SC - Irish period recipes??

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Maddie Teller-Kook wrote:
> 
> Unfortunately there are no 'period' irish recipes.  These were never
> written down. Event though there is documented evidence of food
> remenants found at archeological sites, this just isn't the same.  But,
> to be honest, I know when doing an Irish event, the food cooked ends up
> being more 'ethnic' than 'period'.  If only the monks had taken care to
> write down recipes instead of the book of kells..........(big grin)...
> 
> meadhbh

Of course, if the Book of Kells had been a cookbook, we probably would
never have found it, since some Viking might have taken it home to his
wife, instead of merely hacking off the silver binding decorations and
throwing the rest into the bog. 

As a matter of fact, I understand there is an account or fairly detailed
description of St. Colmkille's (a.k.a. Columba's) favorite food,
Brotchan Foltchep or Brotchan Roy, in the saint's autobiography, dated
597 C.E. The dish still exists today, and based on the description,
appears not to have changed significantly since that time, except for
the possible addition of meat stock to the milk that forms the main
ingredient of the soup's liquid portion.

As for other Irish foods of reasonably safe period accuracy, for all
that some speculation is involved, you might consider boiled bacon with
kale or cabbage, which is what was  eaten in Ireland before Americans
imported a variant on the New England Boiled Dinner (corned beef and
cabbage, with separately boiled potatoes, but sans the traditional
beets) to Ireland, sometime in the late-nineteenth / early-twentieth
century. Kale or cabbage boiled with salt pork, ham, or bacon is a
pretty standard porrey or joutes dish, found in period sources from both
France and England, and probably Germany as well. Le Menagier gives
several such recipes, while Taillevent doesn't bother, since, he says,
every houswife already knows how to make them. It was quite probably
eaten in Ireland in pre-history.

Adamantius  
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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