SC - Translation, please

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

Phillippa re-constructed/translated:


>: : 1.  Good profit may be made by doing well
>: : 2.  The cooking of the pastie I will tell.
>: : 3.  That one may make so good, a simple pasty,
>: : 4.  That all agree is of the best, most tasty.
<<huge snippage>>

Wow! I'm very impressed. Sometimes when this list gets to it's most inane, I
wonder if we will ever do the sort of work that effects the corpus of
knowledge of cooking in the MA and Rennaisance. Here is a good example of
something that could make a striking difference, at least in the
English-speaking world!

Well done!

I find it interesting that the crust contains pea-meal, don't you? It may be
called a pasty, but the inclusion of the pea-meal leads me to believe that
it is to be served without the crust in final presentation. One wouldn't be
caught dead giving a pea-meal crust to Charles I, after all!

>
>>: : 27. And for to make the pastie 'specially tasty,
>>: : 28. Add within some eggs into the pastry.
>>: : 29. and with the crusts a pea treated most rudely,
>>: : 30. Forced into pure grain flour very crudely.

If, however, this means to make the dough the texture of pea-meal (prior to
adding liquid), I see how this pie could then be royal food. Adding eggs and
pea-meal together in a pasty dough seems a contra-indication to me!

As an alternate thought, though, one sometimes sees recipes for "rough"
crust, whose purpose is to retain moisture and work as a sort of casserole,
to be broken and removed later (remeber Apecius' figgy ham recipe with the
crust to be discarded?).  In this case the eggs might be meant to be adding
to the filling (often seen in English Meat pies, either just the yolks, or
like your Melton Mowbray (veal and ham), with a whole hard-boiled egg in the
middle).

A last thought: Could this be a precurser to Terrine? Sounds an awful lot
like a layered French terrine to me, except that it would have the bones in
it! I'm really intrigued with the instructions for building the filling. It
sounds like we are constructing a horizontally layered filling, from the
centre out, that would produce a colored or stiped effect once cut into wedges! 

And because curiosity killed the cat......
Are larks legal game, and if not, where does one buy them? This recipe begs
to be reconstructed exactly as written (according to your personal
interpretations!), simply for the gustatory adventure!  

Aoife    

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