[Sca-cooks] Re: Food Poem

[Marian]

I've got the time to read my sca-cooks backlog because the
internet is down.  I can't find my paper dictionary, and the
online one is obviously inaccesible.

Cindy Renfrow quoted this piece of poetry:

> "Accept, I beg, this tray of wicker made
> With serried cups symmetrically laid;

What are serried cups?

> Whate'er yon red and yellow bowls contain
> The man of taste will surely not disdain
> Here kamakh is of flowering tarragon,

[1] discussed in another post

> Here capers grace a sauce vermilion

[2] I was brainstorming with my dad, the only thing we can come
up with that might make a nice vermillion sauce would be
pomegranates.  Anybody have any other ideas for what might make
a period red sauce?

> Whose fragrant odours to the soul are blown
> Like powder'd musk in druggist's fingers strewn.

I just really like this line ... <smile> <sigh>

> Here, too, sweet marjoram's delicious scent
> With breath of choicest cloves is richly blent;

[3] I'm thinking this is a seperate dish from capers, and also
seperate from cinammon.

> While cinnamon, of condiments the king,
> Unblemished hue, unrivalled seasoning,
> Like musk in subtle odour rises there,
> Tempting the palate, sweetening the air.

[4] If it were me, I'd make candied cinammon for this dish.  Any
other ideas?

> Here crowns the bowl fresh-gathered savory,

[5] Another seperate dish, maybe just fresh gathered savory,
maybe savory on top of something ...

> Rival to musk and pitch in fragrancy;

That is seriously fragrant for herbs!

> Here pungent garlic greets the eager sight
> And whets with savour sharp the appetite,

[6] We found fried garlic (ingredients: garlic, oil) at the Han
ah Reum pan-Asian grocery store.  Good Duck brand.  My family
happens to be the kind of weirdos who eat it straight from the
container.  I would serve just a bowl of the fried garlic chips
for this.

> While olives turn to shadowed night the day,

[7] Obviously black olives.  I would lean heavily to kalamata
oil cured olives (the small wrinkly really dark ones) because I
really like their intense flavor.  Since you (or at least me)
can't eat very many of them at one sitting, I would try to find
some other dark olives for variety.

> And salted fish in slices rims the tray.

[8] I wonder what fish would be appropriate for this?  And can
the fish be smoked as well as salted?

> Behold thereon the onion's argent frame
> Like silver body filled with inward flame;

[9] Presumably one of those varietals of onions with the pale
purply color outside.  Never seen an argent framed onion
though.  Comments? Ideas?

> There circles of horse-radish garnished are
> With meat, and plend their tang with vinegar -

[10] Horse radish garnished with meat?!  I would read this the
other way around, especially since ...

> Meat that, in slices white and scarlet laid,
> Like gold and silver coin is arrayed.

this seems to mean that there is rather a bit of meat laid out.
Just my reading of it of course.

The only cooked meat I can think of that is scarlet after
cooking is corned beef.  Might this be raw and cooked meat
together?  Some other type of pickled meat?

> From every corner, gloriously bright,
> A star doth gleam with dawn's refulgent light:
> So might a garden flower in turn be kissed
> By sun and moon, by radiance and mist."

This seems a strange attachment to the poem, since it isn't
about food.  Not knowing anything about Islam, I am going to
assume that this means something like putting candles or small
oil lamps on the corners of the tray...

-M