SC - Sugar, onions...

[Philip & Susan Troy]

> Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 12:12:30 -0500
> From: Tara Sersen <ladycharissa at geocities.com>
> Subject: SC - Couple of questions for ya'll...
> 
> OK, I have some questions for everyone.  The first is to settle a
> discussion a friend and I had a few weeks ago.  We were discussing the
> ingredient sugar in period recipies.  It occured to us that the first
> time we can recall hearing about sugar cane is in the New World,
> particularly in terms of rum production.  Neither of us could think of
> any period reference for molassas or rum.  So, we figured that the sugar
> being called for might be beet sugar.  If we're right, then very late
> period might have used cane sugar, but not earlier periods.  Does anyone
> know what is right?

Very early period practice in Europe appears to indicate that honey was
almost exclusively used for sweetening foods. Cane sugar was known, but
rather rare in Europe, and would more or less have come under the
heading of a pharmaceutical. Around the time of the first Crusade, the
Crusaders returned to Europe with a taste for many of the foods that we
now associate with medieval European cooking. As a result, things like
sugar in varying states of processing began to appear in European
markets. Still quite expensive, and used accordingly, through most of
period. Sugar cane as a commercial product in its own right, and locally
produced European sugar (in Cyprus, for instance), appear more or less
on a very small scale in late period. One of the reasons things like
molasses and rum don't seem to appear in period recipes is simply that
the production of sugar was still being controlled by the people native
to the areas where sugar cane grows. Molasses and rum used by Europeans
are largely a function of Europeans actually growing and processing
sugar, which is more or less a function of colonialism, which doesn't
really occur within period.

Beet sugar is the result of a process developed in the early 19th
century, IIRC.

> The second question goes back to the discussion on wrapping onions in
> aluminum foil and throwing them in the fire pit.  That sounds wonderful,
> btw, and I can't wait to try it- I love onions :)  I've been using the
> 'wrap it in foil, throw it in the coals and forget about it for a while'
> method of cooking for ages, and do it very well, if I must say so myself
> ;)  But, I think it's a pretty safe bet that there was no reynolds wrap
> in the middle ages, so it's probably not a particularly period cooking
> method.  So, lets spur a discussion on open pit cooking in other than
> the ubiquitous Dutch Oven.

What I _can_ tell you is that many medieval European recipes do call for
onions to be roasted in the ashes or the embers. They are wrapped,
usually, only in their own natural peels, which are removed, slightly
charred, after cooking. More delicate foods without peels of their own
could be wrapped in paper or parchment, again before roasting them in
the ashes or embers, depending on how much heat is desired.

Adamantius
Crown Province of Ostgardr, East Kingdom
troy at asan.com
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