SC - Frumenty using barley?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Decker, Terry D." wrote:
> 
> > I didn't mean
> > "any reference for barley," but rather, " a period reference for barley
> > in a 15thC grain- almond milk- sugar & saffron & egg yolks type
> > frumenty", as goes with venison or "porpayss"
> >
> > Any luck now?

<snip>

> If you come across one, I want it.  Barley was poverty food, just above
> oats.  In hard times, it may have substituted for wheat on a nobles table,
> but I don't think they wrote about it.

You are probably right, but the references made on this list were, I
believe, based on a reference in Le Menagier de Paris. Anne Marie
Rousseau is the person to talk to about this, she being the person who
brought it up originally and posted recipes and all, but as I recall Le
Menagier's recipe for frumenty explains how to hull and boil wheat
exactly as one would barley, hence the deduction that frumenty could be
made from barley, too.

I'm not sure, personally, how I feel about the line of reasoning. It
seems likely a dish of saffron-seasoned, egg-thickened,
stock-and-milk-simmered grain could be (and probably was) made from just
about any grain, but I think they'd be different enough in character to
warrant different names and usage. The example of rice recipes in period
sources (most simply calling the dish "rice", with or without qualifying
adjectives) seems to indicate a different thick pottage which may have
been used as an accompaniment to roast or boiled meats, like frumenty,
but possibly without _quite_ the same royal status.    
 
> Cato probably wrote about it, because he was the staunch defender of the
> simple Republican virtues in a nation that was well on it's way to Empire
> and Apicius.

On the other hand, so was Augustus a staunch defender of simple Roman
virtues, even the very precedented habit of not bothering to ask the
Senate to name him Dictator (neither did Julius Caesar, but that is, in
fact, what he was). The fact that the Senate later proclaimed him
Imperator after he had assumed power, and the soldiers proclaimed him
Imperator already, was sort of incidental. Anyway, I think a lot of
people's concept of Romans alternating between the vomitorium and the
patina of lark's tongues is something more likely to have significant
basis in fact much later than the Late Republic. Of course, individual
Emperors' mileage may vary...;  ) .  

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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