[Sca-cooks] online glossary

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Steve wrote:
>
> Barding, as in bribing a bard with roast meats and mead so that they'll
> stay longer in your camp at war?
>
> Æduin, who needs to go to bed now.

Har de har. You guys...

Barding is distinguished from larding in that while larded meats are
studded with slivers of lard inserted into little slots cut into the
outer surface of the meat (and this is called studding when other
things, such as cloves, are used, according to Le Menagier, which
suggests the process is at least that old), barding is the process of
coating a piece of meat entirely with fat, essentially wrapping the meat
in sheets of fat sliced from a block of [usually] flead, flitch, suet,
or whatever else your culture calls unrendered kidney/loin fat.

Y'ever see, in the glass cases at the expensive butcher shops, whole
beef tenderloin roasts covered with white fat and tied up? (Sometimes
this is done with bacon.) That is barding. It can also be done with
pheasants and various other dryish poultry, certain cuts of veal, etc.

Barding has the advantage of being easily removed for service, and also
does not cut into the meat, which can keep juices from escaping. Think
in terms of the increased surface-area-to-mass ratio between a roast
covered with little cuts versus one without them. On the other hand,
barded cuts really don't brown much. It's just a different tool, with
different capabilities, for a different job.

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com