[Sca-cooks] period deep frying

[Stefan li Rous]

Nancy Kiel asked:
> I thought that deep fat frying (submerging food completely in fat) was a
> modern technique.  When did it first come into use?  And if you were deep
> fat frying, wouldn't you use a down-hearth set-up, with a "burner" of coals
> separate from the main fire, rather than putting all that fuel directly over
> the fire?

You can deep fry easy enough over flames. You just have to be careful not
to get the oil too hot. I cooked donuts this way back in my Boy Scout days.
However, coals are probably better since they are more predictable.

Yes, there were definitely fried foods in period. Were some of these
"deep fried"? In part the answer depends upon your definition of "deep
fried". Do you mean eight inches of oil in a pan? Or just enough that the
food item floats in the oil?

Generally there aren't any recipes that give direction on how much oil
to use. However, some of the dishes would seem to work better deep fried
than frying with just enough oil to surround the food with the items still
sitting on the pot bottom.

We have discussed this here previously, although I don't think we came to
a definative answer. My feeling still is that, in period, oil was expensive
and there were better uses for it than deep frying. You can only deep fry
so long before the oil breaks down. I believe it was Ras and I who were
arguing this previously. I am willing to concede that there was some
deep frying because some dishes seem to work better with this, but I still
don't think it was common.

One of the comments in my book on the history of Cod, (It's not in my database
and I can't find it right now) was that "fish and chips" became popular in the
19th century because with the creation of industrial oil processing and
vegetable oils, it became a cheap food for the lower classes. And since they
were now living in urban areas and had less time than in the agricultural
economy, there was additional push to pick up something cooked elsewhere
rather than cook something on often limited facilities at home.



A few of the files in the Florilegium on period fried foods include:

cooking-oils-msg  (50K)  9/19/02    Period cooking and food oils.

fried-cheese-msg   (9K)  8/20/02    Period fried cheese recipes.
fried-foods-msg   (33K)  1/ 4/01    Medieval fried foods. Recipes.
frittours-msg     (45K)  1/ 8/02    Period fried breaded foods. Recipes.

Someone else said frittours needed to be deep fried. I don't believe that is

the case.

These files are in the FOOD section. In the FOOD-BREADS section:

French-Toast-art  (27K)  3/31/00    "From Lost Bread to French Toast" by
                                        Christianna MacGrain.
French-Toast-msg  (28K) 12/14/02    Period French Toast. Recipes.
fried-breads-msg  (28K) 12/29/02    Period fried breads. Funnel cakes, donuts.

French Toast doesn't need deep frying. I'm not sure donuts need it. Funnel

cakes might, but only an inch or two.


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 ****