SC - period dishes for Ari

[Isha ArrowHawk]

Ari replied to my list of food files with: 
> >                                        crawfish, dormice. 
> **blink**
> They ate mice???????
> 
> <Ari faints>

Well, at least the Romans did. And as Adamantius mentions, it is not
the same critter as the common field mice or rat.

This however, was not a dish I was suggesting you try because it bore
some resemblance to modern foods. I think it was the swan that I thought
you might be interested in, since you said "all fowl and fish" or something
similar.

For those that might be interested I've pasted the first of the two
messages 
about dormice from my exotic-foods-msg file below.

And as mentioned, is dormice really that unusual if you eat squirrel, 
opossum, muskrat or racoon? But then I've never had any of those, either.

- -- 
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 ****

> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 1997 07:42:25 -0500
> From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
> Subject: RE: SC - honey dormice recipe
> 
> >Back on Thursday, Sept. 25, Aine said:
> >>not to mention taste testing all those honey dormice.....
> >
> >Recipe, please!  And where did you get the dormice?
> >
> >Stefan li Rous
> 
> 
> Stuffed Dormice
> 
> Recipe By     : Apicius
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
> 
> NOTES : Glires:  Isicio pocino, item pulpis ex omin membro glirium
> trito, cum pipere, nucleis, lasere, liquamine farcies glires et sutos in
> tegula positos mittes in furnum aut farsos in cilbano coques.
> 
> Dormice:  Stuffed dormice with pork filling, and with the meat of whole
> dormice ground with pepper, pine nuts, silphium, and garum.  Sew up and
> place on a baking tile, and put them in the oven; or cook the stuffed
> [dormice] in a pan.
> 
> Translation from Giacosa, Ilaria Gozzini; A Taste of Ancient Rome,
> University of Chicago Press, 1992.
> 
> Stuffed Dormouse:  Is stuffed with forcemeat of pork and small pieces of
> dormouse meat trimmings, all pounded with pepper, nuts, laser, broth.
> Put the dormouse thus stuffed in an earthen casserole, roast it in the
> oven, or boil it in the stock pot.
> 
> Translation from Vehling, Joseph Dommers; APICIUS Cookery and Dining in
> Imperial Rome,dover Publications, 1977. 
> 
> 
> Vehling notes that the Soouther European dormouse is an arboreal rodent
> the size of a rat (one of my six new things before breakfast).
> He goes on to state "Dormouse, as an article of diet, should not
> astonish Americans who relish squirrel, opossum, muskrat, "coon," etc."
> 
> Giacosa shows this recipe as Apicius 397.  Vehling shows it as Apicius
> 396.
> 
> Bear