SC - fruit and olive pressings

[Robyn Probert]

At 12:56 AM 11/06/98 -0600, Stefan wrote:

>The best, I believe extra virgin and virgin olive oils are the first
>and second pressings and are considered the best. This is about all you
>see in the United States. Since you are already paying the higher
>costs to import it, it's not considered economic to use anything but
>the higher priced stuff. The third and fourth pressings are available
>in southern Europe from what I understand. I imagine the lowest grades 
>or later pressings are probably used in food (margerine?) and industrial 
>products today. In period, perhaps these pressings were used for lamp oil?
>Perhaps soap?

The first pressing is extra virgin and must have <1% acetic acid. The 2nd
pressing is virgin olive oil and can have a higher acid content. After that,
they use heat and chemicals to extract the remainder of the oil. The cleaner
stuff can go into mixed food oils and margarine and the rest ends up in
soap, etc as you suspected!

>Why wouldn't this be true for fruits, too? The fruit gets pressed
>and the juice gets used for something, jelly? and then the resulting
>mush its used for something else. I don't remember exactly what goes
>into jellies as it has been years since I made any. Perhaps the juice
>and some of the pulp goes in the preserves and the rest of the juice
>is fermented? Either way, I doubt the entire produce of the manor
>needed to go into preserves. And if you don't do something with the
>fruit, its going to spoil. Sometimes quickly depending upon the fruit.

The ususal jelly method is to cook the fruit in water until mushy, then
strain through a jelly bag (fine cloth) overnight, then add sugar and cook
to setting point as usual (skimming lots). You can use the pulp left over
from making jellies for making "fruit cheese" (a solid fruit paste), by
adding sugar and cooking this to set point too, but it's not the same as a
regualar jam. It would be unusual to use fruit juice to make preserves -
normally you'd drink it immediately or ferment it.

As well as drinking, brewing and preserving, some fruit stores remarkably
well when packed in straw and kept in a dark, cool, dry place. Apples were
stored this way before cold nitrogen storage was invented. Fruit (and other
things like mushrooms) were and still are dried to preserve them.
You/we/they certainly didn't want the harvest to go to waste...

Rowan
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Robyn Probert				
Customer Service Manager		Phone +61 2 9239 4999
Services Development Manager		Fax   +61 2 9221 8671
Lawpoint Pty Limited			Sydney NSW  Australia
- -----------------------------------------------------------------

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

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".

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