SC - Apecian Ham--Pernam

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Hullo, the list!

With regard to Margali and her Apician Pernam recipe, I've been meaning to
ask, and this was really the first opportunity: whose translation is this? It
looks rather different from the Flower and Rosenbaum version I have here, but
based even on simply looking at it in Latin I have a few questons... 


Lady Aoife Finn wrote:

> 1)Ham means HAM, in other words cured and smoked pork leg meat, not fresh
> pork meat. The romans brought the "ham en croute" idea to britain, where it
> survives to this day, so I think I'm dead-on here in suggesting you get
> preserved ham, not "fresh" ham, for an Apecian recipe specifying ham.]

This appears to be the case;  "poples" seems to refer to the anatomical
portion, and presumably a fresh pork leg, while "pernam" seems to refer to
cured ham. "Petaso" seems to be the shoulder, but it's unclear to me whether
fresh or cured is indicated.

> 2)Braise means to cook with a small amount of liquid. Boiled ham is one
> thing and Braised ham another. One cooks with aromatic steam, and bottom
> liquid and heat (braise), the other cooks with hot water (making the ham an
> ineffective support for later baking, as the connective tissues have
> disintegrated).

Yes, but the original Latin distinctly calls for boiling, which, while not
necessarily requiring a full rolling boil throughout the cooking process,
would indicate to me that it is covered by the water in which it is cooked.
I'd simmer this in water to cover, which would probably help with the salt, too.

> 3)The figs' natural sugar gets a sort of caramelization thing going there
> (be careful of scorching!), and the thick liquid is your sauce (I added
> lemon juice rather than the garum you added---it needs something!).

I'm sure there are all sorts of ways this dish can be improved upon, but I
wouldn't want to suggest that if I were starting out with a Smithfield ham,
Phlip would hurt me. It's my understanding that the figs don't appear in the
final dish. At least no further reference is made to them in the recipe, and
the pastry is stated to be wrapped around the ham. They may help absorb some
of the salt, as a potato or the little bag of meal some of the medieval
sources speak of might. There  may even be either an enzyme in figs that might
function as a tenderizer of some kind, or perhaps the sweetness might help
counteract the strong flavor of a cured ham. It's sometimes hard to say why
things are done in a particular way. Maybe the figs are eaten separately.

> 4) Try a hot-water crust rather than a pie crust. I firmly believe that the
> hot-water crust is a descendant of  excessively thick pottage, and that's
> why we cannot understand, modernly, how pie crust is supposed to stand on
> it's own. When you think of it as a pottage extension you should not have
> too much trouble dumping in the hot liquid and melted fat to the flour.
> Let it cool slightly before working and it will react like
> playdough.....you can get creative!

All this sounds like excellent advice, which may simply mean many of us are
smarter than Apicius. He advises us to make a pastry from flour and oil and to
cover the ham with it, after first removing the ham's skin, scoring the ham,
and filling the incisions with honey. I've made this dish too, according to
the Apician instructions, and found a dough made only from oil and flour to
have a rather unexpectedly odd texture: kinda like shortbread run amok, with
absolutely no gluten development. One possibiity is that freshly pressed olive
oil might have had a certain built-in water content, which would make this
more like a recognizable pastry dough.

> 5) This dish is supposed to resemble a baked ham when finished, at least
> somewhat. Think of it as  roman double-illusion food: "Oh, look, it's ham!
> Noooo, wait, there's a crust, so it must be something else.......No, wait,
> It's a Ham in fig sauce!" Those romans had no sense of comedy!

Terence? Plautus? For that matter, Caesar? No sense of comedy? Perhaps you
mean the good people of Rome, New York?

Now, although I'm a little curious as to how some of these decisions were made
(I suspect we've been Vehlinged again!), please understand that I will be
utterly shameless about inviting myself to the dinner tables of either of
these two ladies, at the earliest opportunity...

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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