SC - period salads

[Terry Nutter]

Hi, Katerine here.  Stefan asked for pointers to the salads from Platina.
I don't do much work from Platina, and I'm not in the mood to dig them
out at the moment, but here's one from Forme of Cury (recipe 78, page
115 in Cury on Inglysch):

	Salat.  Take persel, sawge, grene garlec, chibolles,
	oynouns, leek, borage, myntes, porettes, fenel, and
	toun cressis, rew, rosemarye, purslarye; laue and
	waische hem clene.  Pike hem.  Pluk hem small wi[th]
	[th]yn honde, any myng hem wel with rawe oile; lay on
	vyneger and salt, and serue it forth.

In more Modern language:

	Salad.  Take parsley, sage, green garlic, scallions
	[possibly spring onions], onions, leeks, borage, mint, 
	young leeks [or green onions], fennel [the bulb], and
	town cress [or water cress for a close analog], rue,
	rosemary, purslane; lave and wash them clene ["lave"
	means "wash" too].  Pick them [to remove bad bits].
	Pluck them small with your hands, and mix them well 
	with oil; lay on vinegar and salt, and serve.

I wouldn't feel compulsive about finding everything.  This *is* a salad.
Some of the things that make it different from most modern salads are
the large number of herbs (fresh clearly best in this context), the
use of leeks, the fennel and cress, and the simple variety.  All of 
those are easy enough to reproduce in small quantity, and possible 
even in feast amounts.  You will also notice that lettuce is conspicuously
absent!  Not to say that the English didn't eat it in salads; it's
conspicuously absent from the recipe corpur, but they grew it, and
ate it somehow.  Just, it's possible to make a green salad without it.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry

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