[Sca-cooks] online glossary

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Susan Fox-Davis wrote:
>
>  Æddie 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.
>
> Hey, don't knock it.  It works.  House Ravenspur is a past champion at hosting
> the bards, just ask True Thomas sometime.
>
> Seriously:  I thought Barding was attaching extra fat on the outside, and
> Larding was putting it inside with the big hollow needle?

Correct, although the concept of the big hollow needle is a fairly
modern one (I think). I believe I've seen illustrations of period
larding needles as looking like enormous sewing machine needles or some
other type of pierced awl, with a hole near the bidness end, and a
handle at the other. The object of the game is to stick the needle
completely through the meat, so that the holey end protrudes from the
other side, then you stick your pre-cut lardon into the hole in the
needle, which you then pull back through. Friction and tight space keep
the lardon (theoretically) attached to the needle, so that you are
sewing a stitch with lard instead of thread. For larger pieces of meat,
where the needle is too short to pass entirely through the meat, you
grab a pinch of the meat, kinda like a plastic surgeon might deal with
an unsightly bulge, and run your larding needle through there, so the
fat penetrates maybe an inch deep all over the surface of the roast.

More modern needles taper slightly away from the pointed end, with a
clip at the end to hold the fat in place, and again, you're sewing the
strip of fat through the meat in one way or another.

Still more recently, there are needles that are designed something like
apple corers, which allow you to take a sort of core sample from the
piece of fat, then stick that through your meat, and then, anchoring the
fat with a fingertip or some other tool, you can withdraw the needle and
leave the fat behind.

Larding is really an underused technique today, except perhaps for
butchers and cooks who really understand game, but for things with fat
on the outside, which may not taste too terrific (such as, say, a chuck
roast or, for some, a leg of lamb, maybe a corned beef brisket), it is a
princely technique to remove the fat you don't like and replace it with
fat you do like.

Barding is a little different, though, because the fat isn't really
intended to be eaten.

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com