SC - Islinglass

[HICKS, MELISSA]

> > On Sundays in Lent, you are allowed to eat meat--for one day of the
> week
> > you can forget the stockfish, so this looked odd.  So I looked it up
> in
> > Hieatt's glossary, and "sundez" of stockfish are "sounds" of
> stockfish:
> > "the swimming bladder of certain fish".
> Thanks! That really puzzled me! Swimming bladder of fish is the
> "isenglas",
> right? would this be a thickener?
> 
Islinglass is indeed made from the swim bladder of some type of fish
(can't remember which one off the top of my head right now).

Islinglass both separates and thickens.  It is used in brewing to
clarify - if you add a little bit of islinglass it takes the microscopic
bits floating in your mead and turns them into clumps of bigger bits
which then settle at the bottom of your vat.

I have also used islinglass in cooking to make milk jellies.  It
separates the curds and whey and then sets both of them into slice-able
jellies.

Its really useful stuff but stinks badly of fish when heated.  These is
no residual fish smell or flavor in the resultant jelly though - just an
unidentifiable tang that most people (I have fed this to) find pleasant.

Meliora (Polit, Lochac, the West)


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