[Sca-cooks] Re: lettuce? (really long)

[Louise Smithson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2003, at 07:48 PM,
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
wrote:

> In the course of checking out what greens would be
available at a
> particular season, I found that Hill (Gardener's
Labyrinth, 1579?)
> suggests that you should do succession plantings of
lettuce so as to
> have
> it all season. Do the menus we have found indicate
that lettuce was
> used
> often in that time period?

On January 5th Doc wrote:
I did a quick search through "Two Fifteenth Century
Cookery Books" and didn't find any references to
lettuce.  "Curye on Inglysh" has lettuce appearing in
two recipes (see below) in one particular manuscript
of
"Form of Curye", however lettuce doesn't seem to be
mentioned in any of the other manuscripts, and 2
recipes out of 205 is not a high percentage.

My argument would be that absence of a recipe does not
mean absence of service.  I own a copy of a 16th C
Italian cook book (Scappi) that has over 500 recipes,
not a single one for salad.  And yet when you look at
the menus (over 125) every evening meal starts with at
least two salad dishes.
On April 8th: salad of lettuce and borage flowers,
salad of asparagus
On May 8th: salad of lettuce and borage flowers, salad
of cucumber and onion
June 8th: salad of lettuce and borage flowers, salad
of mixture of herbs
July 8th: salad of greens of many sorts,
August 8th: no salads this month but chopped melon is
served
Sept 8th: Salad of lettuce and borage flowers, salad
of mixed herbs, melon
Oct 8th: endive salad, carrot salad, chicory salad
Nov 8th: salad of lettuce, salad of cooked carrots,
Dec 8th: endive salad, cooked carrot salad, maccaroni
salad
Jan 8th: salad of greens and other things cooked and
raw
Feb 8th: cooked and raw salads of many sorts
March 8th: salad of cooked greens of many sorts, raw
salad of greens of many sorts.

(there are more, this is just a sampling of the ten
menus given per month, but you get the idea)

Now this isn't the same country as Hill (I also have
that one) but he plagarized much of his information
from (in his own words) "a learned cardinal and
philosopher, named ferdinanadus ponzettus, out of the
arabians, greeks and ancient phisitions of the latine
tungue, and nowwe englished by me"

An idea about salad in England in the 16th century can
be gained from Giacomo castelvetro's treatsie on the
fruit, herbs and vegetables of Italy written for Lucy,
Countess of Bedford with whom he was staying.
(Translated into english and avaialble as The Fruit,
Herbs and Vegetables of Italy, Translated with an
introduction by Gillian Riley, Viking Press, British
Museum, Natural History, 1989, ISBN 0-670-82724-X)

"It takes more than good herbs to make a good salad,
for sucess depends on how they are prepared.  So,
before going any further I think I should explain
exactly how to do this.  It is important to know how
to wash your herbs and then how to season them.  Too
many housewives and foreign cooks get their greenstuff
all ready to was and put it in a bucket of water or
some other pot, and sloshe it about a little, and
then, instead of taking it out with their hands, as
they ought to, they tip the leaves and water out
together, so that all the sand and grit is poiured out
with them.  Distinctly unpleasant to chew on... So,
you must first was your hands, then put the leaves in
a bowl of water, and stir them round and round, then
lift them out carefully. Do this at least three or
four times, until you can see that all the sand and
rubbish has fallen to the bottom of the pot.  Next,
you must dry the salad properly and season it
correctly.  Some cooks put their badly washed, barly
shaken salad into a dish with the leaves so drenched
in water that they will not take the oil, which they
should to taste right.  So I insist that first you
must shake your salad really well and then dry it
thoroughly with a clean llinen cloth so that the oil
will adhere properly.  Then put it into a bowl in
which you have previouslly put some salt and stir them
together, and then add the oil with a generous hand,
and stir the salad again with clean fingers or a knife
and fork, which is more seemly, so that each leaf is
properly coated with oil. Never do as the Germans and
other uncouth nations do - pile the badly washed
leaves, neither shaken or drried, up in a mound like a
pyramid, then throw on a little salt, not much oil and
far too much vinegar, without even stirring.  And all
this is done to produce a decorative effect, where we
Italians would much rather feast the palate than the
eye.
You English are even worse; after washing the salad
heaven knows how, you put the vinegar in the dish
first, and enough of that for a footbath for Morgante,
and serve it up, unstirred with neither oil nor salt,
which you are supposed to add at table.  By this time
some of the leaves are so saturated with vinegar that
they cannot take the oil, while the rest are quite
naked and fit only for chicken food."

One has to gather from this that he was served salads
in England and had some very strong opinions. So we
could conclude to make a salad for a 16th C English
feast we should:
Make sure that there is plenty of grit in the greens,
don't drain them and then drown them in vinegar.
Personally I prefer them the Italian way:-)

Hope this helps, they are not English menus though.
But I don't know of any English source that has a list
of menus quite as complete as the ones I have from
Italian sources.

Helewyse


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