do not understand or recognise it. It is also
possible that the process is one that would have been obvious to a Medieval
cook, and so the process itself or implement used to achieve the thickening
was left out. But my money would have to be placed on the 'unknown process'.
Either that, or the original author was extremely stupid, and has been
followed down through history by a long line of equally silly cooks, the
last of whom is....you guessed it...me!   (;^D)

>
>Adamantius


Yours in extreme and sheepish frustration, 

Aoife

All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.
				---Alexandre Dumas

Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes.
				---Oscar Wilde

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