SC - Nonsense re Authenticity, personal recipes, etc.

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>From the Viandier de Pierre Tirel, obscure younger brother of Guillaume
Tirel, _not_ called Taillevent, c. 1384 (Unpublished translation by P.
Troy, 1999) :

"Faux Hachee de Boeuf en Faux Potage [Chopped Beef Stew]

Take the meat from a sirloin of beef, parboil it, drain and cool. Chop
it small. Draw up some thick almond milk and heat it in a pot with the
chopped beef, adding these other things: fried sliced onions, fine
powders of mace, cloves, cubeb, and grains of paradise. Cook until the
beef is tender and the almond milk sauce thick. Serve in bowls,
flourished with pomegranite kernels."

My "creative" redaction:

Well, since the beef was going to be cooked, there was no reason to
parboil it first, so I started with ground sirloin. My seneschale's
cousin is allergic to almonds, and I knew she'd be at the event this was
being cooked for, so I omitted the almond milk. Besides, we already had
a spoon-food in the course this was slated for, anyway. Upon reflection
I decided the best thing to do was form the raw ground sirloin into
round flat cakes, around 6 - 8 ounces, to facilitate service.
  
I tried it with the spice mixture a couple of different ways, and didn't
like it, so creatively added a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, as I
knew all the ingredients used to make it were found on the Eurasian
landmass in period. Taillevent's brother _could_ have used it.
Eventually I decided to add the sauce before forming the cakes, plus
some salt and pepper. For those who wanted the dish a little zippier, I
decided to provide mustard sauce on the side.

We grilled the cakes and topped them with the fried onions. Now,
unbeknownst to me, our King decided to show up at the last moment, and
really wanted to try the dish, but he was going to be walking around
between Order meetings all day, and doubted he'd be able to sit and
enjoy the feast. (There was also some talk of playing cards later.) We
decided what we'd do is provide His Majesty with not one, but two,
small, portable trenchers, so he could put the Hachee between them, and
eat somewhat more neatly while on the go. Finally what we ended up doing
was (follow me closely here) splitting  a manchet to create the small
trenchers needed.
    
We were unable to find pomegranites in season, but luckily we did manage
to obtain commercial manchets that had been garnished with sesame seeds,
which made the dish look much nicer. A final touch of color was added
when one of our scribes, the Laird Aonghais Mac Donald, produced some
brightly colored oiled paper, marked with his own clan heraldry, to wrap
part of the Hachee in, to avoid drips on HM's velvet giacetta.

Once people saw His Majesty eating the dish that way, everyone else had
to try it like that too. A couple of people were so gauche as to suggest
it would go great with tomato ketchup, which of course is OOP and was
quite an offensive suggestion to me.

I was really pleased by the fact that I felt I was able to find period
solutions to all the problems this challenging dish posed.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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