SC - roasting and boiling

[grizly at mindspring.com]

You bring goods points.  You could even do one part of the cooking ahead of your need by a few days, then bring it partially cooked to your kitchen.  That said, the mention of "take cooked meat" could be a reference to leftovers?  Maybe a way to use uneaten meats from previous meals.

Another thing of boiling before raosting or vice versa, beef is a humorally dry food.  The bioling at any point would likely be an attempt to temper that dryness with moisture.  The medieval health handbook even suggests that you can mediate its quality thusly.  Another author, whose name escapes me just now, suggested that beef should only be eaten bioled in order that the body find it useful.  Could be that they had really tough meat in that particular region and needed moist heat to cook it tender.

niccolo difrancesco

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> Just a thought, but is it possible that roasting before boiling (as comes up fairly frequently in period recipes) is actually to do with utensil usage?

I realise that Maitre Chiquart and his ilk are unlikely to have had such a 
problem, but I found when doing a demo not so long ago that pre-roasting 
stewing meat made it much easier to use the two fireworthy pots I had to 
greatest effect.

I had assumed that recipes which started 'Take cooked meat' or something 
similar meant this for a culinary reason, but who knows?  Certainly it gave 
me time to bake bread in one pot and blanch almonds and hardboil eggs in the 
other before getting down to the business of the stewing.

And to reverse the two actions, parboiling then roasting might well ensure 
that the meat is more thoroughly cooked on the inside before the outside 
blackens.

Cairistiona