SC -Mus, Brei and confusion

[allilyn at juno.com]

You do improve my thought processes, Master A.!

>>. I didn't realize you were talking about baking
in the mold; I thought the basic idea was to use the starchy component
to set the food in the mold as it [semi] cools, and turn it out.<<

I was thinking just the way you thought I was thinking.  Molding and then
cooking IS different from cooking and then molding.  I'm not so sure that
the reverse idea would have escaped them, but don't have documentation as
yet.

Perhaps the idea of the 'flower pots', which of course are then cooked,
put the idea in my head.  Or, the phrase, "look [th]at it be stondying",
which I then see as a molded dish, standing on its platter, not just
thick enough to stand up in a pile of food.  Hieatt, in _Taste of
Pottage_, p. 170, comments on the various mortrews, "the numerous
references to 'mortruys' in other recipes indecates that such a dish is
to be a 'standing' thick mixture; to stand must mean to be stiff enough
to hold its shape if mounded."

 With all the subtleties and fancy preparations, I can't see King
Richard's cooks, or Taillevent, or Chiquart, just slopping this thick
pile of food on a platter and serving it, without doing something fancier
to it than dusting with ginger.  But, so far, can't prove they did think
of it.  

We've commented on this list before that it is easy to let modern ideas
interfere with the authentic recipes, and I've just proved how easily
that happens.  Beginning period cooks, beware!  Even those of us who have
been doing this quite a while can fall into that trap.

Regards,
Allison,     allilyn at juno.com


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