SC - Catsup Recipe from Ras

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Kornelis Sietsma wrote:
> 
> On the subject of hot foods - chilies may by OOP, but are there period
> recipes for hot foods using mustard, pepper, or horseradish?
> 
> You can get a good decent heat from any of these products - but was this a
> period practice?  And how old are "devilled" foods?

While mustard, pepper, and horseradish were used in period, they seem
rarely, if ever, to have been added to other foods to make them
significantly hot. The only recipe text that comes close to this usage
(that I can think of offhand) is Hugh Plat's 1609 kielbasa recipe (To
Make a Polonian Sawsedge), in which he instructs us, as I recall, to
make the sausage good and hot with ginger and pepper. I seem to recall
one or two other references to using spices liberally so long as you
_don't_ make the dish too hot.

(And no, before people latch onto the above, it is in no way intended to
suggest people used a lot of spices to disguise rotten meat. Fresh meat
was generally cheaper than spices.)

All this being said, though, while there were both mustard and pepper
sauces used pretty consistently throughout the SCA's period (the only
horseradish sauce I can think of offhand is in Kenelm Digby, published
in 1669), I think it would generally have been considered to be
medically unsound to eat _very_ hot foods, what with choleric humours,
an' all.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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