Joke evolution: was, Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: regional names for egg dishes

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Laura C. Minnick:
>Soooo... What's up, Magister? ;-)

Well, me, for one. Maybe a little insomnia, combined with the desire
to get things like mail out of the way before various noisemakers get
up at 7...

>I was making deliberate reference to the bit with Bugs Bunny, saying he
>wasn't a fwicassein' wabbit- so I guess it didn't lose much in the
>translation.

Yes, I realize that.

>The 'you can't boil me- I'm a Friar!' made it to Garrison Keillor's Joke
>Show recently. Old stinker but it always gets a laugh.

Yep. I'm picturing some guy in a straw boater and a racoon-skin coat
telling it to my Dad in 1929...

>Obligatory food content: So, what hte heck _is_ fricasseein', anyway? How
>is it different from frying?
>
>Fire away!

Well, definitions vary, especially given the range of early fricassee
recipes (which are more like omelettes than sauced sautes or stews),
but the modern interpretation usually seems to involve frying (think
of the name) your chicken, rabbit, or veal (what else gets
fricasseed?) and then finishing it in a coating sauce made with white
wine or lemon (I suppose vinegar could be involved, but I don't
remember seeing it offhand), and often thickened with egg yolks
(which might be the link to the earlier recipes where you fry
everything up and then add eggs and make an omelette-y or scrambled
entity). Some recipes now call for cream, but the temptation to
ascribe "legitimacy" to the egg-based versions, given the past forms,
is powerful.

Didn't we have this discussion on this list before, where everyone
was howling for the blood of anybody whose idea of fricassee was
considered by them to be unorthodox? Cream versus eggs, etc. And
didn't we even have a couple of Lutheran Binder adherents involved?
All I know is the planet must be wiped clean of the flour-thickened
broth fricassee-ers! It is an abomination in the eyes of God and man,
but makes a good stew!

Adamantius (mmmm... shrimp fricassee...)

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