SC - Game pies - Caveat Redactor

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Bells are dinging. Buzzers sound. The robot, looking vaguely like a
washing machine on legs, waves its corrugated plastic duct arms and
says, "Danger, Will Robinson!" 

Sorry! Got a little carried away there. I just wanted to add the caveat
that while what Aoife says is true, more or less, the fact is that we
don't know for sure which of the Martha Washington recipes are period
and which are not, and it is a bit of a logical risk to rely too heavily
on them. We might be able to conjecture a bit on the relative age of the
recipes upon examining the original book, but Karen Hess didn't feel
comfortable about this when annotating the book for publication, and I
see her point. She relied most heavily upon recipe content and style to
figure this out, but still wasn't certain which was which. Her feeling
seems to be that it is the dishes that include standard medieval
components that are most likely to be from our period: meat dishes that
include dried fruit, for instance.

The argument that some of the recipes in a book are almost certainly
period is sometimes misinterpreted by the unwary as a license to use a
source which is  mostly non-period. That's not to say I haven't used the
rationale myself on occasion, but I would be leary of using such sources
when there are more reliable ones out there. Both Elinor Fettiplace's
Receipt Book, and the Penn Family Recipes (the receipt book of
Giulielma, Mrs. William, Penn) are similar books with a mixture  of
period, potentially period, and non-period recipes, but the latest
entries in both books are earlier than the latest ones in Martha
Washington.

I'm inclined to think a game pie with a sealer/filler of butter would be
only marginally period, while the similar receipts of someone like
Elinor Fettiplace, which might call for an egg-thickened wine sauce to
be poured into the pie after baking, would be a closer relative to the
medieval pies of game, fruit, bone marrow, and custard.

I still love Martha Washington's book, including, and possibly because
of, the notes by Karen Hess. She is, to my mind, just about the best
culinary historian I've encountered, and while her work rarely seems to
have very much to do with medieval and renaisssance cooking, she
displays a great understanding of the topic as an ancestor of
eighteenth-century cooking. Also, she displays a greater knowledge of
food and cooking in general than, say, Constance Hieatt. (Great! Now
EVERYONE will be mad at me!) ;  )         
 
> 'Raising coffins' also belongs to another discussion another day, but for
> those who have not tried hot-water pastry, I urge you to experiment. Imagine
> making pastry without any flour flying all over the counter/floor/cook! 

Here I have to agree completely. People might also be interested in the
recipes that call for cream as part of the liquid. Finally, I've found
most pastry work to be good  exercise for fighters in the off-season.
Pasta too. Real pies were an important part of many a medieval noble's
feast-day meals, and they seem to be greatly underexploited by the SCA
cook.

Adamantius, whose widow-and-heir-to-be crave the indulgence of the
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