[Sca-cooks] marinating meat

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Debra Hense wrote:
> How common is it in medieval recipes to specify
> that the meat be marinated in oils or sauces
> before cooking?
>
> I thought that most of the adjustments for the
> humors came from the cooking methods and
> the sauces added or stewed in, rather than
> marinated and grilled or baked.
>
> I ran into this because a fellow judge told an
> entrant that to improve their entry they should
> have marinated the meat in the sauce before
> cooking it.  Not that it appeared in the recipe
> instructions... But she said she had seen one
> recipe where it was done, but couldn't tell
> what the source was.

Wasn't there a cormarye recipe posted, like, yesterday or the day
before?  This is a pork loin dish marinated for several hours in things
like red wine, crushed garlic, carway seed, and coriander seed prior to
roasting. I forget what else is involved (pepper?), but it's an
excellent dish. IIRC, it is from The Forme of Cury. That may well be the
source that the judge was referring to. However, there doesn't seem to
be huge scads of evidence to suggest that this was widespread practice
in other dishes. It occurs to me that middle-class people living in
towns, for example, frequently bought their sauces ready-made, and I
expect it would call for a much greater volume of sauce to use it as a
marinade (what with there being no plastic bags and such).

You might also make a claim for Tarpeian Lamb, which is an Apician dish
for which a paste is made from pounded onion and spices (kinda like a
curry paste, actually, except uncooked before using) which is spread on
the meat, then roasted. The meat is then finished in liquid, IIRC, and
the onion-y crust presumably dissolves back into the sauce. But there's
no extensive period of marination.

Overall, though, apart from a simple lack of too many recipes calling
for marination, at least as far as I know, it would seem to have been
preferred practice in most of period Europe to parboil certain meats
before larding them for roasting, or else boiling, then frying.

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