[Sca-cooks] redaction help

[Alex Clark]

At 03:53 PM 9/16/2003 -0400, Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa wrote:
>Ok, so I'm going to work on redacting this recipe:
>
>A Jewish Dish of Chicken
>
>Clean the chicken and pound its entrails with almonds, breadcrumbs, a
>little flour, salt, fennel, and cut cilantro; beat it with six eggs and
>the amount of four pounds [?] of water.  Then put the chicken over the
>fire a little and place it in a clean pot with five spoonfuls of sweet
>oil, and do not stop stirring it over the fire in the oil until it is
>lightly browned.  Then make a mash of the stuffing prepared earlier and
>leave it until it is bound together and thickened.  Pour it out and put
>it around the stuffing, adorn with cut rue and fennel, buds of mint,
>and minced almonds, and present it, God willing.
>
>
>Stuffing:
>Chicken entrails (liver, heart, gizzard?)
>Almonds
>Breadcrumbs
>Flour
>Salt
>Fennel
>Cut Cilantro
>         (mashed together)
>6 eggs
>water?
>         (beat together)
>
>Brown the chicken (in pieces) in oil/fry the chicken in oil?
>Cook the stuffing until it is bound together (fried? baked? boiled?)
>Put the stuffing in a dish, arrange the chicken around it, and garnish
>with rue, fennel, mint and minced almonds?

The above is a pretty good redaction of the translated recipe, though if I 
were interpreting it I might prefer to work from a more exact redaction, 
something like this:

Stuffing:
Entrails from the chicken
Almonds
Breadcrumbs
A little flour
Salt
Fennel
Cut Cilantro
6 eggs
"Four pounds" water

Chicken:
One chicken, cleaned, entrails removed
"5 spoonfuls" oil

Garnish:
Cut rue
(Cut?) fennel
Buds of mint
Minced almonds

Grind all stuffing ingredients together except eggs and water.
Beat eggs and water into the stuffing mixture.
Brown the chicken in oil, stirring continuously.
"Leave" the stuffing until it is "bound together and thickened."
Put the stuffing in a dish, arrange the chicken around it, and garnish.

--------------------------------

Some questions and comments to consider when interpreting the recipe:
Measurements:
         What size chicken and giblets/entrails? Modern fryer? Other?
         What size eggs? Small? Medium? Other?
         "Pound" according to what standard of weights?
         What size spoon?
Which entrails are to be included?
Is the fennel leaves or seeds? I would guess leaves, because it's always 
listed next to another leaf.
Since the chicken is to be stirred with oil to cook, and then arranged 
around the stuffing, it does seem that it should be cooked in pieces.
Continuous stirring suggests that the oil-measuring spoon is not remarkably 
large (otherwise the heat would be well distributed with less frequent 
stirring).
The stuffing is left to thicken, seeming to imply that it is cooked, and 
that this is a passive process, without additional labor. Based on this 
instruction, it seems likely to have been baked.
The stuffing will have the chicken arranged around it, so it should be 
thick enough that it won't spread out in the dish.
Fennel can get pretty big--I would assume that both it and the rue are 
supposed to be cut, unless this means seeds.
Are "buds of mint" small leaves? Is this why there's no explicit 
instruction to cut them, or is that just how it was translated?
Almonds cut unevenly in all directions, or slivered? Raw, toasted, or blanched?
This is a meat dish, not to be served with, shortly before, or shortly 
after, kosher milk foods. (Kosher eggs are pareve, not dairy.)

Henry of Maldon/Alex Clark