SC - RE: Meat -- Roman roasted meat

[maddie teller-kook]

L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt wrote:

> celery seeds?

That would be a substitute for lovage, m'dear. Since I'd rather have a
fresh, green, leafy substitute for the dried lovage I can buy, I'd use
the leaves of the celery, which are quite similar in flavor.

> BTW I have read a little about the dredging process to form a crisp crust on
> a roast with flour and fat and some flavoring. Does anyone have any sources
> for this practice? I can only find secondary sources.

Best I can offer is the dredging instructions found in Gervase Markham,
for roasting meat. Fairly similar to the coating for the pound of butter
roasted well and curiously, also from Markham. The instructions are
fairly long, if I remember correctly, but I recall it involved roasting
the meat for long enough to moisten the fat, then sprinkling it heavily
with very fine white bread crumbs, letting them toast a bit, basting
them to re-moisten, and then adding more crumbs. This process is
repeated as many times as is necessary to achieve the desired crunchy
crust.

Presumably Markham is talking about fresh crumbs from something like a
trimmed Pullman loaf, in effect if not in origin. I can't imagine using
the dry tinned bread crumbs after having experienced the real thing.
 
> Aoife...who once again worked backwards from what I wanted to make, then on
> to "can we document it?" Baaaaaaad Aoife. They sent the bones back to the
> kitchen shaped like a little dinosaur fossil in a museum. Picked clean.

Naughty Aoife! Points off for documentation after the fact. Any more of
that roast left?

Adamantius