SC - Culinary A&S Entries

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Mark Harris wrote:

> I'd be interested in hearing more about the dry, smoked sausage and the
> cheese. Did you make these from the raw materials? recipes?

The sausage was as close as I could get to the Polonian Sawsedge in Sir
Hugh Plat's "Delighted for Ladies" (c. 1609), made following the recipe
pretty closely. It is, in fact, a kielbasa. As for the cheese, it was an
English Slipcote, so called because it is a pretty soft cheese inside a
rind of the dried outermost layer, rather than a mold coating. You can
give it a squeeze, and the coat slips off. Recipes for this are found in
numerous sources, ranging from the Penn Family receipt book to Kenelm
Digby to Martha Washington's Cookery Book.

I neither slaughtered the hog nor milked the cow, but otherwise did my
best ;  ).

> I don't remember the article, but I will be trying to find it in my not
> very well organised TIs, so you can tell me just to go there. But I would
> like to hear any elaborations or corrections.

Apart from the omission of a good chunk of the notes and bibliography
(the article was pretty long, are you surprised ;  ) ?  ), there isn't
too much I would add if I were to write it over again. You can find it
on the Web, now that I think of it, on the Ostgardrian Web pages at:

http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/sca/cooking/ppb.html 
> 
> What is a "small" ale? I assume that is not referring to size of mug it is
> served in. :-)

A small ale is made from the second mashing of malt previously mashed
for ale or beer. It's akin to the slightly weaker second cup of tea when
you add hot water to your used tea bag. Later sources simply use fresh
malt in smaller quantities. I believe the name is derived from the fact
that a given amount of malt will make a proportionate quantity of ale,
and somewhat less (1/3-1/2 the amount) small ale. There's an excellent
description of the process in Gervase Markham's "The English Housewife",
which, while not a period source by conservative estimations (my own
included), describes a process that likely didn't change much between
the Middle Ages and advent of hops as a common ale ingredient in the
16th - 17th centuries.

Adamantius
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