SC - period cold soup

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Hi there!

I seem to have missed the beginning of this thread, so I apologize if I seem
to be coming from left field here, but a thing or two struck me about all this
- -- 

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> Ras said:
> >You might want to try a service of a chilled fruit soup (e.g., cherry soup)
> >with something like beef tips served over egg noodles.  If a fruit soup is out
> >of the question then the use of gazpacho, borscht or a cold vegetable pureed
> >soup (e.g., asparagus or spinach) might be a good alternative.
> 
> Ras, were you talking about period soups or modern period-oid soups? Are
> there any medieval soup recipes that specifically call for the soup being
> served cold? Would this have been ice-cold or just room temperatures?

Although the suggestions above seem to me, at first glance and before my
morning jolt of caffeine, to be more or less peri-oid, I seem to recall seeing
a couple of recipes for pottages (chopped meat in a sauce, IIRC, which would
have been eaten with a spoon) that could be served hot or cold, and at least
one which is served cold. 
> 
> Any recipes/evidence for medieval fruit soups?

Abundant. As in much many. Here's one I happen to have sitting on my hard
drive :

Syrosye
“To make a syrosye.  Tak cheryes & do out (th)e stones & grynde hem wel & draw
hem (th)orw a streynoure & do it in a pot.  & do (th)erto whit gres or swete
botere & myed wastel bred, & cast (th)erto good wyn & sugre, & salte it &
stere it wel togedere, & dresse it in disches;  & set (th)eryn clowe gilofre,
& strew sugre aboue.”
			Curye On  Inglysch, Book III, Utilis Coquinario,  Ed. Constance B. Hieatt &
Sharon Butler, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985

 The above dish often seems to be interpreted as a sort of thick pudding, but
one could argue either way: the instructions don't use the standard medieval
English adjectives denoting extreme thickness -- chargeaunt or stondyng. All
we know for sure is that it has to be thick enough to hold up some cloves set
into its surface, long enough to make it to the table, and you might be
surprised at how thin a pottage will do that.

However, one side effect of the addition of white grease or butter to a
pottage thickened with bread crumbs is that if it does grow cold, or at least
room temperature, it won't become glutinous in texture. I'm not arguing that
this means the dish was served cold, but let's say that if it should be served
cold by accident, the quality of the dish probably wouldn't suffer greatly.

Regarding Lord A'aql's references to gazpacho, I'll point out that the dish
(and there are a bazillion local variants) is claimed by the Spanish to be
extremely ancient, and far older than Spanish involvement in the New World. I
recall reading somewhere that the word gazpacho is derived from an Arabic term
meaning "soaked bread", and that  the only absolute essentials for the classic
dish are bread, garlic, and olive oil. The same source indicated that while
the amount of bread used in the dish has diminished over the centuries, it is
not a proper gazpacho if it contains none at all. Now while this suggests the
original dish might have been a cold bread and garlic soup (still alive and
well in Spain and Portugal, BTW), it's not the same as documenting it. Maybe
some of our Middle Eastern specialists can help shed some light on this.

Hope this helps...

Adamantius, blindly groping for tea  
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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