[Sca-cooks] Stuffed grape leaves

[Johnna Holloway]

To Make a Delma.
Take the Lean meat of Loyn of mutton and as much beef Suet,
shread it small as for force meat. Then put the smae quanity of
Rice boyld tender, season it with sweet herbs, salt & pepper, & a
little nutmeg; then mix it all together and brake in one or two
eggs according to the quantity of your meat. Then take Cabbage
or vine leaves and dip them in hot water, then role the meat in ye
leaves about the bigness of a small Cucumber, and tye them with
course thread, put them into a stewpan with gravey, put them over
 a gentle fire cover'd. Let them stew till they be thoroughly done,
then take them out and take off the thread, thicken the gravey
the yolk of an egg and pour it over your meat.  page 29.

The Receipt Book of Ann Blencowe. This is from the Adelphi Limited edition
from 1925 which I own. The manuscript carries a date of 1694, but Ann was
born in 1656 and married in 1675. I suspect that this was compiled for one
of her daughters upon a marriage. The mss remained in the family and the 
1925 edition
is the first time that it was published. There was another edition done 
later, but
it's not as nice as this one. Neither is very available.

You guys lucked out--- We are leaving in an hour for the War. I just 
signed on to check mail.

Johnnae llyn Lewis

lilinah at earthlink.net wrote: snipped

>> There is actually a recipe for stuffed vine leaves not long out of 
>> period
>> (ie. 60 years or so) in the English corpus. Lady Ann Blencowe, IIRC,
>> included them in her collection, headed 'To make a delma'. You can find
>> this quoted in Elisabeth Ayrton's 'Cookery of England'.
>
> SNIP If you find Lady Ann's recipe, could you post it, please? I'm 
> certainly curious...
> Anahita
>