[Sca-cooks] Brawn in peuerade - Pre-Redaction Questions

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Barbara Benson:
>In the first you are just par-boiling the
>onions in water and the second you are par-boiling in the vinegar
>and cinnamon. That would make a big difference. I was thinking that
>the pureed onion would thicken the sauce, but the "lykour" should do
>that just fine. I was also worried that by boiling the onions in
>vinegar there would be way too much vinegar. But if the straining is
>just to remove the onions from the liquid then the vinegar that the
>onions retain should not be too overpowering.

Probably not. On the other hand, we don't know for sure how strong
the vinegar used was; there was no standard 5% acidity thing in
force. But I did feel that starting with vinegar to cover, cooking
over a flame as the recipe suggests, then draining the whole onions
before adding them to the main pottage would be closer to the
original recipe. If nothing else, it could easily be a part of a
modern recipe synthesized from both of the period ones quoted, so
unless it's a total coincidence that both call for onions to be used
in a similar but not identical way (like the meat that seems to be
used in more or less a similar fashion, ditto the broth), it seems
like pretty compelling circumstantial evidence.

>The other major difference, I believe is the, pre-roasting of the
>meat. The "auter" recipe emphasizes "Fresh" meat andthe first just
>says meat.

This is presumably a humoral thing; the salt meat is hotter and dryer
than the fresh meat (especially pork), so you'd be soaking and
blanching the salt meat to make it cooler and moister in nature (as
well as more palatable), while fresh raw meat (especially pork ;-)  )
would be _relatively_ cool and moist, so the pre-roasting would take
any harmful edge off those qualities. Even though the second recipe
doesn't clearly specify it, I think there's a good chance it allows
for the option of using relatively lean salt pork, or something akin
to corned pork or beef. The vinegar might also mask that
lactobacillus tang that corned meats tend to have, making it a little
less obvious that the meat is not fresh. [No, I'm not talking about
overspicing and rotten meat here ;-)  ]

>So I am guessing it is telling you to soak the meat if it has been
>preserved. I will be using fresh meat (of course) so I do not think
>this is an issue.

I assume not, but note that the methods both recipes advocate for
[probably] medical as well as esthetic reasons just happen to
coincide with what we would do today for esthetic reasons: soaking
salt meat and browning fresh meat.

>Finally, the first recipe calls for ginger while the second calls
>for saffron, salt and the wine, bread, vinegar mixture. Another big
>difference I would think.

Jess. I was interested to see that (as far as I can remember) neither
recipe seems to mention pepper as an especially predominant spice in
a sauce named for pepper.

>As far as me saying beef, this is for a specific event, and I
>already have more pork than I should. I was going on the assumption
>that Brawn = meat and that I could have a bit of a fudge factor. I
>would think that there was a high possibility that they would be
>talking about mutton, but I agree it should probably be pork. Do you
>think beef is to far of a stretch?

I guess not. I'd prefer to simply use another recipe that clearly
calls for another meat than pork, just in case, but I don't think
there'd be any dire consequences of using beef in this.

>Thank you for talking me through this. It really helps!

The hive mind is better than one head ;-). Well, sometimes... anyway,
my pleasure!

Adamantius