SC - Crawfish Recipe Request

[Valoise Armstrong]

Hullo, the list!

In response to a gentle's request for crayfish recipes, I mentioned and
described two from period French sources. Unfortunately, this is looking like
a stressful week and my I need my memory for other things, and, to be blunt,
mucked up the descriptions pretty badly.

Here they are again, in more or less their original form, albeit translated:

"A Tile of Meat (Tuile de Char). Take cooked crayfish and remove the flesh
from the tails; and the rest, to wit tails and carcase, must be brayed for a
very long time; and afterwardstake unpeeled almonds, and let them be shelled
and washed in hot water like peas, and let them be brayed with the shell in
what is abovesaid and with them bray breadcrumbs browned on the grill. Now you
should have capons, chickens and pullets broken all raw into quarters, or veal
broken into gobbets, and cooked, and with their sewe wherein they be cooking
you should moisten and dilute what you have brayed and thrn pass it through a
strainer; then bray the dregs left [in the strainer] once maore and strain
again; then add ginger, cinnamon, clove and long pepper, moistened with
verjuice without vinegar, and boil all together. Now let your meat be cooked
in pork's fat in gobbets or quarters, and serve it forth in bowls and pour
pottage over it and on the pottage, in each bowl, set four or five crayfish
tails, with powdered sugar over all."
	The Goodman of Paris (Le Menagier de Paris, ~1390), Eileen Power, translator
© 1928 Harcourt, Brace, New York


"68.	Again, Stuffed Crayfish: to instruct the person who will have to do thse
stuffed crayfish, see that he has a great quantity of crayfish, that he washes
them thoroughly, sets them to cook in good water with salt; when they have
cooked, take them out onto good clean work-tables. Take the largest ones for
stuffing and remove the big shells, clean them and set them aside in good
dishes; then take the necks and legs of those large crayfish and enough of the
others to stuff the number of crayfish he intends to stuff, and remove the
meat from inside them; in the necks and entrails that are there, then put them
on a good work-table and chop them up very fine and put it in a good dish.
Then he should see that he has very good parsley which has been cleaned,
washed and drained; he should chop it up very fine and mix it in with the
crayfish meat, with a little good white ginger and saffron to give it colour.
Then get the crayfish shells which were set aside above, and put some of that
filling into one shell and place another one face down on it, and put each of
them like that one against the other. Then see that he has good clarified oil
and put them to fry in good clean pans; when they have fried, take them out
into fine dishes and sprinkle sugar on top of them. Then they are served up
when it is time."
	Maitre Chiquart Amiczo, 'Du Fait de Cuisine', 15th century, Terence Scully
translation, © 1986 Peter Lang Publishing, New York.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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