SC - Meat and Lord's Salt

[david friedman]

I wrote:
>
><< Meat pickled with the Lord's Salt is good, but it lends a strong and
> distinctive taste to whatever you make with it.  By the end of the week,
> unless you and yours are very fond of vinegar, you are going to be sick and
> tired of that taste. >>
>
and Ras writes:
>
>Could not a plausible period use of this "preserved" meat entail rinsing the
>meat or perhaps even parboil it? :-) You would then cover the meat  with water
>(or broth), add an onion or so, some pepper, a pinch of cloves and cinnamon,
>maybe a little galingal and crushed cubebs and then simmer this until the meat
>is ltterally falling apart and the broth is considerably reduced. Perhaps a
>dish of fruimenty (or rice) on the side? Or spoon it over some sops?
>
>This method of preparation would almost negate the vinegar taste. Any residual
>flavor would nicely blend in with the rest of the sauce by becoming a
>flavoring  "ingredient"  which would fine tune the dish. Serve it with the
>slightest hint of freshly ground "true cinnamon" and the tiniest sprinkle of
>sugar. The last of this years apples slowly roasted on the hearth and boiled
>carrots. Top it off with a nice goblet of sweet spiced wine diluted with some
>cold spring water or a draft of cool ale brought directly from the cellars?
>
Consider the following recipe from Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books:

Conyng, Hen, or Mallard.  Take conyng, hen or mallard, and roast him almost
enough; or else chop him, and fry him in fresh grease; and fry onions
minced, and cast altogether into a pot, and cast thereto fresh broth and
half wine; cast thereto cloves, maces, powder of pepper, canel; then stepe
fair bread with the same broth and draw it through a strainer with vinegre.
And when it hath well boiled, cast the liquor thereto, and powder ginger,
and vinegre, and season it up, and then thou shall serve it forth.
(spelling modernized)

We have done this at Pennsic with pickled meat, rinsing and soaking the
meat, leaving the vinegar out and reducing the spicing from what we would
use with fresh meat.  It works fine.  But you do still have the
vinegar-and-spices flavor; and the original poster was proposing to eat
dishes made with pickled meat something like 6 nights out of 10.  I still
think he would get tired of it.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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