SC - Seething with enthusiasm here...

[Philip & Susan Troy]

> 
> Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 22:25:35 EST
> From: Mordonnade <Mordonnade at aol.com>
> Subject: Re: SC - Rose Soda redaction questions
> 
> In a message dated 98-01-04 19:51:34 EST, you write:
> 
> << 
>  I've gotten the impression that seething is a hard simmer or a soft boil,
>  just from the context of the recipes I've seen. Opinions, anyone?
>  Adamantius, I know you're out there.
>   >>
> 
> I am certainly no authority, but in my family, tea is "steeped", never boiled.
> A teapot is heated, then hot water is poured over  the tea in it, and it is
> covered and allowed to "steep" for several minutes.  Is it possible that
> "seethed" has degenerated into "steeped" in modern language?
> 
> Mordonna

Without going into typing in all the little bitty italic fine print, the
gist is that the verb "seeth" is derived, according to my dictionary,
from a sort of all-purpose Anglo-Saxon verb, meaning to cook or boil.
"Steep" (as in infuse) is derived from another, Germanic verb, via
Middle English, meaning "to pour out", which, oddly enough, is what you
do with tea _after_ you steep it.

In re the question of whether tea gets seethed, the answer is, as is
often the case with the questions that come my way [heh heh heh] more
complicated. 

Yes, the standard modern rule is that tea is almost never boiled. I
think Tibetan/Mongolian tea, the kind that is drunk with butter in it,
might be boiled; I'll have to check up on that. Otherwise the rule is
that the water must be boiling when it is poured over the dry tea
leaves, but that the tea must not, itself, be boiled.

Now, about boiling in general. Bear in mind that period people didn't
have gas or electric stoves, egg timers (not to speak of, anyway) and a
whole lot of other stuff we take for granted, to some extent. One of the
standard elements you'll find in some later-period English recipes is
the primitive mechanism of boiling something a given number of "walms".
A walm is when the liquid comes to a boil and sort of puffs up a bit.
Some fairly sophisticated low technology, if you think about it, can be
found in a  recipe that calls for allowing a pot of liquid to come to a
boil, having a relatively cold ingredient added, which will stop the
boiling temporarily, and cooking the dish for its second walm, in other
words for long enough for the pot to come back to the boil. You can then
add a measured amount of liquid, or another ingredient, and stop the
boiling again, and continue this for the specified number of walms.
Lacking sophisticated timing and temperature measuring equipment, it's a
pretty good way of consistently duplicating the procedures and effects
of a given recipe, eh?

Now, since this is about at the point in one of my postings where
people's attention begins to wander and they wonder just what on earth
I'm on about, I'll point out this process differs from the usual modern
act of boiling a box of pasta, or whatever, in that we are accustomed to
having a continuous boil. Period people, evidently, did not, and they
may not have assumed that when something was boiled, it was in liquid
above 100 degrees C. the whole time. It was, well, put into hot water,
or into cold water that subsequently got hot, and cooked. The number of
actual walms involved may or may not have been an issue.

Also, considering just how superior a dish of boiled meat that is
actually simmered, and not boiled, over an equivalent dish of meat that
has been cooked on a hard boil the whole time, it is understandable that
there are several dishes which are called "boiled", but which actually
are poached or simmered. The bottom line is it's hard to tell whether
tea that has seethed has actually come to a boil, or if so, how much. 

I've had a fair amount of experience with infusions of both the tea and
the non-tea variety, and it seems to be that the question of whether
they go into the water when cold, and brought to a boil, or infused in
boiling water, and whether or not the herbs are removed before the water
is fully boiling, varies according to case.

I hope that, somewhere in all this, lies the answer to your specific
question. I confess I seem to have missed this topic on the first
go-round.

Adamantius
troy at asan.com
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