[Sca-cooks] scavenger hunt game

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>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!)

Note, then, that the longer you wait to post, the smaller proportion
of your intended answers will be viable, because they may already be
taken... so...

>
>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."

Failing this, for reasons stated above, isn't there a subtlety
somewhere with a stag that bleeds when you push the arrow further
into it?

>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.

There's a German recipe for peas extruded to look like worms, either
in Guter Spise or Welserin... I'm not aware, offhand, of a second
example.

>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.

Jumbles/Ciamboles are sometimes formed into letter shapes, and there
are numerous subtleties which involve writing on them. Then there's
the cure for a mad dog's bite in Le Menagier, which involves writing
a charm on a slip of parchment, which I think gets used as a
poultice...

>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>

Find them? Don't know where, offhand, but I recall instructions on
making cooked meat look raw (i.e. red). Cindy could be referring to
that.

>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!

Oh, there are plenty of testicle recipes, but I don't recall seeing
any involving the sack in question.

>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.

Oh yeah, he sucks up to Martino big time... I rather like Chiquart,
who doesn't exactly suck up [much], but gives the distinct impression
of being extremely magnanimous in spending his time talking to _you_,
and who also, at times, resembles Caesar in The Gallic Wars. "I,
Chiquart, having told you how to make the filling, will now tell you
how the pastry is to be made..." or words to that effect.

>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.

And then there's the fence of butter & the Easter lamb which Phlip mentioned...

>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..."

I like the English 14th-century one (Forme of Cury?) that tells you
to use a reed (it uses the word, pen, actually) to blow up the skin
of a chicken or capon. Peking Chicken...

>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."

Chiquart has one (IIRC) for a whole pike "cooked" in three ways:
basically it's roasted, with one section covered so it doesn't brown,
and basted so it looks boiled, one section roasted, and one section
roasted and basted with oil so it looks fried. I _think_ it's
Chiquart.

>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

><snip>

>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."

Also the 14th-century English ones for a forcemeat cooked in pots and
sacks, later removed and glazed to look like the pots and the sacks...

>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."

There's also fenkel in brewet, or is it fenkel in soppes... among others...

>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..."

See also medical literature regarding beans (apparently flatulence
excites lust -- these people need to get lives!). I also vaguely
recall a couple of Italian recipes that specifically refer to
such-and-such a dish being for a waning libido. And some of them are
based on eggs...

Adamantius