SC - 16th c. German Roux

[RuddR at aol.com]

David Friedman writes:

<A standard modern technique for making a sauce or gravy is to stir flour
into hot fat then add liquid, creating a suspension. So far as I know, this
technique is unknown in medieval cooking, where thickening is typically
done with bread crumbs, egg yolks, amidoun (wheat starch) or rice flour.
This raises the interesting question of when and where the technique
originated.

At Pennsic, I acquired a copy of the recent translation of the cookbook of
Sabrina Welserin, which is mid 16th c. German. Several recipes early in the
book (5, 9, 11, ...) seem to be describing the modern technique. Does
anyone know of an earlier example elsewhere?>

Although it is not a true roux, since there is no grease or butter mentioned,
there seems to be a "proto-roux" described in Ashmole MS 1439 (Two Fifteenth-
Century Cookery-Books, p. 110):

"Sauce gauncile
Take floure and cowe mylke, safroune wel y-grounde, garleke, and put in-to a
faire litel pot; and se(th)e it ouer (th)e fire, and serue it forthe."

A flour and milk base does seem to be unusual for a medieval sauce; this is
the only one I recall seeing.

Rudd Rayfield</PRE></HTML>
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