[Sca-cooks] scavenger hunt game

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>On 14 Feb 2002, at 20:27, Olwen the Odd wrote:
>
>>  >>10- You were inattentive & your food has burned. Give examples of
>>  >>"saving
>>  >that dish!"
>
>>  Hmm.  This is a reference about "if it should taste of smoke" found in
>>  both the 'Starch' and the Royal Broad Beans in de Nola.  Does that
>>  count? Olwen
>
>I think the same technique is also found in Le Menagier de Paris.

Yep. Just about the first thing he says in the actual cookery section
is that bit about not stirring or scraping up from the bottom of the
pot, but rather just dumping your pottage into a fresh pot, leaving
the stuff that sticks to the bottom behind. That's always been a very
nearly spiritual experience for me: SCA cooks with their big, cheap
pots _very_ frequently burn rice or beans, etc., and it's as if Le
Menagier could see us through some kind of time-travel telescope. It
is perhaps the most personally affecting passage in all of medieval
culinary literature, AFAIAC; the best reminder I have ever found of
my kinship with cooks of hundreds of years ago.

I _think_ he follows (or is it Taillevent?) with a passage about
removing the burnt taste (once you've actually  saved your pottage
from burning) with a bag of yeast (barm or sourdough, presumably).

Adamantius