[Sca-cooks] scavenger hunt game

[Christina Nevin]

Rules:
Find cited references to answer the questions. (No need to type the whole
recipe, just give the recipe title, source, & pertinent part of the recipe.)
Give yourself one point for each recipe source found. Multiple citations
count for extra points.
Recipes without proper citation don't count.
Person with highest total points wins.
(No fair copying someone else's answers!)

14 Questions:

1- Find an arrow being used in a recipe.
Not an actual human-edible recipe, but a recipe for poison to put on an
arrow to kill game - Le Managier de Paris, Janet Hinson (ed)
"POISONS TO KILL DEER OR BOAR. Take the root of the electuary herb which has
blue flowers, and grind in a mortar and put in a bag or cloth and press out
the juice: and put this juice in a bowl in the sun, and during the night
keep it covered securely so that neither water nor other liquid can get in
it, and keep putting it out in the heat of the sun until it gets glutinous
and holds together like gummed wax, and put it in a tightly closed box. And
when you want to shoot your bow, put some between the iron barbs and tubular
casing of the arrow so that when the beast is struck, it will strike and
contact the flesh, for if you do it otherwisely, that is to say if you
anoint the metal differently, when it enters the beast's hide, the ointment
will stay in the skin, and the blow will fail."


2- Give examples of illusion foods that are supposed to come out looking
like worms.
Two C.15th Cookbooks; Fruit hasselets is figs and dates etc fried to look
like entrails, but worms? Never seen that one.


3- Find examples of words or letters being shaped in or on the food.
Seen examples of this in C.17th books, but can't think of anything from
pre-1600.


4- Find instructions, in a recipe collection, for revenging oneself upon
another cook.
Write a review of their book comparing them to Martha Stewart? <eg>


5- Find a recipe which uses a whole scrotal bag.
Chicken Roll - Platina: recipe for a roll of chicken livers, whole chicken
testicles and sour cherries (can't remember the number).
I know we also had a conversation with Nanna and Ras about this for lamb or
bull testicles - can't remember which, and darned if I can remember the
recipe either!


6- Give the most obsequious salutation you've ever found in a recipe book.
Platina is fairly unctuous (and highly amusing) in parts, but I don't have
him with me at work so can't specify.


7- Find a recipe,  not a pie, that "fences-in" or encloses a pre-cooked
beastie.
Hmm, difficult, only thing I could think of was Form of Curye: Chastletes,
p.142-3
"Chastletes. Take and make a foyle of gode past with a rollere of a foot
brode, & lynger by cumpas. Make iiii coffyns of |>e self past vppn |>e
rollere |>e gretnesse of |>e smale of |>yn arme of vi ynche dep; make |>e
gretust in |>e myddell. Fasten |>e foile in |>e mouth vpwarde, & fasten |>e
o|>ere four in euery side..."
which might be considered a very complex pie, though not a singular one and
the construction is interesting. Parma Tarts - Taillevent, #180 is similar.


8- Most creative use of a straw in a medieval recipe.
Daz buouch von guter spise, 39, as a strainer
"A good filling....Pour all in a pan and hold it over the fire. And add
thereto an egg shell full of wine, and stir it well and (so) that it is
boiled. Take a good servant-cloth and lay it on clean straw. And pour
thereon the milk, until it drops well over that (Probably means until the
whey runs out.), (and) which then stays on the towel. Therefrom make a
cheese..."


9- Strangest recipe made with a whole fish.
I think this is horribly fiddly and pretty odd: Stuffed pike - Sabina
Welserin
"Stuffed pike is made like so: Cut the pike open a little along the side,
put a knife into it and cut out the large bones at the neck and peel the
skin off of the pike, so that the skin remains whole. Then take the pike and
remove the bones, chop the flesh, put milk into it and carp blood, and
season it and stuff it again into the skin, yet the head and tail remain on
the skin. Do not oversalt it and sew it closed again with coarse silk and
roast it on a grill. And when it is roasted, then draw the string out
again."


10- You were inattentive & your food has burned. Give examples of "saving
that dish!
Burnt soup - Le Managier de Paris, Janet Hinson (ed)
"To remove burn from a soup, take a fresh pot and put your soup in it, then
take a little leaven and tie it in a white cloth, and throw it in your pot,
and do not let it stay long."


11- Give a dish that is only served on one day of the year.
Shrove Tuesday doughnuts - Sabina Welserin
"173 How Shrove-Tuesday doughnuts are made in Nuremberg
Grate Parmesan cheese or any other cheese which is quite dry. Beat eggs into
it and also mix a little good wheat flour with it so that the doughnuts do
not become too crisp from the cheese. Make the dough firm enough that it
does not run. After that make an egg dough as for a tart, make long narrow
flat cakes and with a spoon lay a small lump of cheese dough, as large as
you would like to have it, in the middle of the flat cake and wrap it over.
And with both thumbs press each heap well into the flat cake forming a small
bun, then cut it off with a small metal blade. When you would fry them, you
should not let the fat become too hot, instead just after it has melted, lay
quite a few of them in the pan, fry them slowly. Shake the pan, then they
will become like marbles."


12- Give examples of everyday items being simulated with food. (Ex.- cups,
saucers, pots of flowers.)
Sugar plate - Goud Kokery, 13 "To make suger plate. Etc."
and
The Good Hus-wives Jewell, Thomas Dawson
"To make a past of Suger, whereof a man may make al manner of fruits, and
other fine things, with their forme, as Plates, Dishes, Cuppes and such like
thinges, wherewith you may furnish a Table."


13- Give any recipe using fennel. (aniseed - yuck!)
Salat - Forme of Cury, 84
"Take persel, sawge, grene garlec, chibolles, oynouns, leek, borage, myntes,
porrettes, fenel, and toun cressis, rew, rosemarye, purslarye; laue and
waische hem clene."


14- Find a recipe that excites lust.
Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina  - Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti,
p.114
"Hen's eggs are preferable to all other eggs; they are a rapid restorative,
they are comforting, they increase the male sperm, and reinvigorate the
sexual act..."



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