SC - Re:cheap meats/marinating

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Lenny Zimmermann wrote:
 
> On Thu, 21 Aug 1997, Katerine wrote:
> >Lionardo suggests checking Platina, on the basis that
> >Lombardy Custard should be a custard from Lombardy.

> It was simply a suggestion as a way to compare what an Italian form of
> custard might have been made like. Since you yourself mention...
> 
> >The name suggests that somebody at some point that that there was something
> >distantly Lombardy-like about the custard.
 
> And I suggested that we look at the closest corpus I have to a Lombard
> style by seeing what was available in the Veneto region.
> 
> >  Custard recipes in Italy (and
> >Lombardy was not always part of Italy; for that matter, Italy was hardly
> >a single entity) may be relevant, but they also may not.

What we seem to have here is a simple misunderstanding that I hope isn't
causing blood pressures to rise. Virtually all of the information people
provide on this list is of value, and just how much value at a given
time is sometimes unknown until people look into it.

> >In other words, I'd look, but I'd take what I found with a grain of salt.
> >Even if the dish was invented by someone who went to Lombardy and like
> >something he had there, it doesn't follow that he used the same techniques
> >when he tried to reproduce it.

Fair enough. Think of all the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
French culinary appelations that seem to make little sense: Marseillaise
versus Provencale versus Nicoise, for example, are distinctions that are
clearly defined in classical French culinary taxonomy, but far less
distinct in the actual foods they represent. Sometimes a claim that
something is Lombard in style is a pretty arbitrary one. However, in
this case we don't really know if that's the case or not.
 
> Apparently I am quite incapable of passing across a message in
> assuming the readers of this list are able to make such logical
> deductions on their own. As such, allow me to apologize and add
> concurrence that, indeed, my example was only used as a methodology
> for style. As such it should be possible, by broadening the horizons
> of what some cooks of the time MAY have known about custards, that we
> can begin to make an attempt at understanding the English recipe
> instructions that are trying to be redacted.

It's always a bad idea to make assumptions about what a group of people
are or aren't likely to deduce, so if people don't follow the logical
sequence you employ, you ought not to be too surprised or upset.
However, there's sometimes a fine line between giving people credit for
intelligence, and making an unreasonable assumption that people will
follow and agree with your line of thinking.

In any case, I repeat my assertion that no information is wasted. Even
if the custards of Italy bear little or no resemblance to an English
custard named for Lombardy, it's certainly as good a starting point as
any of the others we've used. Le Menagier de Paris, BTW, has a pie
recipe which is somewhat relevant, as well. He is talking about putting
chickens into a pie, and says that if one would make the dish in the
Lombardy fashion, one should dip the chickens in beaten egg before
closing it up in the crust. There may actually be a reasonably
consistent recurring theme in Lombard pies, which may or may not have
anything to do with Italian custards.  

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I do hope no one is getting upset here, as
I doubt it will help us get to the bottom of this.

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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