SC - Re: Lombardy Custard

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Terry Nutter wrote:
> 
> Hi, Katerine here.  I'd like to inject a contrary opinion here.
> 
> Straining is a very common step in medieval English cuisine.  In the
> overwhelming majority of cases, neither eggs nor cream are involved.
> A huge number of sauce recipes call for straining bread or toast
> steeped in broth, wine, or vinegar.  You are told to strain herbs or
> spices in liquid.  You are told to strain almond milk.  And so on.
> 
> In the overwhelming majority of cases, straining serves one of two
> purposes: either to achieve a smooth homogeneous result, or (far
> less frequently, and often using a cloth) to eliminate clear liquid
> from something you are getting to clot.  In the latter case, the
> recipe often specifies running a ladle under the cloth to wick
> out the liquid, and tells you how solid the result should be.
> 
> We have here a recipe that calls for straining a bunch of combined
> ingredients.  The recipe is quite clear, actually, about combining them
> first; it later refers to the combined semi-liquid result when it tells
> you to pour the licour over the baked crust and fruits.

While that interpretation is possible, I find it significant that  the
stated aim and result don't appear to be consistent with the ingredients
mentioned--
	>  strayne [th]orwe a
	> straynoure, tyl it be so styf [th]at it wol bere hym-self;
is very nearly impossible to achieve with a strainer or  a whip. Under
ideal conditions, you might be able to achieve it with an electric
beater if it didn't burn out first. The fat in the cream acts as a
shortening, which makes it more difficult to extend protein polymers and
aerate the mass. Possibly with an ice cream freezer you might get
somewhere. Unless there is a textual error, I am still inclined to think
that the recipe if followed literally will not produce the desired
effect, which is why I thopught perhaps the intent might be to fold
together stiffly beaten eggs with cream, beaten or otherwise. 
> 
> I am *very* suspicious of interpretations that take this as meaning to
> whip one of the ingredients in isolation first (whether the eggs or the
> cream) and then combine.  Especially when the only reference to eggs
> says *explicitly* to take both whites and yolks, I would resist any
> initial interpretation that required separating them and treating them
> differently.  When recipes meant you to do this, they said so.

Agreed. My interpretation takes that into account, but also the fact
that the recipe as written won't produce a mixture thick enough to bear
itself, which I assume to mean beaten to soft or stiff peaks.

> What this one says, is to strain a combination until it is thick.
> Absent a *compelling* reason to read it otherwise, I would interpret
> it as meaning to do exactly that.

I feel that the fact that I've done this before and it doesn't work, for
the reasons stated above, is pretty compelling. Of course, there's no
reason a custard mixture needs to be stiff before cooking. I feel that
we have here, more or less, a recipe that states 2 + 2 = 5. We can
change any of the numbers to make the statement true, but as written it
isn't true.
 
> Long before I would interpret this as calling for any of whipping
> the cream alone, beating the whites alone, or beating the yolks alone,
> I would try following the directions *as they are written*: that is,
> combining the ingredients and straining (probably using cheesecloth,
> maybe in several layers, lining a strainer), and see whether the fat
> in the cream aggregates through the whole to get a thick, semisolid
> liquid after repeated straining, or whether using a fair number of eggs
> has a similar effect.  And I'd try it with a number of different balances
> of ingredients before I concluded that the recipe meant to do something
> else.

There's some basis to suggest that a different balance might produce a
different effect, but unless we change the definition of a custard away
from a liquid thickened with eggs or egg yolks while cooking, there is a
distinct range of proportion where this effect will occur, outside of
which, it won't.
 
> Modern baked custards sometimes call for whipping an ingredient, but
> by no means always do.  I don't think that the fact that this is a
> custard is a compelling reason to disbelieve the directions as
> written.  And the directions only indicate that the filling
> is to be thick.  That, by itself, isn't a reason to believe that
> they are screwed up, either.

Generally I agree. Only the statement that it is to be strained until
thick is inconsistent with the rest of it. Certainly there's no reason a
recognizable custard can't be produced by simply mixing the cream and
the eggs until homogeneous. Now that I think of it, what about the
parsley? If you strain the eggs, cream, and parsley, you end up with
eggs and cream, since the recipe doesn't instruct the cook to chop the
parsley really fine or puree it.
 
> The fact that we can think of several techniques that might make
> this dish appealing to us does not mean that any of them were
> intended by the author of the recipe.

Absolutely. Also, the effects of those additional processes don't
especially change the final result very much. 
 
> Indeed, I'm suspicious of the claim that medieval English cooks
> whippped/beat egg whites, yolks, or cream by straining them at all.
> I don't doubt that it can be done; never having tried it, I bow
> freely to the experience of those who have.  But that something
> *can* be done does not, by itself, imply that it *was*.  In this
> case, were it done, I would expect evidence of it in the corpus
> of a kind that doesn't seem to be there.

True. Never having been one of those who speak of emphasizing the
CREATIVE of Creative Anachronism, I'm inclined to agree. However, there
are various techniques that some cooks know about that aren't widely
known, and it's possible that this is one such, especially since the
very recipe we're discussing speaks of combining eggs, cream, and
parsley, and straining one, some, or all of them until thick enough to
support itself.
> 
> In particular: yolks, whites, and cream can be beaten to different
> stages, and which one you beat them to affects the final dish.  The
> English medieval corpus is *full* of directions that tell you to
> pursue a technique until some effect is achieved (boil meat until
> it is half done; chop it until it is like brains; slice it to the
> length of a finger; cut something like lozenges; etc.).  If they
> were using strainers to whip whites, yolks, or cream, I would expect
> to find recipes that told you to take one of those ingredients
> (perhaps with sugar, but *not* with anything that would interfere
> with the process) and strain it "until" -- something that could
> reasonably be read as distinguishing between foamy, soft peaks,
> hard peaks, and so on.

Understandable. The recipe only speaks of straining until thick enough
to hold itself up. (Or, perhaps thick enough to hold up an egg, but that
sounds like a long shot.)
> 
> If there is such a recipe in the medieval English corpus, I haven't
> seen it.

Only this one, that I can think of...

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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