SC - sherry Biscuits

[Helen]

At 4:40 PM -0500 10/22/98, Helen wrote:
>Also, what is crayfish jelly?
>
>"Side dish: crayfish jelly, loach jelly, small rabbits and pigs.
>Dessert: frumenty and venison. End: hippocras
>and wafers. Extras: wine and spices."
>
Here is Menagier's meat jelly, which has crayfish in the meat-day version
along with the meat and crayfish and/or various fish for the fish-day
version. I haven't tried this version, although I have done one from a
contemporary English cookbook.
- ---------
TO MAKE FOUR DISHES OF MEAT JELLY, take a pig and four calf's feet and have
two chicks plucked and two skinny young rabbits, and remove the grease, and
they are to be split in two down the middle, except the pig which is to be
cut in pieces: and then put in a pan three quarts of white wine or claret,
a pint of vinegar, a half-pint of verjuice, make it boil and froth
strongly: then add, in a small closed cloth bag, a quarter of an ounce of
saffron to give an amber colour, and put meat on to boil and all together
with a little salt; then take ten or twelve pieces of white ginger or five
or six pieces of galingale, half an ounce of grains of Paradise, three or
four pieces of mace leaf, two blancs worth of juniper: cubeb, nard, three
blancs worth: bay leaves, six nutmegs; then crush them in a mortar and put
in a bag and put in to boil with the meat until it is cooked, then take it
out and set it to dry on a white cloth, then take for the best plate the
feet, the snout and the ears: and the rest to the others. Then take a good
net on two supports, and pour your whole potful through it, except for the
spices which you take out, and strain it for soup, and do not stir it until
it gets clearer.  But if it does not strain well, heat it here and there to
keep it hot so it will strain better, and strain it two or three times
until it becomes clear, or through a cloth folded three times. Then take
your dishes and arrange your meat in them, and have some cooked crayfish,
of which you are to put on your meat the thighs and tails; your jelly is to
be reheated, and pour enough of it on to the meat to cover, for there need
be only a little meat, then put in the cellar overnight to cool, and in the
morning stick in it cloves and bay leaves and cinnamon sticks, and sprinkle
with red anise.  Note that to make it in two hours, you must have quince
seed (or flesh: trans.), philicon (possibly an astringent plant of the fern
family) and cherry-tree gum, and crush all this together and put in a bag
to boil with the meat.

Item, on fish days, you make the jelly as above, with loach, tench, bream,
eels, crayfish and perch. And when the fish is cooked, put it to drain and
dry on a fair white cloth, and skin and clean it well, and throw the skins
in the broth.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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