SC - Help! To the Queen's Taste

[harper@idt.net]

> stefan at texas.net writes: 
> > I think it had to wait
> > until the invention of cheap vegetable oils in the 19th century.
> 
> While deep frying may or may not have had to wait until you specify, there 
> are recipes that do call for frying things throughout the period corpus. 

In this case "it" was specifically referring to deep frying. I thought that
was clear since in the same message I did point to a number of files in
the Florilegium which have information and recipes for fried food.

> Some, such as the chicken recipe I posted some time ago are middle not late 
> period. Lard was a commercial product available throughout the middle ages 
> and early modern period. I think your hypothesis regarding vegetable oil and 
> deep frying is essentially in error especially since most if not all foods 
> that are deep fried taste much better when deep fried in lard than when done 
> in veggie oil. 

This may well be true. I've not tasted enough fried foods where I knew
whether they were fried in lard or vegetable oils to agree or disagree
with your statement that frying in lard tastes better. Sometimes choices
are made on other than taste factors. In the case of deep fried foods,
which seem to have been a lower class item, at least in the case of
fried fish and potatos (chips). The reason this type of food became
widely available, at least in England, was that the invention of
cheap vegetable oils meant they could afford it. It was a cheap food
that could be gotten off the streets in a time of packed tenement
blocks with little in the way of kitchens.

Most of my info on this comes from a recently, well-reviewed book on
the history of Cod. If you wish I'll try to locate my copy and perhaps
I can find those particular paragraphs or pages. Right now, I'm not
sure where my copy of this book is.

> My suggestion would be to completely (without exception) 
> disregard 'modern' thought in this matter and simply follow the recipes as 
> written from period. it would go a long way towards over riding suppositions 
> and thoughts based on modern thought and bring the cookery 
> methods a lot closer to period. 

I'm not aware of any period fried foods that indicate to cook them in
a deep bath of oil. Or any foods that would require the use of a deep
bath of oil rather than a shallow pool of oil in a pan. If you know
of any, or other evidence that deep frying was done commonly in period,
please let us know.

> Lard was a MAJOR commercial product during 
> SCA period. 

I'm not disputing that. There were few other choices. And some of
these, such as olive oil, were limited to particular regions. What I
am questioning is that lard was cheap enough to be commonly used in
deep frying.

>Vegetable oil popularity and mass acceptance was based entirely 
> on the necessities of W.W.I and W.W.II. Any conjectures about it's use 
> outside that venue is most certainly, IMO, in error. 

And I think your estimate is 50 to 100 years too late. I will try to 
find my copy of the Cod book.

> Even if you except the 
> erroneous supposition that pig's were skinnier in period (another theory that 
> I hold as false) there is no indication that the introduction of frying, deep 
> frying or any other type of frying was in any way related to the rise of the 
> use of the insipid product called 'vegetable oil.' In fact, extant period 
> recipes clearly indicate the opposite was likely.

Ok, which period recipes "clearly indicate the opposite was likely"?

As to whether medieval pigs were generally fat or skinny, I've seen
evidence that points to both possiblities, including some feeding
of grains to pigs but nothing yet which is definative either way.
I guess I need to get a box of those sticky bookmarks from 3M, so
I can mark these things as I read them. I think I will remember, 
then after I've read more in the book or finished the book finding
those paragraphs gets difficult.
 
> Ras

- -- 
THL 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 ****