[Sca-cooks] Re: rice pudding & marrow

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Mark.S Harris wrote:

>>>Would a medieval / Renaissance white pudding have half a cup of sugar? and I
>>>am confused about the suasage bit in this recipe.  Where would that tie in?
>>>Phillipa
>>>
>>Basically, the original recipe says to soak the rice in milk overnight (I'm working from memory, so bear with me), drain it, cook it in cream until mostly done, add eggs, I STR some dried fruit being added, but I could be wrong, and some grated suet. Oh, and sugar and probably other flavorings, spices, etc.
>>
>
> But then Adamantius, went off on the tangent about the farmes/frames
> thing:
>
>
>>Then you put your mixture into the farmes, a term which Markham uses several times in a string of recipes, all for sausages, including ordinary pork sausages. Kenelm Digby, writing, oh, maybe 50 years after Markham was published, and Hugh Plat, roughly contemporary to Markham, use the term too. "Tharmes" appears in one of these sources, I forget which one, as a variant. In each case they appear to be a reference to cleaned gut used for sausage casings. Some of the recipes talk of how long to cut your farmes, how to stuff them and tie them off, etc. It becomes far more clear if you look at the whole string of recipes in the original source, instead of just the one used for
>>"To The Queen's Taste". Since the recipe says, "as was shown previously", or words to that effect, it helps to know what was shown previously. ;-)
>>
>
> Thanks for the summary of this, Adamantius. But I'm not sure what this
> has to do with the original question, about whether the use of half a
> cup of sugar is the correct redaction of this recipe. I don't
> remember the amount of rice used, but this sounds like it might be more
> sugar than the original recipe writer was thinking of.

It might, but then sugar was cheaper as of about the sixteenth century, since it was being grown in the Mediterranean and in the Caribbean, as well as in Asia.


Markham's recipe calls for (rough estimates where appropriate):

1/2 pound rice, appr. 1 1/4 cups
Milk to cover; this is then discarded
1 quart thick cream
6 egg yolks
pepper
cloves
mace
currants'dates
sugar
salt
beef suet (probably at least 3/4 pound; knowing this is a sausage helps
determine that)

I'd say that, since we're probably looking at some 3 to 3.5 lbs of
puddings, 1/2 cup, or a quarter pound, is enough without being overwhelming.

I'm not sure about Sass's proportions, but since she's got us cooking
the rice in milk, and then adding cream, which is different from what
Markham suggests, I suspect we've got different sugar proportions, too,
in order to keep this in line with a more modern, dessert-type rice
pudding. Not having the numbers in front of me, I couldn't say for sure.


Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
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