Brie Period? Was, Re: [Sca-cooks] beets

[Philip & Susan Troy]

XvLoverCrimvX at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 8/29/01 3:48:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time, vavroom at bmee.net
> writes:
>
>
>>>I am also wondering about brie.  I have a fish and brie tart recipe I think
>>>
>> >could possibly work with the right spices.
>>
>
> For Caer Mear's Baronial Investiture I helped Lord Kendrick make a Brie tart
> of sort. I do think brie is period since you make it for Savory Toasted
> Cheese....Savory Toasted Cheeeeeeeeese, mmmmmmm. If anyone has documentation,
> I would like to have it.

Digby calls for the best of Brie, Cheshire or a good, fat cream cheese
for his Savory Toasted or Melted Cheese. There's actually a fair amount
of documentation for Brie, but there's a slight problem. What we know
for sure is that cheeses made around and marketed from the town
(region?) of Brie were not necessarily the same cheese as modern Brie.

I STR that the white surface mold found on Brie is the result of an
innoculation developed fairly recently, like in the eighteenth or
nineteenth century.

Another good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about is that you
can still find raw, non-communal (in other words, definitely uncheddared
by any definition of the term) Cheddar cheese made on certain English
farms, made as it was in the sixteenth century. One famous farm family
that has been doing this (supposedly) pretty much as they have for the
past 500 years, is Keen's. Their cheddar tastes just a bit like new
Parmaggiano-Reggiano, with just a hint of the sharpness of Provolone.
It's a very pale butterfat/broomflower yellow.

Is cheddar period? Definitely. Can most of us buy it in stores to serve
at an SCA feast and claim accurately that we're serving anything like
the period cheese? Not really.

There are actually a reasonable number of late-period English (and
other) cheese recipes available; they give us a pretty good idea of what
we're dealing with. On the other hand, since a lot of recipes just call
for "good rich cheese", or fresh cheese, or old cheese, it's pretty easy
to choose a good modern one for the purpose, probably without
compromising the dish.

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98