cooks games was:SC - feedback requested

[E. Rain]

- ----- Original Message -----
From:  David/Cariadoc

> potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn on the cob are all from the New
> World, hence not medieval European. Melons and apples, on the other
> hand, are from the Old World, hence can be medieval.

We do have recipes for sweet potatoes (simply called potatoes or "Spanish
potatoes") from just outside SCA period.  My new book (*gloat*) "Dining with
William Shakespeare" by Madge Lorwin includes a few.

(I had already typed the following recipe before I checked out the date of
the source *sigh* - I actually thought it was from within SCA period.  Even
so, I figured it was still worth posting.  I hate to waste all that good
typing!)

However, Madge Lorwin does have this to say about sweet potatoes (and this
is, unlike the recipe, appropriate for SCA period):

'Sweet potatoes, like eringo roots, bone marrow, and numerous other foods,
were considered aphrodisiacs.  Although they had been know in England for
many years, they were still very expensive.  In 1615 sweet  potatoes cost
the then large sum of three shillings a pound.  William Harrison,
criticizing the lavishness of the nobility, gentry, and richer merchants,
spoke reprovingly of "the potato and such venerous roots as are brought out
of Spain, Portingale, and the Indies to furnish up our banquets."  But they
were not yet well enough to be included in many of the dietaries.  In 1595
Dr. Thomas Muffet, in "Health's Improvement", said of them, "They nourish
mightily ... engendering much flesh, blood, and seed, but withal encreasing
wind and lust."

'Sweet potatoes were usually imported sliced and candied.  But in the fall
and winter, they arrived raw and were hawked through the streets by peddlers
who called "Potatoes, ripe potatoes."  They were also sold in dried form.

'John Gerard, who grew them in his gardens, described them as "no lesse
toothsome, wholesome, and dainty, than the flesh of Quinces."  The roots, he
said, could serve "as a ground or foundation whereon the cunning
Confectioner or Sugar-Baker may worke and frame many comfortable delicate
Conserves and restorative sweet-meats."


TO MAKE A POTATO PIE

Boyle your Potatoes tender and blanch them; slice them but not very thin,
and mix them with some apple pared and sliced:  season  them with Cynyamon,
Ginger, Sugar & Salt.  Your Pie being made, put in these meats with a good
store of marrow on the top, being cut into lumps as big as a wallnut:  pour
a little verjuyce on the Pye and close it; being baked put to it verjuyce,
sugar, butter, cynamon, and ginger, beat up thick together, cut up the lid,
and fill it with leare [this sauce], raising it up with the knife to let in
the liquor.  You must put in Butter when you close up the Pie to bake it,
otherwise it will burn in the oven, they being of very dry substance.  Less
then two houres will bake it.  Scrape Sugar on it, and serve it up hot.

Joseph Cooper, "The Art of Cookery Refin'd and Augmented" 1654

Gwynydd