[Sca-cooks] Evidence for non-boiled medieval meat

[Stefan li Rous]

Selene C. said:
> Thanks all. I feel better now, as well as better-armed.
Okay. If you wish to look further into the Florilegium for more evidence,

or simply wish to point the folks making those blanket statements there, here
are the files which are likely to have period recipes that cook various meats
by other than boiling:

birds-recipes-msg (20K)  5/18/01    Bird recipes. Squabs, pheasants, quail.
meat-rolled-msg   (20K)  2/ 7/02    Period dishes of meat rolled with a filling.

   (this one may include the rolled beef recipe that someone else mentioned)

p-marinating-msg   (4K) 10/31/01    Period marinating of meats.

   (you generally don't marinate meats you are going to boil)

ribs-msg          (10K)  6/30/02    Period rib recipes.

   (I guess you could boil ribs, but...)

roast-chicken-msg (39K)  8/31/00    Period and SCA baked or roasted chicken.
roast-meats-msg   (96K)  2/ 2/03    Hints and period recipes for beef roasts.
roast-pork-msg    (52K) 12/30/02    Cooking pork roasts. Medieval recipes.
steaks-msg        (13K) 11/14/00    Period grilled steaks. Descriptions.

   And this file gives the referance to the steaks being grilled in the Bayeux
Tapestry, that I couldn't find yesterday. And there is this quote:

> "Upon my soul, I haven't a scrap of bacon, and I haven't a cook to fry you
> steak and onions."
>
> Langland, "Piers Plowman", c. 1390.

And another I couldn't resist posting after seeing it. Certainly not a boiled
meat:

> "Original:
> To make Stekys of venson or bef.  Take Venyson or Bef & leche & gredyl
> it up brown; then take Vynegre & a litel verious <verjuice>, & a lytil
> Wyne, and putte pouder perpir ther-on y-now and pouder Gyngere; and
> atte the dressoure straw on pouder Canelle y-now, that the stekys be
> all y-helid ther-wyth, and but a litel sauce; & serve it forth.

And in a later message in reply to comments about this recipe:
> I think you are putting a modern definition to the term gredyl, when you
> consider this a pan.  In Middle English, a gredyl is a gridiron, a lattice
> work of iron straps or bars used for roasting.  The term appears to have
> been used interchangeably with gridirne.  I'm still researching the word
> trying to determine when the definition changed to mean a flat pan.
>
> The term derives from Old North French gredil and was probably introduced
> during the Norman Conquest.  Since the Bayeux Tapestry, shows a cook
> grilling meat on a gridiron, the technique was obviously in use in the 11th
> Century and possibly was more common than pan frying.

> Bear

Braised-Beef-art  (16K)  6/10/01    "Frankish Braised Beef - A Recipe from
                                        Anthimus' De obseruatione ciborum" by
                                        Lady Clotild of Soissons
Carbonadoes-art   (14K)  6/19/97    "Carbonadoes" by Adamantius. A medieval
                                        "barbecued" meat dish.

The files mentioned are all in the FOOD-MEATS section.

This is why I asked whether the individuals might have been saying meat was
only boiled in a particular time period or location or they whether they might
have been making the statement about a particular meat such as beef. There are
so many examples that run counter to the statement that "All meat was cooked
only by boiling" that it seems a preposterously broad blanket statement to
make. A lot of meat seems to have been boiled and then cooked by another
method, but even then there are a lot of recipes that seem to imply that no
boiling was involved at all.


Stefan
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas         StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****