SC - The British Museum Cookbook

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

Hey all from Anne-Marie

we are asked about the British Museum Cookbook...
> Can anyone tell me about this book?  Found a recipe on-line with this as
> documentation but don't know time periods, etc. about it.  
> 
Its a little book from...the British Musuem! I have it, and while theres
intriguing sections on all kinds of fun time periods, there's not a primary
source to be found. Rats!

we are also asked...
> Also, we are hosting Crown Tourney in Oct. and I have someone who wants
to
> do an edible castle for the head table.  I would LOVE to hear
> suggestions/comments on this.  I would appreciate any alternative ideas
to
> present to this lady.  She really wants to make a special contribution
> food-wise to Their Majesties feast but she is new at this and I would
like
> to give her more than one option to try before hand.
> 
THeres a recipe in Taillevent (14th century French) for something called a
"parma tart". There's one in Chiquart too, but where Chiquart focuses on
the filling, Taillevent says "you can put in chopped spice meat, or boiled
or roasted meat or...". The neat part of the recipe is how he describes
creating a pastry casing for the food, with high sides and crennallations.
Then, you make little banners for the lords present, and stick them in the
food in the dish.

when we did "parma tarts" for a banquet, what we did was use a very sturdy
pie dough and shape crennellated walls around regular pie pans. We baked
them and decorated them with little banners showing the heraldry of various
notables there present. Then we filled the pie dish with a dish of chicken
quarters and sauce. To do it "right", we should have put a layer of spiced
meatballs or patties, and then the chicken.

Few people ate the "castle" part (though they could have), but it was
flashy, not too hard, and oh-so-period. If you decide to use real pie
dough, be careful as it tends to slump in the oven.

here's the primary source quote...
Parma Tarts (Taillevent #180):
Take mutton, veal or pork meat, cook it, chop it appropriately, spice it
extremely reasonably with fine powder, and fry it in lard. Afterwards, have
large uncovered pies the size of little platters, with pastry sides higher
than for other pies, and made in the manner of crenellations. The pastry
should be strong so that it can hold the meat. If you wish, mix some pine
nut paste and currants with the meat, and crumble some sugar on top. Take
some boiled and quartered chicken, and in each pie put three or four
chicken quarters in which to fix the banners of France and of the lords who
will be in the [royal] presence. Gild them with sprinkled saffron to be
more attractive. 

If you do not want to depend so much on chicken, you need only make some
flat pieces of roasted or boiled pork or mutton. When the pies are full of
their meat, glaze the top of the meat with a little egg yolk and egg white
beaten together, so that the meat will more hold together more firmly for
inserting the banners. Have some gold, silver, or tin leaf for gilding the
pies in front of the banners.

hope this helps! have fun!

- --AM



!


============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================