SC - Re: Period cooking?

[david friedman]

Two minor points:

1. "Icelandic Chicken," a name for which I am probably responsible, 
isn't really Icelandic. I found the recipe in a collection included 
in a period Icelandic medical miscellany, but it appears from Grewe's 
work that it is one of several surviving daughter manuscripts of a 
lost original that he believes was originally southern European.

2. This thread reminds me of a story in one of Euell (sp?) Gibbon's 
books. A bunch of Texas cowboys are "herding" catfish--riding their 
horses in shallow waterways with catfish in them, and spearing some 
of the fish--for fun (because they can do it on horseback). When they 
are done, the question arises of what to do with the catfish, which 
apparently are notoriously bad tasting because of where they live or 
what they eat or something. So they get off their horses and start 
telling stories.

One of them describes a technique for cooking catfish. You wrap them 
in cattle dung and bake them in the fire. When they are done, all the 
scales come off as you break off the baked dung.

"And then do the catfish taste good?"

"Oh no. The catfish still taste like mud. But the dung isn't bad."
- -- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/