SC - Pea soup humor - a true (but long) SCA story

[Philip & Susan Troy]

THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Bowl of this nasty liquid (with black bits floating in it) were served to the
> feasters.  And His Grace Stood up from his place at the high table as asked:
> "Everyone's enjoying the soup -- RIGHT?"

What a shame! One of the very first things addressed in the cookery
section of Le Menagier de Paris is how to cure burnt pottages, and I
actually had occasion to use one of the hints provided in the text in
mundane cookery over the weekend, when I had a layer of
tenaciously-stuck and semi-burnt chili (yes, with beans, it was for kids
and it's a long story) adhering to the bottom of my pot. All you have to
do is pour your pottage into a clean pot, and leave behind anything that
sticks to the old pot, which is where the burnt taste will be
concentrated until you mess around trying to unstick it. In extreme
cases, Le Menagier advises various means to lessen the burnt taste, too.

> And now a question -- is there a period recipe, soup or otherwise, for *fresh*
> peas?

>From Le Viandier de Taillevent, Scully translation, recipe eleven from
the section on thick pottages:

"11. Cretonnee de pois nouveaulx: Cretonnee of Fresh Peas. Cook them
until they can be pureed, then puree them and fry them in bacon grease;
then bring cow's milk to a boil, and soak your bread in it; grind ginger
and saffron,infuse them in your milk, and boil; then take chickens
cooked in water, break them into quarters, fry them and set them to boil
with the other mixture; remove from the fire and pour in a great
quantity of egg yolks and serve."

Other recipes specify that the yolks are stirred in during the final
minutes of cooking, and stirred until the pottage is thick, and should
never boil after the egg yolks are added. One should bear in mind, also,
that the fresh peas mentioned here are not quite the sweet peas that we
find frozen in the supermarket. (We've been through that pretty
recently, though, haven't we?)

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

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".

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