[Sca-cooks] Mustards

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> I think the dried fruit would be good too, as it would concentrate the
> sweetness and keep the mustard from being watery.

Someone used dried cranberries in her mustard and liked it very much.

> Combining a prune sauce and a mustard sounds like a good combo.  I looked in
> the Florilegium for prune sauce, but didn't turn it up.  And I tried a few
> other google searches as well.  Is it under an old language spelling?

It's in The Medieval Kitchen by Redon et al. Googling Dried Plum Sauce
found it in someone's list of redactions-- here's the original:

"Translation: Take prunes and put them to soak in red wine, and remove the
pits; pound them very well with a few unskinned almonds and a little
roasted or grilled bread soaked in the wine where the prunes had been. And
pound all these things together with a little verjuice and the above
mentioned wine and a little boiled grape must, or sugar, which would be
much better; mix and strain, adding good spices, especially cinnamon. "

> Those grape and raisin ones sound tasty.  Do you find that white or red
> wine/verjuice is best from those ones in Platina.  The spice-raisin balls
> seem like a good food for travelers or campers as it would be easy to just
> get out the number of little spice balls that you needed from your container
> and would require minimal preparation at that point.  It occurred to me that
> this preparation is like jerky-for-spices.

I like red wine and white verjuice, the white wine mustards I've made seem
to turn pickle-ish over time.

BTW, my research indicates verjuice or must would be used in summer,
vinegar in fall and spring, and wine in winter because of the theory of
humors, but I think that info is from Scully's Medium Aevum article.

> Did you teach your mustard class again this year at Pennsic?  If so what
> were people's favorites?

Well, mostly I give them a bunch of things to try mixing together. Many of
them make lombard mustards but a bunch of them made the cinnamon mustard
from the Viander, as that is one of the ones I had available for them to
try. (I used 3 parts mustard to one part chinese cinnamon)

-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens
out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all
languages, not scrupling about diversities in manners, laws, and
institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but
recognizing that, however various these are, they all tend to one and
the same end of earthly peace." -- St.  Augustine of Hippo