SC - Can Someone Explain This?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Robyn Probert wrote:
> 
> John, I think this means "a dish fastened on the end of the pele", being the
> long handled slice affair used to put bread, pies etc in and out of the
> oven. In other words, fix a dish to the end of the pele; put the mix in this
> dish, then open the oven and (using your new long handled dish) pour the mix
> into the coffins/pie cases which are still in the oven. This means you don't
> have to take them out of the oven, and you won't burn your arms either.

Just a brief addendum for those who do Americaspeak: this is known as a
baker's peel, and we would call it a spatula rather than a slice; it's
the [usually] wooden gizmo used to place baked goods in and out of
ovens. I interpret the basic instruction in the same way: you attach a
bowl to the the end of the peel, presumably at the handle end, or
perhaps you use an old, worn-out peel with the blade end cut off, and
fill the shells without removing them from the oven. Bear in mind that
the recipe originally intended brick or some other wood-fired oven,
without a continuous heat source. For proper baking it's pretty
essential no time or residual heat be wasted, since you can't just close
the door of a cooled oven and expect the temperature to go back to what
it was by magic. (Some of the implicit baking schedules found in sources
like Gervase Markham and Elinor Fettiplace are pretty fascinating, with
the cheat bread going in first, then the manchets, then the pies, then
the various eggy biscuits as the oven cools.) 

BTW, this method, or a near variant, is still used in restaurants to
produce reeelly reeelly full custard pie/tart shells. You fill the
shells as much as you can without slopping the filling all over in
transit to the oven, bake them for a bit, then open the oven, carefully
slide out the rack partway, and fill the shells to the brim with a
pitcher or ladel. Obviously you have to replace the rack _very_
carefully, but there's less waste of filling and less time cleaning the
oven using this method, apparently.
 
Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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