SC - shortbread/-cakes & salad

[Luanne Cupp Bartholomew]

KallipygosRed at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Okay, I know that everyone has agreed, by the posts I read, that the bone
> marie was a marrow bone in translation in the receipe that was asked about.
> But why couldn't it have been "bain Marie" which is the French term for
> putting something into a "water bath"?

I believe the original recipe was for caboges? It calls for mery-bonys,
or some such, and the rest of the recipe appears to be in English. I
don't think the English, in the fifteenth century, had acquired the kind
of culinary inferiority complex that would lead to the introduction of a
lot of foreign-language terminology. Of course there are English recipes
written in French and in a mixed patois of the two, but I think by the
fifteenth century this had mostly vanished.

Another consideration is that I'm not aware of the concept of the
bain-marie existing at the time. Even in the seventeenth century there
seem to be signs of a different technology regarding the kinds of things
a bain-marie would be used for. In the fifteenth century, AFAIK, we're
still mostly using the oven for pies, tarts and bread, etc., none of
which require a bain-marie (as opposed to the various terrines and
mousses that begin to show up in the eighteenth century), and while
sauce and pottage recipes will frequently indicate that a gentle heat is
needed to prevent curdling, they generally just say something like, "And
let it not boil after the eggs are in", without suggesting how it was
done other than the bare fact of, if it boils and the dish is ruined,
it's back to peeling turnips for you. 

So, if the suggestion of marrowbones is a guess, it's probably a fairly
justifiable one.

Adamantius 
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com