SC - egg & breadcrumb coating

[Stephen Bloch]

Also in the Stone Ages, Gideanus wrote:
> Emulsified sauces in general appear to be rare in medieval cookery. I
> believe there's one calling for hard-boiled egg yolks, mashed with the
> other ingredients, and olive oil beaten in (kind of an early mayonnaise
> or tartar sauce), in one of the Spanish or Catalonian sources. Not sure
> which offhand.

In the c.1400 AD Catalan _Libre de Sent Sovi_ are the following two
recipes (our translation; be warned that neither of us has formal
training in medieval Catalan, or modern Catalan for that matter).
Sorry I don't have the original Catalan on-line; it's on paper in a
pile somewhere in this house.

141 Almedroch
If you wish to do almedroch, take grated cheese and two or three cloves
of garlic, and mince them [until they're stiff & can be shaped].  And
when they are minced, temper them with hot water, and when you
[axetars]? them, don't use the pestle to immediately disintegrate them,
but only mince them finely.  And it should be of a good thick
consistency.  And if perchance they are destroyed, take a large spoon,
and heat it well on the fire; and when it is well heated, put it into
the almedroch, and stir it around, and it will return to its state.

142 Almedroc with eggs
If you wish to make almedroc, you will have 2 or 3 cloves of garlic and
cheese, as in the previous recipe for almedroch.  And crush them very
well, and crush into them two or three eggyolks boiled in water.  And
when it is well mixed, [exetats] it with good broth and butter.  And if
you don't have butter, add a little oil and good spices.  And make it a
consistency that is thick, and don't cook it.  And use it on pork, that
goes on the spit.  And it should not be tempered, which will destroy
it, but left as flavored as it is.  In the same way is made [esquesos]
garlic, but make it with more garlic.  And don't put in seasonings &
spices, except to make it white and thick, and don't let it boil.  And
it serves to give heat when used thus with almedroc.



The first, from the directions for how to rescue it if it is
"destroyed", is apparently an emulsified sauce of cheese and garlic,
and the second is the same thing with boiled eggyolks (which, as I
understand it, help to stabilize the emulsion), as well as broth and
butter.

Marimar Torres, in her book on modern Catalan cooking, _The Catalan
Country Kitchen_, gives a recipe for "allioli", which she translates as
"garlic mayonnaise", made from minced garlic, a raw whole egg, olive
oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  She comments that "Purists in
Catalunya insist on making their allioli in a mortar and pestle, but I
always use a food processor...."  I've read elsewhere that "purists"
don't include egg in their allioli, relying on compounds in the garlic
alone to stabilize the emulsion.

On the subject of "eggyolks boiled in water", I recall that the 13th-c.
Arabo-Andalusian _manuscrito anonimo_ contains LOTS of recipes calling
for boiled eggyolks.  In particular, one entitled "Cooking Stuffed
Eggplants" (which I included in my T.I. article of c. 1994, "Some Recipes
of al-Andalus"), that says "...boil eggyolks and also fry them a little..."
One possible interpretation was to boil eggs, peel them, extract the
yolks, and then fry them, but on a lark I tried separating raw eggs,
dropping the yolks gently into near-boiling water (which I had handy,
having just boiled eggplant in it), then fishing them out with a slotted
spoon and frying them in oil (which I had handy, having just fried the
eggplant in it).  This works, and the yolks have a rather different
texture from what they would have if boiled inside the rest of the egg.

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
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