SC - Plums period?

[Terry Nutter]

Hi, Katerine here.  Sincgiefu quoted Gerard at length on plums, suggests that
fresh plums are prolific and don't keep, and asks why one should assume
that they were not dried like other fruits.

I suspect the answer has to do with where and when.  I am frankly reluctant
to accept a description of practices from the mid-17th century as telling
me much (or indeed anything) about practices in the 13th to 15th.  Setting
aside the sheer passage of time (350 years was a long then as it is now),
culinary practices changed radically between the 15th and 16th centuries.

There are several indications that plums were used fresh.  For instance,
the recipe for Bolas in the first manuscript in _Two Fifteenth-Century
Cookery-Books (H279 PD 104, p. 24-5) calls for washing them clean before
putting in liquid to boil; a step that is hardly necessary for dried fruit, 
and does not, to the best of my knowledge, occur in any recipe with
regard to dried fruit.  (It also does not echo a list of similar opening
instructions in previous recipes.)  You see the same thing in the recipe
for Porryene (Diuersa Servicia 76, p. 76, _Curye on Inglysch_), which
also says to take the "fayrist".  One sees such indications with fresh
ingredients, but you don't see suggestions to take the best of dried
fruit.

There are recipes, especially for pies, in which we have no indication
whether the plums are dried or fresh, but in which we also see dried
fruit (dates, raisins, currants).  In these cases, it seems reasonable
to guess that they may be dried; then again, most of these recipes
call for apples, pears, or both, and there is no reason at all to 
believe that these were most often used dried (as opposed to held
over season in cellars or similar storage, a practice that continued
into this century).

As to the prolific nature of the trees: most surviving recipes are
believed to stem from the kitchens of great households, which were
cooking for hundreds.  (Amounts, when they are given at all, tend to bea
that hypothesis out.)  I see no reason to suppose that such households
could not consume the output of a fuit tree -- especially considering
that serving manuals indicate that soft fruit was typically placed on
the table at the end of the meal, with soft cheese, wafers, and
hypocras.

There may well have been a trade in dried prunes; but if so, it would
have existed for the same reason as trade in other dried fruit (like
raisins): not because it wasn't possible to consume the fresh grapes,
but because there was an independent market for dried ones.  I'm
certainly open to the notion that dried prunes may have been used in
the 13th to 15th centuries; I rather suspect that in some of the pies,
they were dried.  But I would want stronger evidence before
I claimed it for a fact.  I do think that the evidence supports the
view that the dishes in which plums were the main ingredient used
them fresh.

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry

============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================