Period cheese casserole (was Re: [Sca-cooks] oop-perioid-recipe cheese pie)

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

On 12 Sep 2002, at 23:29, Pat "Mordonna" Griffin wrote:

> My mother never throws out ANYTHING.  In a recent attempt to clean out
> her freezer, I found lots of little baggies of leftover slices of
> bread, and cheese.  All kinds of bread and cheese.  White bread, rye
> bread, pumpernickle, oat bread, provolone, extra sharp cheddar,
> mozzarella, swiss, even a bit of muenster.  My solution?
>
> Cheese Pie
> 2 cups toasted bread cubes
> 2 cups shredded cheese
> 2 Tbs. butter
> 2 cups milk (more or less)
> 1 tsp. salt
> 1 tsp. black pepper
[snip]

You weren't that far off from period practice.  If you'd used toasted slices of
bread, and broth instead of milk, it would have been a period recipe.  Nola's
recipe for Lombardy Sops is a bread-cheese casserole:

SOPAS A LA LOMBARDA
Make broth from good meat which should be quite fat; and cast much
saffron into it, that it should be quite yellow and very deep in color; and the
broth should be well-salted; and then take slices of bread, removing the
crust, and toast them and scrape off the burnt part, and scald these sops
with the said broth; and when they are scalded, place them in an iron
casserole, making a layer of sops and another layer of buttery cheese of
Parma, or of Aragon, or of Navarra; and so fill all the casserole; when it is
full, set it on the fire to cook over good coals or in the oven, and cook it little
by little; and as it cooks, cast in that broth, from time to time, fatty and
yellow, by spoonfuls inside the casserole, sprinkling it over the sops; and
when it is more than half cooked, cover the casserole or frying pan with an
iron lid which should be laden with coals on top; and cook it in this way for
an hour, looking and ascertaining occasionally that it should not dry up too
much, and that it should be well supplied with said broth, which should be
the fattest; and when you put it on the table, do it in such a manner that
they go dry. And having done this, prepare dishes or if you wish to make
plates of them, let it be as you wish.


Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
rcmann4 at earthlink.net