SC - RE:New CA: French Food in the Renaissance

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

heya from Anne-Marie

Zoe asks:
>So I'm gonna ask!  I got my copy of this on Monday , and have been looking
>it over. 
>Margaret mentioned the use of cheddar cheese, whats wrong with that?

well, Cheddar isnt mentioned in the OED till after the source used. That
would be MY biggest arguement. I originally said to use whatever cheese you
liked, and that the ubiquitous cheddar worked well, though the orange stuff
was a bit agregious (the yellow food coloring being added fairly recently
to duplicate the effects of the cow eating a lot of real grass) etc etc
etc. That whole discussion got eliminated for space, or at least hacked to
shorter and put as an endnote.

>Another thing i note is that a lot of the  pies/tarts when filled,  have a
>rather thin filling and that the filling may need to be doubled for modern
>tastes. (If thats not worded righ holler at me)

It wasnt for modern tastes, it was just a point of refernce. That
particular reconstruction makes a thinner pie, useful when you're not
feeding an army, or you only want a bit of tart to go with a billion other
dishes in a course of a big medieval feast. I dont have my copy handy...did
she add that about it being for modner tastes? (wouldnt suprise me, she
added a lot of stuff like that that we needed to take out again, and I may
have missed one)

>So my Question on this is, were medival pies less full? Or were the pie
>crusts smaller making the filling more substantial?  Do we  know what the
>medival pie size was?  

nope, no idea, except that in pictures, they look pretty much pie sized,
but maybe taller. I based my reconstructions on making a 9" pie in a 9" pie
shell, purely out of modern convenience.

>Just a  few thoughts, overall the book looks good, i know i will be using
>it.. 
Then I have succeeded! :)
Thanks for the feedback...

- --Anne-Marie

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