[Sca-cooks] Generys' Feast/Rolls and butter

[Decker, Terry D.]

It is probably a condiment.  Most of the modern Moorish breads don't seem to
use fat in the making and the addition of fat to bread dough appears to be
something that is retained after it occurs.  And as with most of the
European sources, it is hard to tell how wide-spread the use of butter as a
condiment was.

Interestingly, butter mixed with barley flour appears to have been a common
condiment for bread in Ireland (not necessarily surprising given the cattle
based economy and the fact the Irish still produce a prodigious quantity of
butter and turn a nice profit smuggling it into Northern Ireland, unless the
recent EU unification has put a crimp in the trade).

Bear

> I also ran across a mention, in one section of the Anon. Andalusian
> cookbook (I've been spending a lot of time in it lately),
> that refers to
> some people's custom of using butter with their bread, although I
> remember thinking that it was unclear (to me, at least) if that was a
> reference to butter-as-ingredient or butter-as-condiment.
> --Maire
>
> Terry Decker wrote:
> >
> > There is evidence of butter being used as a condiment for
> bread, but the
> > extent of use is difficult to determine.  Flavored butters appear in
> > Elizabethean writings.  Honey butter appears only as a medicine.