SC - Icelandic Chicken {RECIPE}

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Michael F. Gunter" wrote:

> I have expirienced the same thing with the recipe. We made it according to
> the period recipe and then substituted a tastier pastry. But I came to the
> conclusion that the period chicken was basically a travel food that needed
> the stiff crust to transport well or that it became something like a clay
> pot and wasn't meant to be eaten but simply a vessel for cooking the
> chicken in. If you just break open the crust and serve the chicken without
> it the chicken is very moist and tasty.

A yeast-leavened dough also works well. As you say, though, it's not
clear what circumstances the dish is intended to be eaten under: if it's
a pie, or merely a travel container, or what. Obviously a whole bird,
with bones, would preclude its being cut in chunks and eaten as we would
eat a boneless meat pie now.

One consideration is that a bird wrapped in fatty bacon, especially
salty bacon, would allow for a bird pretty well protected from airborne
bad'uns, especially if wrapped in a stiff pastry of any kind (remember
our recent confit thread?).

This could well be either a travel food _or_ simply a sort of
cold-on-the-sideboard kinda emergency dish. Certainly the large pies of
the English renaissance, generally filled with clarified butter around
the main meat filling, were expected to keep quite a while without what
we'd call refrigeration.
 
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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