SC - Lefse/hleifr

[Decker, Terry D.]

> >
> >The fact that Russia produced these grains in the half century before the
> >Danish cook book does not demonstrate that the Danes also produced these
> >grains.  The primary grain producing regions of Russia are further south
> >than Scandinavia.  Also, the fact that they were produced, doesn't tell
> much
> >about how they were used.
> >
> >Bear
> 
> 
> True, but historically throughout the period eras the Danes and other
> Scandinavians were trading fairly heavily with the Russian areas, as they
> were also trading with Constantinople. So I would say that there is a good
> chance that the other grains would have been avaliable, at least to
> households of the middle class, because the Domostroi talks of those four
> grains as being the staples of the Household's baking. Even with teh grain
> areas further outh, it would not be difficult to send a trade flotilla
> down
> into those areas from most of Scandinavia.
> 
> Anya
> 
Okay, these four grains were the staples of a households baking.  How much
of each flour was used yearly?  How much of each was used in bread?  What
was the relative values between the flours in 1616?  Was there a general
trend to use wheat flour in baking?  Etc., etc., etc.

Now, I doubt seriously that the Domostroi will provide you the answers to
those questions, however, by taking the recipes and evaluting them on type
of recipe and probable frequency of use you can create a speculative
economic snapshot of a time and place.  For example, rye, wheat, maize,
millet, barley and oat flour are all staples of my kitchen, how much of each
do I use in a year?  If you look at the recipes I prepare and make some
assumptions about how often I prepare them, you can produce some Fermi
answers about the quantities I use and the economics of my kitchen.  

My intent was to consider the culinary economics of a time and place based
on the contents of a cook book, not simply say. "it was available, so they
had it."  That rye is the only grain mentioned in the passage on
bread-making is curious.  If we examine the other recipes and determine
which other flours were used, how they were used and the quantities used,
what does it say about the economics of grain in Denmark?  Anyway, you've
run into one of my fixations, historical economics.

BTW, trade in grain would have been easier with the Northern German states
or with Poland than with Russia.  By the time we are discussing, most ships
were too deep draft to negotiate the rivers and a Scandinavian trade
flotilla in Russian territory without the appropriate documents would have
been considered pirates and converted to kindling.  The Czars were pretty
ruthless about controlling trade within their borders.

To complicate the issue, Ivan the Terrible fostered trade with England to
reduce his dependence on his neighbors.  Then he proceeded to make war
unsuccessfully on Sweden and Poland.  Relations were a bit strained in the
Baltic and at the time Koge Bog was published, Sweden's Gustavus II Adolphus
had grabbed a large chunk of northwest Russia and cut Russia off from its
northern trade routes, so trade between Russia and Scandinavia at that time
was non-existant.

Bear

PS  I use about 300 lbs of wheat to 30 lbs of rye to 2 to 5 lbs of the other
flours each year for personal use.  The actual statistics for my kitchen are
thrown off by the number of baking experiments I perform and the request
work I do  












  
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================