SC - <<<<<< I just had a stroke of luck on getting a Smoker Grill ...snip... When I went to the local

[Nicholas Sasso]

Lucretzia and Freind wrote,
> > I have a query from a friend I hope someone can answer. My initial 
>reaction
> > was no, I think it's a Georgian invention,

> > "Ah! That reminds me! Is the thing that we moderns call "Yorkshire 
>Pudding"
> > - a thinnish batter poured into a hot roasting pan and cooked either in 
>the
> > oven or in front of a flame till it puffs up and browns - even remotely 
>SCA
> > period?

Adamantius responded:
>
>I haven't seen any indication that any kind of baked pudding, sweet or
>savory, is found in a period source. One thing to bear in mind is that
>ovens seem to figure less in medieval cookery than they do subsequently,
>except for obvious things like bread, pies, and tarts. For cooking them
>in front of a fire, well, as I say I've seen no evidence of it. Also,
>one should consider that if this dish did exist in the Middle Ages, it
>certanly wouldn't be classified by a name which refers to guts, which is
>basically what "pudding" means.

How about this then: Doesn't some reference just Post period (Markham?) have 
recipes for 'dredging' roasting meat with a type of batter? When reading 
those recipes, I picture a yorkshire pudding type product developing, even 
though it might not have gone to the hall.

Some of the batter would have dripped into the dripping pan with the fat and 
cooked, the end product being somewhat like a modern Yorkshire pudding.  The 
boy doing the roasting or some other servant might well have eaten it, or 
passed it on to an even lower class servant to eat.  The pig herder if no 
one else.  Sometime between then and when Yorkshire pudding appears, the 
servants food by accident became something done on purpose and finally also 
done by (or for) the upper classes on purpose.

The definition of pudding changed late or just after period from something 
cooked in the guts to a doughy mass cooked in a cloth or basin with the 
meat.  And also, amongst the working class, serving the pudding  before the 
meat in order to reduce appetite and make the meat feed more people became 
pretty standard. So, if some families in Yorkshire made this product on 
purpose, the name could easily have been applied at that time period.

Which doesn't mean Yorkshire pudding as we know it existed, just that the 
beginnings of it seem to have been in those dripping pans. But to keep 
people from deciding Yorkshire pudding IS period, maybe I should have kept 
these thoughts to myself.

Lady Bonne




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