Salmon (was: SC - Chicken usage)

[Par Leijonhufvud]

Debra Hense wrote:

> In fact, I teach a class now and then (coming to the Interkingdom Cooking and Brewing
> Symposium in July in Ohio) where I cook about 12 kinds of shortbread for.  I
> use a basic recipe of 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup fat, 1/4 cup sweetner.  I vary the recipe one
> ingrediant at a time. First recipe will be the basic against which to compare all others.
> 
> First recipe:   white bleached flour, butter, white sugar
> 2nd recipe: unbleached flour, butter, white sugar
<snip>

Kudos on a fine use of the experimental method! I confess I don't think
I would have had the patience for it, myself.
 
> The purpose of the ingrediant substitutions is two fold:
> 
>         - learn about the characteristics each of the different ingrediants has. Such as the raw
>           sugar tastes better than the white sugar.  The diet oleo never sets up and should never
>           be used for baking. The brown sugar tends to carmalize.
> 
>         - learn to think about what effect an ingrediant substitution might have on your recipe.
>           Substituting lard for butter not only gives you a greasier texture, the finished product
>           tends to crumble and not hold together as well.
> 
> I also use this method to try out new ingrediants. Everytime I run across a new flour at the
> health food store or local grocery chain store, I buy it and run home to try it out in my basic
> shortbread recipe.  This way, I discover lots about its basic flavor, texture, how it handles in
> a dough.  Then, I try making it as a simple bread recipe. Flour, water, salt, yeast.  This way I
> determine its gluten content for myself. How much work (kneading) does it take to make a
> good bread?

I strongly recommend the baking section in Harold McGee's "On Food and
Cooking" for anyone interested in this sort of thing. Pastry and
confectionery are the most demanding of a good knowledge of kitchen
chemistry out of all the gustatory arts, with brewing probably a close
second. McGee gives a strong theoretical background on the material this
experiment covers, which would make many of the results fairly
predictable. This is not to say that this isn't an excellent learning
tool, since a picture is worth, etc.   
 
> Then, when I redact a recipe calling for flour, I determine the following things:
>         - who am I baking this for? Nobleman (upper-class), merchant (middle-class), working-class.
>         - what country?
>         - what century?
>         - what kinds of flour would they reasonably have had access to.
> 
> If it calls for fine manchet bread crumbs, I used the unbleached flour. If I want a more flavorful
> flour - I mix in a little oat or rye flour.

All good points. Sometimes the recipe, or at least what we know about
the food, linguistically, can point us in the right direction here. For
instance, what we generally call shortbread is more typical of Northern
Europe than Southern. (There are butter cookies in the south, but they
are a slightly different animal.) Also, it is supposed to be short,
which means it is tender, crumbly, and/or rich with fat. So, since it is
full of shortening anyway, and the dish comes from a place where
low-gluten flours abound, there seems little point in making it from
high-gluten, bread, or semolina flours, except as a teaching tool.
Again, useful anyway.

It might be good to do something like this with something like a yeast
bread, which of course has fewer variables, but might be a bit more
universal as regards time and place.

Adamantius