[Sca-cooks] Pottery cooking A&S Report

[Christine Seelye-King]

-----Original Message-----
From: Christine Seelye-King [mailto:kingstaste at mindspring.com]
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2003 9:25 PM
To: kiraanna at madcelt.com
Subject: A&S Report


Dear Kiaanna,
	If this is too late for this report, hang on to it for the start of the
next one.  If it doesn't go out until next time, I'll try to get you copies
of the photos.  Sorry it took me so long.
Christianna

Art/Sci Report for Mistress Christianna MacGrain, 3rd Quarter, 2003

At Pennsic War XXXII I had the good fortune to be invited to cook food and
break pottery.  A group of potters from Aethelmarc had created a variety of
period cooking vessels.  Mistress Cori and THLady Honnoria of Thescorre were
having a class at the War that involved teaching folks how to make period
pottery, which was followed up by a period firing in a turf kiln.  A firebox
and flue were created ahead of time, and the results of the class were
stacked into a pyramid shape.  A turf covering was then piled on and around
the mound and fired by hardwood from 11AM until 1AM the next morning.
I was given 4 vessels to cook with.  A "pipkin", or small 3-footed pot that
would hold roughly 2 cups.  A frying pan with a hollowed-out handle, which
accomodated a long stick for use over the fire.  The other two vessels were
fish-bowl shaped (the sides came up farther than the horizontal, perhaps 3/4
of the way up), one holding approx. 1 1/2 quarts and the other approx. 2 1/2
quarts.  The smaller of the two had thicker sides.
The purpose of the experiment was to try out period recipes and cooking
methods, in the period-style pots, cooking over an open flames and with
coals.
The recipes I selected were as follows:

For the pipkin, I chose An Excellent Boiled Salad, from the English Huswife
book 2, p.40.  This recipe is for a dish of cooked spinach, and specifically
calls for it to be cooked in a pipkin.  We took coals from the fire and dug
a trench, where the pipkin sat and cooked slowly.

For the frying pan, I chose Duke Cariadoc's extrapolated recipe for oat
cakes taken from a late-period Scottish soldier's campaign description.  I
took the liberty of adding butter (an extravagance!) to the recipe to aid in
flavor and cooking.  The frying pan did well, but due to uneven heating, it
cracked in two, and then in several more pieces.  We continued to cook over
the broken pieces however, and learned a lot about what should be changed
for the next run of this particular piece.
The oat cakes were good, in the words of the King of Aethelmarc, "Mmm,
toasted granola".

For the smaller, heavier pot, I made a lamb tagine, combining two recipes:
Lamb, Prune and Butternut Squash Tagine (Adapted from Paula Wolfert) and
Lamb Mishmish, taken from al-Baghdadi's Cooking Manual.  This one got cooked
directly over the top of the kiln, as it was the hottest heat source.  None
of the potters knew of a reference to cooking over a kiln flue, but we
thought perhaps those tending to the kiln have probably always cooked their
lunch this way!  I used a smaller bowl to create a lid, which worked
wonderfully.

For the larger pot, I wanted to try another cooking method.  I chose Pommes
Dorre from Ancient Cookery- a 15th Century manuscript.  We tried heating the
water for boiling the meat balls with heated rocks.  This method would have
worked better if we'd had the right rocks.  Ours turned out to be mostly
sandstone, and we ended up with lots of rock crumbles in the bottom of the
pot.  It did get the water hot enough to cook with, but was slow and
less-than-successful.  We ended up cooking half of the meat balls over
pieces of the frying pan with much better luck.  After we had boiled the
first half, it was very clear why this recipe would call for endoring them
after they were cooked.  They were pale and ugly, something I'd never really
noticed when making them over a gas stove with modern equipment.  Covering
them with a golden glaze (which we didn't do, but is the 'Dorre' part of the
recipe) would have made them much more visually appetizing.  They were
tasty, regardles.

Everything was very tasty, the crew that had been stoking the kiln were very
thankful.  The potters were quite thrilled to see their wares being used,
and were quite pleased with the broken one for educational purposes.
Another cook and I thought that coating the bottoms of the pots with some
sort of lard or oil would have made clean-up of soot marks easy, but the
potters wanted the marks to stay.  In fact, the tajine pot was later entered
in an Aethelmarc A&S and won it's category.  I am told the soot marks made
the difference.  Cooks and potters have very different priorities!