SC - Wedding feast-longish

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> Lord Ras said:
> 
> >...and salads were often identical to those we still make today.
> 
> Ras, I think this is too broad of a brush to use, although it may
> be true for a minority of salads served today.
> 
> >From what we've discussed here, medieval salads were often similar,
> at least in concept to modern salads however there appear to be
> a significantly broader range of greens and herbs in medieval salads and
> a significant lack of the modern iceburg lettuce. I've found that
> the vast majority of salads I've been served mundanely include
> iceburg lettuce.

You are apt to run across Iceberg lettuce in American salads, but not nearly
as much in European ones, where you're more likely to find Cos or Romaine
lettuce, or perhaps no lettuce at all. Here's a mid-period take on the salad
situation; they get far more complex in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:

Salat

“78	Salat. Take persel, sawge, grene garlec, chibolles, oynouns, leek, borage,
myntes, porrettes, fenel, and toun cresses, rew, rosemarye, purslarye; laue
and waische hem clene. Pike hem. Pluk hem small wi(th) (th)yn honde, and myng
hem wel with rawe oile; lay on vyneger and salt, and serue it forth.”
			Curye on Inglysch, Book IV, “The Forme of Cury”, c. 1390 C.E.

	This is a mixed green salad, notable by modern standards by the absence of
lettuce. More than a third of the ingredients mentioned are some member of the
onion family, and this is generally much spicier and more flavorful than a
lettuce or spinach-based salad.  Listed in order are parsley, sage, garlic
chives, scallions, onions, leeks, borage, mint, wild baby leeks (known as
“ramps” in the U.S.A.) fennel, town cress, rue, rosemary, and purselaine. The
herbs are washed and picked over for nasty bits, then torn up by hand, topped
with raw oil (meaning either virgin olive oil, not extracted by heat, or else
oil that has never been used for prior cooking -- yecch!), vinegar, and salt. 

Apart from the predominance of oniony things, this is very much like something
I've seen people pay 8-12 dollars U.S. for a medium-sized plate.

Adamantius

- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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