SC - questions on pea broth

[Wade Hutchison]

LYN M PARKINSON wrote:
> 
> Somewhere, I have recipes that call for 'pea broth'.  We've discussed
> this on the list, I think.  Now, when you cook the dried peas, and you
> take the lid off the pot, you have cooked peas at the bottom of the pot
> and a brownish/clearish liquid at the top.  Normally, we mush everything
> together and go from there.  The recipes don't call for pea soup, bruet,
> or pottage.  They want *broth*.  This morning I cooked peas and then
> drained them into a bowl.  The fairly clear liquid I have divided and
> will freeze for use when I find those recipes.  Not in Chiquart,
> apparently, 'find' couldn't produce 'pea broth'.

Taillevent's exact phrase is "puree de poys", which he uses seven or
eight times in Le Viandier, which is why this issue is so confusing. I
believe Chiquart does use the same expression, but whether an English
translation calls it "pea broth" I don't know. Most translators, AFAIK,
skirt the issue as to what this substance _is_ and simply translate it
as pea puree. From the context it's pretty clearly a liquid, and it is
tempting to assume it is the water peas are boiled in, with or without
the peas strained into it for additional thickening power.

I seem to recall Chiquart giving a recipe for pea puree, though...I'll
have to go back and check on this.

The question of what pea puree really is, is one of those insoluble
medieval cookery questions, which is why, when most people on the cooks'
list bring up cuskynoles as a sort of thread-ender, you'll find that
Cariadoc asks what pea puree is, the peas or the juice.
   
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".

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