[Sca-cooks] RECIPE: To boile pie meate

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Kirrily Robert:
>I avoided the suet and didn't use much butter, because it was quite
>fatty enough.  Adding extra fat would be revolting to almost any modern
>person eating it.  Perhaps a leg of mutton minced by hand would be less
>fatty than commercial ground lamb?

Commercial ground lamb may be made from scraps, high in fat but not
necessarily the kind of hard fat that stands up well to cooking
without simply turning into grease. Think of the period sausage
recipes that talk of using lean meat plus added fat of a specific
kind, rather than simply a fatty cut. I think this is a similar
situation. I would think a proportion roughly similar to sausage meat
might work pretty well, if you use suet rather than random scrap fat.

>Although the name of this recipe is "pie meate" there is nothing
>particular to suggest it should go into a pie.  I suppose it might be
>one of those things that the Elizabethan reader simply would have known.
>But I find it to be quite tasty on its own, and I rather like it that
>way.

Maybe this is a faux pie, something that would once have been served
in a pie with the crust discarded, and this version simply omits it.
Either way, it doesn't look too different from a late-period
mincemeat filling.

>The recipe also says to "boil" or "seeth" the meat with the suet and
>butter.  If you have enough fat for this, the dish is revolting, as
>mentioned above.  Really.  Trust me on this.

Maybe. We need to remember that these recipes are the way they are
for a reason, and even if it's necessary to change them to suit our
needs, we should remember England was colder then, and houses were
designed and heated differently than they are now. A significantly
higher-fat diet than we're used to, for the wealthy, at least,
wouldn't be unreasonable, but then the meat doesn't need to be
submerged in liquid fat for it to boil in butter; it's probably more
like simmering the meat in the foaming, melting butter, and then it
probably produces a little of its own juice as this happens.

Adamantius
--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER