SC - Malaches (FoC 159)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

UlfR wrote:
> 
> [Mailed Saturday evening, but never made it to the list AFACT, so I send
> it again]
> 
> Malaches (Forme of Cury)
> 
> 159 Malaches. Take blode of swyne, floure, & larde idysed, salt & mele;
> do hit togedre. Bake hyt in a trappe wyt wyte gres.
> 
> 8 dl pigs blood
> 3-4 dl flour (mixed wheat and rye)
> 75 g butter (I was out of lard)
> salt
> 
> I mixed the blood, the flour, salt, and most of the butter (diced). I
> poured it into a greased deep tin in an 200 C oven, for 75 minutes, with
> a foil cover. By that time a knife point came out fairly clean, and the
> internal temperature was 75 C.
> 
> The result is slightly dry, bland but not bad at all. I suspect that if
> I used some fat source that did not "go into solution" completely the
> dryness might be solved. Alteantively I could melt the butter before
> mixing it in, but That Is Not Supported By The Original Recipie, so I
> couldn't do that.

Note that two fat sources are mentioned in the recipe, and this could be
a source of confusion, and not including both of them could be the
source of your dryness (that and a native Scandinavian wit...). It calls
for lard, for which a decent substitute is bacon or fresh pork belly or
back fat, even soaked salt fatback, and then white grease, for which a
good substitute or source is lard ;  ) . The former is to enrich the
finished food and moisten it in  the mouth as well as in cooking; it
melts as it cooks, like the fat in a sausage, but the fatty tissue
remains after cooking. The latter is a shortening, whose purpose is to
lighten the texture of the curdled blood, like the olive oil or butter
you sometimes stir into polenta. It keeps it smooth and soft.
 
> Those better at middle english than me can probably answer the question
> of if it would have been better to make a pie crust.

Well, rather than ask why you changed the recipe (egads!), I can say
that the dish is probably better cooked in a pie crust, or perhaps baked
in a bain-marie, literally a "blood pudding"... the texture is smoother
and presumably moister. Plus, you get to inflict it on people who aren't
expecting it ;  ). "What's this? More weird food? No? Only pie? Thank
goodness! About time!"
 
> Looking at a modern cookbook for black-pudding I see that the recipe has
> changed, but the FoC version is clearly an ancestor. It was much less
> dense than what is sold as black pudding in Sweden today; it was more
> like a soft cake than anything else. It also tended to burn to the
> sides of the tin (the modern recipie uses a water bath).

Oh, definitely, just as fronchemoyle seems to be an ancestor of the
white pudding. And then, of course, there are "white malaches" without
blood... I'd say the modern recipe I'm familiar with hasn't changed
hugely, at least not the UK-type or French types I've seen. The most
obvious changes seem to me to be that you'd be using fresh soft bread
crumbs instead of flour, and that this recipe doesn't seem to call for
any spices. Pepper, cloves, and perhaps nutmeg would be a great asset
here. But then, of course, we don't want to deliberately change recipes
to meet expectations ;  ).
 
> For lunch tomorrow I'll fry some up (in slices), not supported by the
> recipie either, but that is SOP with black pudding nowadays.

Hmmm. This poses an interesting question, one which may even deserve its
own thread and/or new subject header. Here goes:

How many documented, primary-source recipes can you (the collective you)
think of that specifically address the question of leftovers, or even
dishes that are based on other, previously cooked dishes? For example,
there's a recipe in Le Menagier that speaks of taking cold beef and
(IIRC) reheating it in slices with a sauce of vinegar and chopped
parsley (again, I _think_ that's what it says), and this is supposed to
be good for serving unexpected guests for a quick supper: as in, when
somebody bangs on your door in the middle of the night and you don't
want to simply send them away. How many examples of this kind of
recycled food strategy can people think of? It might go a ways toward
explaining the attitudes of medieval people toward leftovers, which
might explain why there aren't any instructions for reheating malaches.
On the other hand, if this is a feast dish, it may be one of those
things that got given to the poor as alms. Mmmmmm! Malaches!

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com