SC - Christmas Dinner and Gifts

[Par Leijonhufvud]

"Sharon R. Saroff" wrote:
> 
> Take a chicken.  Remove all the skin as one piece.  Sew the skin up one
> side to make a casing.  Mix together flour (about 1 and 1/2 cups), chopped
> onion (1 small), 2 cloves of crushed garlic, a pinch of salt, lots of
> paprika and shmaltz (chicken fat globs).  Stuff the casing and sew it up.
> Roast it with the chicken, in the pot with the Sabbath Stew
> (Cholent,dafina, Hamin) or by itself.  Sounds like a form of sausage
> doesn't it.  I am wondering how period this might be and where I might look
> for information.  My cookbooks say that it is period.

I think this would come under the heading of a pudding, as in white or
black puddings, since _generally_ sausages are meat-filled rather than
stuffed with starchy things, onion, and fat. With exceptions, but as a
rule this is the case.

I'm familiar with doing this with the neck skin of a goose or swan in
period; I think swan's-neck pudding is at least found in mid-to-late
period English sources. Unfortunately most of my food books are still in
boxes, but perhaps someone else has a recipe. I vaguely recall that the
meat from the boiled neck, with breadcrumbs and possibly blood, as well
as other stuff, is used as the filling. I've also heard of Roman Jews
making air-dried gooseneck salami, but offhand can't think of
documentaton for period usage.

As for the use of a whole chicken skin, this seems pretty similar to
some of the period recipes for making "two" chickens out of one, with
the chicken skin (possibly with some meat from the same bird) stuffed,
reshaped like the bird and glazed, and the carcass either padded out
with minced meat and glazed, or simply heavily glazed, with both being
roasted side-by-side. This subject came up recently in the discussions
on blowing up chickens (it blowed up real gooood!) I believe there are
references to such dishes in fourteenth-century French and English
sources. When we're all moved and unpacked I'll look for specifics,
unless someone else gets to them first.

Adamantius    
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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