SC - Edible pastry (was: The first fish recipe)

[cclark at vicon.net]

Kerri (Cedrin Etainnighean, OL) wrote:
> ... Also, what sources
>make distinctions between edible and inedible dough coverings? 

Thanks for posing these precise questions. I was being a little too vague in
my previous remarks, and going on memory rather than consulting better sources.

I don't recall any that actually make that particular distinction, but as I
recall _The_English_Huswife_, ed. by Markham, has a group of pie crust
recipes ranging from coarse to fine & short. But it's in the library, and
the library is closed at this hour. Anyway it's relatively modern (slightly
after 1600), though it looks like a likely indication of what earlier
practices *might* have been.

_A_Proper_newe_Booke_of_Cokerye_, in Duke Cariadoc's collection, often makes
some specific mention of what kind of pastry is used, what is in it, or
(sometimes) even how to make it. Usually it's a short pastry. Here are some
examples, starting early in the book and proceding from there. Page numbers
are from the 1987 edition.

"a Custarde" (p. 23/C7) says that the coffin must first be hardened in the
oven, and then is filled with a cream and sugar custard with raisins and
dates, and choice of butter or marrow. No further instructions for the crust.

"pyes of grene apples" (p. 29/C8) calls for a coffin made with "a lyttle
fayre water and half a dyche of butter and a little Saffron," heated, mixed
with flour and two egg whites, and assembled in a two crust pie.

"chekins in lyke paest" (pp. 29-31/C8-C9) describes chickens baked in the
same pastry as the "grene apples," with fruit and butter. After it's baked,
it says "drawe youre baken chekins" and serve with a sauce of verjuice and
egg yolks. The recipe does not mention whether the chickens are served in
the pastry. The next recipe calls for pigeons, spices, and verjuice, baked
in the same pastry. At the end, it says "If ye think theym drye, take a
lyttle vergis and butter and put to theim and serve theym."

"pescoddes" (p. 33/C9) are spiced marrow fried in a pastry described as
follows: "make youre paeste as fyne as ye canne, and as shorte and thyn as
ye canne." The next recipe, "stock frytures," is cooked in the same pastry,
and may be fried or baked.

"a pye of alowes" (p. 35/C10) is filled with dried fruit, hard egg yolks,
herbs and spices, all rolled in thin slices of mutton, plus spices, more
hard egg yolks, and dried fruit. It is baked in an unspecified pastry, and
then a spiced syrup is poured in before serving.

The next few pages (37-41/C10-C11) have recipes for tarts. First comes the
recipe for "short paest for tarte:" flour, water, butter, saffron, and egg
yolks. It looks like the only definite proportion stated is a dish of butter
to two egg yolks. The tarts that follow are filled with beans, various
fruits and flowers, spinach, and cheese.

"couer tarte after the frenche fashyan" (p. 45/C12) has two crusts; the
crusts are described as "cakes of fyne paeste." The filling is a sweet cream
custard.

Earlier recipes that call for pastry tend not to specify the kind of pastry,
except for the rare inclusion of a sometimes incomplete ingredient list,
such as the eggs or almond milk in the dough for cuskyn ... Am I allowed to
mention those here? What the heck:

Cuskynoles! :-)

I get the impression that in the earlier sources pastry is more often
described for things like rissoles, turnovers, or dumplings, rather than for
pies and tarts. Perhaps that means that there was more variety for the
former, while the latter were baked with just one or two standard types of
pastry. Maybe the former were more often cooked in fine, sweet, or short
pastry. Or maybe not. Who knows? (That's not necessarily a rhetorical question.)

If I were to leap to conclusions now, I would guess that almost any pie from
the late middle ages or renaissance (at least in England) could have been
baked in a short pastry, but that some types, such as savory meat pies,
might have been cooked in a coarser and less buttery crust. The "Proper newe
Booke" seems to prefer egg whites in the pastry for two crust pies and yolks
for one crust tarts. Some fried foods in pastry seem to have used
unshortened pastry, while others used a pastry as short as the cook could
handle without tearing (see "pescoddes" above).

Alex Clark/Henry of Maldon

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