SC - Questions - cooking in period, and some answers

[Yeldham, Caroline S]

Questions from Stefan... and some answers ...

In her comments about Kentwell Hall, Caroline said:

>Keeping dishes
>warm is easy - just put it by the fire (this is using pottery or cast ir=
on
>cooking vessels - this year I expect to have to cope with bronze, which
>needs different treatment).

How is working with bronze different than working with cast iron? Do you
mean you can=92t set the bronze pots near the fire to keep them warm? Or
that you have to cook in them differently?

You have to cook in them differently.  Cast iron reacts slowly with even
acid ingredients cooked in them, and a bit of extra iron in your diet will
not do you any harm.  Bronze contains copper, which is much more reactive
and will producesome nasty substances in contact with some food items,
including verdigris.  This also makes the food taste 'metallic', which
people don't like.  I am told (and I haven't done it yet), that the key to
cooking safely in bronze is to remove the food as soon as it is cooked (ie
don't keep it warm in the bronze pot) and to keep the bronze scrupulously
clean.  Unfortunately they used bronze in period.  I was told about this
dish of cabbage which was left to keep warm for about half an hour, and
ended up this lovely bright green colour ...

What about the using the pottery? Did you cook over the fire in the potte=
ry?
Or use them beside the fire?

No, pottery cooking vessels get used over the fire.  Sometimes they crack if
I'm careless and let them get too hot ...

>You may have mentioned this but I have forgotten. How did you support
>the pots over the fires? Hung on chains or hooks? Or sitting on grills?

Both these techniques - the first is more flexible.

>You mentioned ovens. Were these the single chamber type, where the=20
>oven was first heated by burning a fire in the chamber, then raked out
>and the food put where the fire had been? 

This is the only (period) type I've used.

>Or did these have multiple
>chambers, one for the fire which was kept burning and a separate one
>for the food? I was under the impression that the two chamber type was
>late in the medieval period, if at all.

I haven't seen this type - tho' I have known writers misled by the space for
wood storage underneath the oven into thinking the fire was put there.
Every time I've seen a period oven its been in close association with an
ordinary fireplace, used for cooking, keeping the yeast barm warm etc, and
that's where the fire is kept in and the ashes are dumped.


>Thanks for this wonderful set of messages. I definitely plan to create
>a file for these in my Florilegium files.

My pleasure - glad you found them interesting.

One area I forgot to cover is the use of recipes in event.  Naturally we
can't have the books out on display - they are modern and anyway would get
messy.  What we tend to do is keep copies hidden out of sight so if we
forget the details of a recipe we can check them - but mostly we work from
memory.  Sometimes we get it wrong and have to console ourselves with the
thought that at least we are in the right area.  One thing this does mean is
that each cook builds up a repertoire of dishes they are confident in
producing from memory.

Also we have no means of measuring items, so we just have to judge 4oz of
flour or whatever (English, remember! - but the same would apply to US
measurements).  We have to use our judgements as to whether a dish is the
right consistency.

Caroline
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