SC - Miracle Whip OOP (was Re: Sweet and Savory)

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Ari asked:
> > > Stuffed Dormouse:  Is stuffed with forcemeat of pork and small pieces of
> > > dormouse meat trimmings, all pounded with pepper, nuts, laser, broth.
> 
> Question:  What are 'laser' and 'forcemeat'?

I guess I should have included the second message from this file that
mentions dormouse. I have pasted it below.

There are also some more comments about laser in my herbs-cooking-msg file
in the Florilegium.

The reason that silphium became extinct was that it grew in only a small
area of North Africa. It was the Classical World's best birth control
agent and was harvested into extinction. There is more on this in the
birth-control-msg file in the PERSONAL CARE section of my files.

- -- 
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, 05 Oct 1997 09:49:58 -0400
> From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
> Subject: Re: SC - honey dormice recipe
> 
> Decker, Terry D. wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Just thought I'd throw a small note in here: laser and silphium are not
> the same thing. IIRC (which is as close as you're going to get on a
> Sunday morning before I've had my tea) silphium was a more or less
> unidentified (at least to us) plant resin which appears to have gone
> extinct or otherwise unavailable between the lifetime of Marcus Gavinus
> Apicius, and the time at which the earliest Apicius manuscript (7th
> century?) is dated. Laser appears to be the more readily available
> substitute for silphium, and is believed to be asafeotida gum,
> presumably ground to a powder. This is available as an extract in some
> herb or health-food stores, and as the genuine article, powdered resin,
> in Indian markets under the name "hing powder".
> 
> G. Tacitus Adamantius, always interested in Soul Food ;  )