[Sca-cooks] Marzipan sauce anyone? (was Re: An Evil Thought- Excercise in Intelligence)

[Daniel Myers]

On Sunday, June 1, 2003, at 06:46 PM, Avraham haRofeh of Sudentur wrote:

>>> I suspect it means the same as "temper" in cooking. Dialectical
>> differences,
>>> dontcha know.
>> OK... ;-)
>> What does "temper" mean?
>
> To mix two dissimilar liquids together. It has a couple of specialized
> applications, but that's the general meaning. In egg cookery,
> tempering eggs
> means heating them slowly by adding small amount of hot liquid, so
> that they
> don't curdle into scrambled eggs when added to the larger mass of hot
> liquid. In chocolate work, tempering refers to a process of heating and
> cooling the melted chocolate to as to give a nice satiny finish to the
> cooled solid chocolate.

While our dearest Avraham is correct, there are additional connotations
to the word as used in period cooking.  Terrence Scully had an essay in
"Food in the Middle Ages" (ISBN: 0-8153-1345-4) entitled "Tempering
Medieval Food" in which he spends 20 pages on just this topic.

His (well supported) conclusion is that the use of the word reflects
the "four humors" belief of the time.  Some ingredients would be too
sanguine or phlegmatic or whatever, and to bring its humors into proper
balance its aspects must be "tempered" by the aspects of a food with a
different (and somewhat opposite) balance of humors.

For example, if the humor of an ingredient is a "hot" one (like ginger
or pepper) it can be used to temper a "cold" humored substance (such as
pea puree perhaps) in order to make it "slightly warm" (which is
suitable for the consumption of humans, who themselves are supposed to
be "warm").

So while the word "temper" can be taken as "mix", it's good (maybe) to
remember that it may imply a philosophical reason for mixing the
specific ingredients.

How's that?

- Doc


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  Edouard Halidai  (Daniel Myers)
  http://www.medievalcookery.com/
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