SC - Salad questions

[Jessica Tiffin]

Greetings, the list.

I find myself currently up to the eyebrows in period salad recipes - we're
going into summer, and I'm putting together an article for our newsletter on
period salads, in the hopes that it'll persuade our non-cooking Shire
members that it's possible to bring something both simple and authentic to
our potluck events.

I have no problem with the Form of Curye salad or the one from Platina,
having primary versions of both.  It's with the earlier (Roman) and later
(Elizabethan) salad recipes that the trouble starts.

I have lots of Elizabethan salad recipes, but all from secondary sources.
The main one is Ruth Ann Beebe's "Sallets, Humbles and Shrewsbury Cakes",
which quotes acres of primary sources, but doesn't specifically attribute
them.  She merrily tells us that all the recipes quoted come from Dawson's
"Good Huswife's Jewel" and "Good Huswife's Handmaide for the Kitchin",
Gervase Markham's "English Huswife", "Countrey Contentments", and Murrell's
"Delightful Daily Exercise for ladies and gentlewomen".  She doesn't
attribute each individual recipe at all.  I've managed to track down some,
but there are several I can't identify: please, if anyone has copies of the
Elizabethan sources and recognises these, can you tell me where the darned
things come from?  Quoting from secondary sources only is outraging my
earnest postgraduate soul...

It seems logical to assume that this one and the long series of "Anothers"
are all from one source:
Sallet for FIsh Daies
First a sallet of green fine hearbs, putting Perriwincles among them with
oyle and vineger.

Another
Olives and Capers in one dish, with vinegar and oyle.

Another
Carret rootes being minced, and then made in the dish, after the proportion
of a Flowerdeluce, then picke shrimps and lay upon it with oyle and viniger.

Another
Onions in flakes laid round about the dishe, with minced carrets laid inthe
middle of the dish, with boyled Hippes in five partes like an Oken leafe,
made and garnished with tawney long cut with oile and vinegar.
(Any ideas what on earth "tawney long cut" is??  And I assume "Hippes" are
rose hips?)

Another
Salmon cut long waies, with slices of onions laid upon it, and upon that to
cast violets, oyle and vineger.

Another
Take pickelde Herrings and cut them long waies, and so lay them in a dish,
and serve them with oyle and vineger.

To compound an excellent Sallet, and which indeed is usall at great Feasts,
and upon Princes Tables
Take a good quantity of blaunch't Almonds, and with your Shredding knife cut
them grosly; then take as manie Raisyns of the sunne cleane washt, andthe
stones pick't out, as many Figges shred like the Almonds, as many Capers,
twise so many Olives, and as many Currants as of all the rest cleane washt:
a good handfull of the small tender leaves of red Sage and Spinage; mixe all
these well together with a good store of Sugar and lay them in thebottome of
a great dish, then put unto them Vinegar an dOyle, and scrape more Sugar
over all; then take Orenges and Lemmons, and paring away the outward pills,
cut them into thinne slices, then with those slices cover the sallet all
over; which done, take the thin leafe of the red Coleflowre,a nd with them
cover the Orenges and Lemmons all over, then over those red leaves lay
another course of old Olives, and the slices of wel pickld Coucumbers,
together with the very inward hart of your Cabbage lettice cut up into
slices, then adorne the sides of the dish and the top of the Sallet with
more slices of Lemons and Orenges and so serve it up.

The Roman problem is that my only access to Apicius is  "The Roman Cookery
of Apicius," which is translated and adapted by John Edwards.  Would anyone
know if this is a trustworthy translation?  The comments in Stefan's
Florilegium file were fairly disparaging about Edwards's redactions (an
opinon I had independently formed from reading it!) but I'm wondering if the
actual translation has the same kind of errors as the Vehling one?  He
doesn't give the originals, not that I could tell a correct Latin
translation if it was served up to me with oyle and vinegar, but hey.

Sorry to bombard everyone with such a long post, but any help will be
gratefully received, including other sources in which I could dig for salad
recipes - are there, for example, any Andalusian ones??

Melisant

Melisant de Huguenin  *  Jessica Tiffin * melisant at iafrica.com
Seneschal, Shire of Adamastor, Drachenwald (Cape Town, South Africa)
Sable, three owls, wings elevated, argent, each maintaining a willow slip vert.

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