SC - cuskynoles---Long but Good

[david friedman]

At 7:30 AM -0500 10/24/97, L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt wrote:
>A Dialog between His Grace, Duke Sir Cariadoc of the Bow, and Lady Aoife
>Finn of Ynos Mon .
>
>>You have left out "and sothen boil in veir water" immediately after the
>>figure!

>Yes, I did! Sorry. I suppose I ignored it alltogether. It didn't fit my
>formula, so I unconsciously omitted it.

Part of what is interesting about this whole process is the way one first
forms a guess about what is "really" going on, then interprets everything
to fit--with the result that two people can get radically different
interpretations of the same recipe.

>This is really extraordinarily
>interesting. I never though of fruit raviolli. I'm wondering why, though, we
>would prick the pockets (the drawing clearly shows dots, which I interpret
>as holes, in the middle of the squares).

The recipe says nothing about pricking them. I interpret the dots as an
artistic representation of the high points--a way of showing that the
center of the square is higher than the edges.

>So if I understand you correctly, we
>are re-assembling into a rectangle after boiling,

No. You assemble the whole thing, then boil, then grill. It works fine. The
sequence is clear in the original.

>to bake/grill the
>cuskynoles, much like modern pierogi is browned in butter after boiling? I
>dunno. It seems pointless to me. And they wouldn't bake/grill very well
>without some sort of grease (unless this is an assumed step?).

Worked fine when I did it.

> In this sort
>of recipe--your interpretation--I would naturally want to saute them in
>butter and sprinkle with sugar or drizzle with something. Putting them wet
>onto an ungreased griddle is going to make a big, pasty fruity mess.

My interpretation of roasting on a griddle isn't frying but roasting; what
I actually do is put them in a frying pan under a broiler.

>>"peoren" means "pears." You are misreading "p" as "th" to convert "pears"
>>to "thereon." Check "per" in the glossary of _Curye_.

>Fair enough. It sounds good. I did think it was a typo in the ms (or scribal
>error).

It is worth noting such assumptions down, so that when things don't make
sense you can go back, undo them, and try again. In your post, you simply
gave the (wrong) version--at that point did you still remember that you
were changing the original on the theory that it was an error?

>>Smear the paste--i.e. your pasta dough--with the mushed up up apples etc.

>I see. But we have no description to cover with more "past", though the bit
>about cutting up before cooking makes more sense in your context.

It says to "do thine fassure within," which seems to imply that the filling
is inside something. And later it says to fold together as in the figure.

>>"fassure" is the filling--see the glossary of _Curye on Inglysche_.

>Alright.


>I see. I bow to your superior knowledge. But I believe each individual piece
>is supposed to be a palm and a half wide and three fingers in breadth.

After sending my post, I came across a post-period reference to a "palm" as
3 or 4 inches. In the version in the miscellany, I assumed a palm and a
half to be 6 inches. So call it 6x3 or a little less.

 >A
>9"X3" sheet of ravioli (or anything else) is not going to feed more than 2
>people.

You are assuming that "a portion" means "a meal." Medieval feasts had lots
of dishes in them. One eggroll won't feed you either.

One and a half of my palms (and I'm about as big as your average
>Large sized medieval male would have been)is exactly 6 inches when measured
>from wrist fold to  middle finger join. As i see it, 9 inches is a bit "out
>there" in my mind. So a piece of ravioli (or whatever), oblong, 6 by 2 1/2
>to 3 inches, is an adequate serving for one. In the Curye drawing we have
>15 such items making up the square. That's much more reasonable for a
>household or a dish for high table constituting a "royal tid-bit".

In my reading, the square is one such item--either two pieces aprox 6x3
with the filling between them or, if we take "fold" more literally, one
piece folded in half with the filling between. The subsquares are the
result of pushing down along the figure's lines with the back of a knife or
something similar.

>The
>Ravioli would fall apart in the water, and you'd get noodle and fruit soup.

Doesn't happen.

>Perhaps I'm wearing my 20th century glasses when I should be going at it
>blind! It is far more sensible to dot the filling onto the paste, wet the
>paste in between, and then fold over the dough and press between with your
>knife blade. That's roughly how to make modern ravioli from scratch.

And in my interpretation, you spread the filling, fold over the dough (or
use two pieces), and press between with your knife blade. You don't have to
dot the filling--squeezing the two layers of dough together along the lines
squeezes the filling out of there and into the middle.


David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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