SC - Rendering fat

[Mordonna22@aol.com]

One small nit to pick out of a long message that Bonne wrote. Bonne said:

> Their preservation techniques worked reliably enough to still be in use 
> today (drying, sugaring, fermenting, salting, pickling, and storing fresh 
> and preserved foods in cold, dark, dry places). Others worked less well 
> (filling the meat pie up with butter to seal it) but worked well enough to 
> continue in use until the idea and technology of canning could finally be 
> figured out.

Actually the problem wasn't with filling the meat pie with butter to
seal it. The problem was that it didn't seem to occur to folks to fill
the pie with butter while the pie was still hot. Early on they seem to
have let the pie cool in the open air and then pour in the butter. It
seems to have taken about fifty years before filling the pie while it
was still hot caught on. The problem is that if you fill the pie while
it is still hot, the heat has killed any organisms in the pie, then
sealing it immediately keeps any more from invading. Unfortunately,
cooling the pie in the open air before sealing it, lets the invasion
possibly begin and then you seal them into a nice, airless enviornment,
which some of them happen to prefer.

However, while this technique does seem to fall within period, in the
late 16th century, it is not a medieval technique.

- -- 
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 ****