[Sca-cooks] Re: cooker

[widener]

The 55 degree temperature comes from anecdotal incidents and living in the
Texas hills where German influence is great, as in Fredericksburg and
Kerrville. Every old farm here has a smoke house, some rock and some wood.
The fire is built outside the smokehouse and channeled in, there is no
cooking in this process, only smoking. The slaughter is always in the Fall
on the first of the cold days so that the meat is cooled. The ambient
temperature is hopefully in the 40's and 50's. There is no reference to
smoking being anti-bacterial but the US FDA says that it slows the rancidity
of meat. Also in South Texas there was a time when using a working old
refrigerator for smoking was the thing. You cut a hole in the top and bottom
and blew smoke in and kept the meat cool also. This is where the 55 degree
temp is sworn by as the best way to smoke. The smoke to our period is just a
flavor to add. Too much smoke has been known to affect some people adversely
in their digestion (stomach pains).
I would hazard that the smell of smoke in a medieval kitchen and enviroment
would be so prevelant as to use it as a flavor would be redundant. So the
use of smoke as a method to retard rancidity would be the major use.
Bro Stephon
----- Original Message -----
From: "Avraham haRofeh of Sudentur" <goldbergr1 at cox.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 12:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: cooker


> > I'm curious as to where the "55F" number originally came from.  What
> > references I've seen calls anywhere from 100F to 120F "cold-smoking" and
> > 150F to 200F "hot-smoking."
>
> Not that he's the be-all-and-end-all, but my favorite TV cook, Alton
Brown,
> uses 100F as the dividing line - cold-smoking is 80-100F, and hot-smoking
is
> anything over 100F.
>
> Avraham
>