SC - Malaches (FoC 159)

[UlfR]

On Sun, 29 Oct 2000, Philip & Susan Troy wrote:

> > 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

> 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 

I interpreted the original as "mix in the lard, and use the 'wyte gres'
for the trappe". Your interpretation is that I should have mixed in both
the lard *and* the wyte gres? The closest I can get to that is "use wyte
gres to make a crust". I could be extremely mistaken, but (in true
Socratic tradition) please explain how I went wrong in that case?

> (that and a native Scandinavian wit...). 

Doubtfull. While I had fun playing with lots of blood, I would not want
to imply that that kind of humor is dry.

> 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 ;  ) .

Ahh, now I see. I was thinking "lard, I could get away with butter
instead". Looking at Stefans site with the original MS and some
commentary I see (http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/FoC025_smallgif.html):
"[Butter] The usual substitutes for it are oil-olive and lard; the
latter is frequently called grees, or grece, or white-grece...". I see a
slight discrepancy in the two interpretations of what lard is to be
taken as. Is it the original body tissue from which we would extract the
lard today, or is it what we would refer to as lard today?

> 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.

I agree fully as to the effects this would (most likley) have on the end
result, and I would also agree that the change from my interpretation
would probably improve the dish.

> > 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!), 

So you would take "trappe" to be a pie crust? Since the original
specifies the wyte gres in the trappe, I suppose I can agree with you
there. But then you can't have it in the malache as well, can you?

> 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. 

The modern versions are cooked in a bain-marie, but there was no mention
of it in the original. Is there any mention of bain-marie in the 14th C
corpus? 

Based on this, what would your suggestion be for Malaches 1.1? In a
crust made with lard, and with diced fat back (or equivalent) and lard
(melted?) in the mixture? I'll pick up another bucket of blood some
afternoon this week and try it. The question is if it is a reasonable
interpretation of the original.

> 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!"

The problem is that to my most likley victi^Waudience -- native Swedes
- -- blood pudding is something they grew up with (it is mostly kid fare;
cheap, bland and filling). This is a new type, and most of them has only
had it storebought, sliced and fried, but it is still nothing to make
their head explode and attain a stable earth orbit. Pity.

> Oh, definitely, just as fronchemoyle seems to be an ancestor of the
> white pudding. And then, of course, there are "white malaches" without
> blood... 

Where is fronchemoyle to be found?

There is still the facinating note that the Scottish gaelic words for
black and white pudding is awfully similair to "malaches" (I can neither
spell or pronounce it, and with a modifier for the white one). I'll
definitely try the white malaches as well. Could be a fun contrast to
serve both together some day.

> 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. 

Yes, at least we can't have a big fight over what amount of what spice
to use. Thinking of the flour, would you say that my mix of white wheat
flour and rye was a decent guess as to flour and mele?

> 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 ;  ).

No, we would not. The white malaches have more spices.

> 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? 

I would say that -- based on vague memory and "the library is at home"
- -- all of the recipies calling for previously cooked meat, or roast and
then boiled, is adaptable to leftovers. 

> 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.

You also have the mentions of cold meat for breakfast. I would guess
that in many cases last nights leftovers got eaten cold as breakfast.

> 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!

Quite possible. OTOH, malaches, and various sausages using blood, is an
answer to the old question "there's buckets of blood in a pig, you
aren't going to let it go to *waste*, are you?". Thus it might be
something that got served whenever a pig was butchered.

/UlfR

- -- 
Par Leijonhufvud                                      parlei at algonet.se
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.  
		-- Lazarus Long (R.A. Heinlein)