humor. was Re: SC - viking barley bread

[Siegfried Heydrich]

In mundania this looks great with green and regular egg noodles.
olwen


>From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>
>Reply-To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
>To: SCA-Cooks maillist <SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org>
>Subject: SC - Cressee discussion summary
>Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 01:51:52 -0500
>
>Ras replied to my questions:
> > << I thought you (Ras) were very much into doing a dish exactly as
> >  the recipe is written and not deviating.>>
> >
> > I am.
> >
> >  <<Wouldn't assuming that
> >  colored cheeses would be available and using one, much less two
> >  different cheeses of different colors go against this?  >>
> >
> > Possibly. But since I came into the thread rather late and have no way 
>of
> > knowing what transpired before I have no way to answer this question. I 
>do
> > know we made butter all the time when I was growing up and it was 
>definitely
> > yellow. I am just wondering why everyone is assuming that the cheese is 
>white
> > and not yellow. Apparently I missed that part of the thread. The delete 
>key
> > can be a cruel mistress......
>
>Ahh. ok. Master Cariadoc posted the original recipe and his redaction
>for this Cressee recipe. He had posted a copy of a picture of the
>dish on a website. When I went there, the cheese looked pretty yellow.
>Someone else suggested putting white cheese on the white pasta and
>yellow cheese on the yellow pasta. I then made suggestions that I
>didn't think this a good interpretation because the recipe doesn't
>mention two different cheeses. Others have suggested that the pasta
>be more brightly colored with more saffron or a different grain be
>used. Another comment I suggested was that perhaps medieval folks just
>didn't expect a bright color differentiation between the interleaved
>yellow and white pasta.
>
>Ok, actually it was Adamantius that posted the original recipe back
>on June 22:
>
> > Constance Hieatt and Robin Jones, "Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections
> > Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal
> > 12.C.xii", Speculum v. 61, October 1986, pp 859-882.
> >
> > The original recipes are in 13th-century French, with an English
> > translation by Hieatt and Jones. Here's what it sez for cressee,
> > translated from Add. 32085 :
> >
> > "5. Cressee [crisscross of noodles]. Here is another dish, which is
> > called cresee.Take best white flour and eggs, and make pasta dough, and
> > in the pasta dough put fine, choice ginger and sugar. Take half of the
> > pastry, (which is or should be) colored with saffron, and half (which is
> > or should be) white, and roll it out on a table to the thickness of your
> > finger; then cut it into strips, then cut it into strips the size of a
> > piece of lath; stretch it out on a table as illustrated [see diagram,
> > one color is presumably to be crossed over the other]; then boil in
> > water; then take a slotted spoon and remove the cressees from the water;
> > then arrange them on, and cover them with, grated cheese, add butter or
> > oil, and serve."
> >
> > The diagram is a rectangular grid 4 squares high by eight wide.
>
>Here is a snippet from Master Cariadoc's message giving the URL
>of his picture and some of his comments:
> > http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/cressee/cressee_recipe.htm
>
> > One problem with the recipe is getting enough contrast in color
> > between the plain and the yellow strips. One way is by using a lot of
> > saffron--but the result looks better than it tastes, unless you
> > really like saffron. Another possibility that Elizabeth suggested but
> > that I have not yet tried is to use the egg yolks in what will be the
> > yellow dough and the whites in what will be the plain dough.
>
>I hope this gives you a reasonable summary of things.
>--
>Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
>**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
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