[Sca-cooks] Re: Mario Nebbits. New topics for discussion...

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Michael Gunter:
>I guess the presenters
>felt the judges either didn't have copies of these books or
>didn't read documentation. Then the recipes were followed
>straight from the books. Even in cases where there were
>mistakes in the redaction. It was rather depressing. And I
>have heard from several entrants that they never read the
>judges' comments because they don't want the criticism. Sigh.

And at one time, that might have been true... but look at it this
way: you've got to start someplace.

>
>Another interesting discussion I got into with the other judges
>was over a mincemeat pie. I usually hate mincemeat but this
>person did a wonderful job and a perfect proportion of period
>spicing. The pie was very good in all but one way. The recipe
>said to cook the meat and then shred it. The meat was shredded
>but in such large chunks that even cutting the pie pulled out
>large hunks of stringy meat. The meat was chewy and a bit
>tough. The judges felt that the meat should have been minced
>more and the dish should be more delicate. I decided that I
>liked the way it was because the pie was meant for celebration
>and richness. You got a big bite of nice chewy meat and felt
>it was a beef pie and not a fruit pie. The recipe was dated
>1507 so I think it was meant as a main course and should be
>hearty. The other judges felt it would be too difficult to
>chew with bad Medieval teeth. Looking at archieological
>evidence the people of this period actually had pretty decent
>teeth. It wasn't until a bit later that everyone ate sugar
>and had rotted teeth.

I suspect the right degree of fineness would be somewhere in between
the modern mechanical tendency toward homogeneity (too much food
processor use) and the fact that modern people often don't understand
what kind of dull, repetitive, hand work a person is capable of when
they don't have machines to rely on. I would suspect it could have
been shredded by hand to a pretty darned fine consistency by a
Renaissance cook who couldn't say, "Expletive deleted this, I'm using
the Cuisinart!!!" Think of what the better Chinese restaurants are
capable of on a regular basis.

[Although, not to leave topic or anything, has anyone else noticed
that the prep work in Chinese take-out (and in restaurants) is simply
not what it was 10 or 20 years ago? Everything is in much larger
hunks, either because it's faster and less skilled a task, or because
it takes up more space in a quart container, or for some more
esoteric reason, but the days of the 1/16 inch uniform shred seem to
be dying out, except in the really high-quality restaurants (seems
like Shanghainese and Taiwanese places go in for this, at least in my
area). Is this a personal peeve for anyone but me?]

>I suggested on the judges' sheet that the presenter explain
>where this dish would have been presented so to decide
>whether the dish should be delicate or hearty.
>
>What is your thoughts on a 16c mincemeat pie?

Hard to say. Sugar from Cyprus had reached England, and sugar from
the New World would reach England fairly soon, I think. I believe
Harrison (which is what, the 1570's or '80's?) speaks of an English
tendency toward bad teeth, and a lot of sugar in the diet. My main
concern as a pie maker would be to have the filling cut small enough
that there wouldn't be big air pockets in the pie. Possibly this
would be less of an issue for a mince pie.

Adamantius
--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER