Re- SC - Hierarchy-Cathe

[Marisa Herzog]

Aldyth at aol.com wrote:
 
> Good and smart readers and lurkers of the list.  I have come upon a recipe in
> a mundane cookbook which claims to be old french...I enclude it below and beg
> to see if someone can come up with a period equivelent.  It tastes wonderful.

<recipe snipped>

Sounds wonderful! I suspect, though, that its style betrays origins in
the nineteenth century, which is certainly old, and isn't a problem in
and of itself. There are plenty of variations on the venison pasty in
period, but none that I'm aware of that come really close to this. The
primary differences are the cream, the mushroom element, and the celery.
Even the onions would be more likely to be a flavoring that wouldn't end
up in the final product, I suspect.

Probably the main problem with this as a period recipe are the use of
the various cream and cream soup products in the filling. These would
tend to spoil without refrigeration, which isn't something you'd want in
a period pie. More likely the cream would end up in the pastry, rather
than in the filling. The chopped vegetables are another, well,
anachronism, as far as SCA use goes, especially the celery, which would
continue to be a rare food item in Europe until the mid-to-late
seventeenth century (not that the plant was universally unknown, it's
just there is little evidence to suggest that it was widely eaten).

The more standard type of venison pasty or pie in period would be one
where large chunks of raw, possibly larded, venison would be baked for a
couple, or several, hours, in a pie crust with a few spices and its own
juices. In later period pies a sauce might be added in later, consisting
of wine and egg yolks, tasting vaguely like Hollandaise sauce, to mix
with the meat juice and thicken in the oven like a custard. Still later
in period, and post-period, the pie would be sealed with melted or
clarified butter, with all air spaces eliminated from inside the crust.
This was an early form of preservation similar to canning.

A typical example of such later-period pies can be found in Gervase
Markham's The English Housewife, I believe.

Adamantius 
 
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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