SC - Carving sets

[Par Leijonhufvud]

At 3:48 PM +0000 1/13/00, Christina Nevin wrote:
>
>	Adamantius wrote:
>	Appropriate dishes for the period (if we can believe Alexander Neckham)
	might include...

>I like the sound of the hens in cumin and the rissoles. What type of rice
>dishes? Could you please post the recipes?

Here is what Neckham wrote (quoted and translated in _Daily Life in 
the 12th Century_); he doesn't give recipes, unfortunately.

"A roast of pork is prepared diligently on a grid, frequently basted, 
and laid on the grid just as the hot coals cease to smoke.  Let 
condiments be avoided other than pure salt or a simple garlic sauce. 
It does not hurt to sprinkle a cut-up capon with pepper.  A domestic 
fowl may be quite tender, having been turned on a long spit, but it 
needs a strong garlic sauce, diluted with wine or verjuice.  Flavor a 
hen which has been cleaned and cut up into pieces, with cumin, if it 
is well boiled; but if it has been roasted, let it be treated with 
frequent drippings of fat, nor does it refuse garlic sauce; it will 
be most tasty with simple sauce.  Let fish that have been cleaned be 
cooked in a mixture of wine and water; afterwards they should be 
taken with green "savory" which is made from sage, parsley, dittany, 
thyme, costus, garlic, and pepper; do not omit salt.

"In a kitchen there should be a small table on which cabbage may be 
minced, and also lentils, peas, shelled beans, beans in the pod, 
millet, onions, and other vegetables of the kind that can be cut up. 
There should be also pots, tripods, a mortar, a hatchet, a pestle, a 
stirring stick, a hook, a cauldron, a bronze vessel, a small pan, a 
baking pan, a meathook, a griddle, small pitchers, a trencher, a 
bowl, a platter, a pickling vat, and knives for cleaning fish.  In a 
vivarium let fish be kept, in which they can be caught by net, fork, 
spear, or light hook, or with a basket.  The chief cook should have a 
cupboard in the kitchen where he may store away aromatic spices, and 
bread flour sifted through a sieve-and used also for feeding small 
fish-may be hidden away there.  Let there be also a cleaning place 
where the entrails and feathers of ducks and other domestic fowl can 
be removed and the birds cleaned.  Likewise there should be a large 
spoon for removing foam and skimming.  Also there should be hot water 
for scalding fowl.

"Have a pepper mill and a hand mill.  Small fish for cooking should 
be put into a pickling mixture, that is, water mixed with salt...  To 
be sure, pickling is not for all fish, for these are of different 
kinds:  mullets, soles, sea eels, lampreys, mackerel, turbot, 
sperlings, gudgeons, sea bream, young tunnies, cod, plaice, 
stargazers[?], anglers, herring, lobsters fried in half an egg, 
bougues, sea mullets, and oysters.  There should also be a garde-robe 
pit through which the filth of the kitchen may be evacuated.  In the 
pantry let there be shaggy towels, tablecloth, and an ordinary hand 
towel which shall hang from a pole to avoid mice.  Knives should be 
kept in the pantry, an engraved saucedish, a saltceller, a cheese 
container, a candelabra, a lantern, a candlestick, and baskets.  In 
the cellar or storeroom should be casks, tuns, wineskins, cups, cup 
cases, spoons, ewers, basins, baskets, pure wine, cider, beer, 
unfermented wine, mixed wine, claret, nectar, mead... piment, pear 
wine, red wine, wine from Auvergne, clove-spiced wine for gluttons 
whose thirst is unquenchable..."

 From De nominibus utenslium by Alexander Neckam (1157-1217), quoted 
(and translated from the Latin) in Daily Living in the Twelfth 
Century by Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., University of Wisconsin Press, 
1952, p. 88 (first paragraph quoted here) and pp.93-94 (second and 
third paragraphs).

Elizabeth/Betty Cook

David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
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