[Sca-cooks] Interesting Charles Perry article in Wednesday's LA Times food section

[Huette von Ahrens]

How to sieve a chicken

Two Englishmen restore royal kitchens and test
16th century recipes. Who would have thought the
best place for their research would be
California?
 
By Charles Perry, Times Staff Writer

If you've seen a sword-fight scene lately, you 
may have seen the Palace Kitchen Boys. As a way 
of understanding palace kitchens and their times,
they've studied swordsmanship, so these days
they're also on call for movies and TV.

If being cooks-sword fighters sounds like a
stretch, it won't be the only thing about Marc
Meltonville and Richard Fitch that does. What
these two Englishmen do as coordinators of the
Historic Kitchens Project goes way beyond 
dressing up for a Renaissance Faire. For the last
decade or so, they've been restoring historic
English royal kitchens in all their former
functionality. Which means not only learning to
fence but also reviving 16th century recipes.

We caught up with them at the end of January when
they were in Pasadena researching 16th century
English cookbooks at the Huntington Library.

Why did they come to California for that? "It
turned out the Huntington Library had all but two
of the books we were looking for," said
Meltonville. "It was actually easier than chasing
all around Europe to find them." In fact, they
found a few books here they didn't even know
existed.

Their home base is Hampton Court Palace, Henry
VIII's huge "party palace" on the Thames, built 
in 1525. "Its kitchen now looks exactly as it did
in Henry's time," boasted Meltonville, "as if the
cooks had walked out a few moments ago."

This year is the 400th anniversary of the Hampton
Court Conference, the gathering of religious
scholars presided over by James I that led to the
King James translation of the Bible. In 1604,
James had just ascended to the English throne
after the death of his aunt, Elizabeth I. He had
already been king of Scotland for 35 years.

"So the question is," said Meltonville, "did 
James bring any changes to English cookery? Did 
he introduce Scottish dishes? Did he bring French
influences, because of the old alliance of France
and Scotland? Did he make no changes?"

In England, James I is remembered as a dour,
pompous bore. "But it turns out that when he came
to England, he became a party boy," Meltonville
said. "He had many banquets."

The Palace Kitchen Boys test period dishes at
Hampton Court — using heirloom fruit and 
vegetable varieties, archaic cheeses and so 
forth, of course. Unfortunately for the public,
they don't serve the food at the kitchen (which 
is open to visitors only a few weeks a year, this
year from April 9 to 19, followed by weekends
through the end of May), though they'll probably
end up publishing a cookbook. Trying out recipes
is just part of their job of finding exactly how
the kitchens worked.

In their quest for authenticity, they use 
utensils modeled after period examples, made out
of the exact materials available at the time and
by the exact techniques. All their glasses are
made in Prague, Czech Republic, for instance,
because Renaissance Italian techniques are still
used there.

They decided to start wearing period clothes when
cooking, making them from traditional woolen
broadcloth colored with period dyes. "One thing
we've found," says Fitch, "is that old dyes
weren't colorfast. Beer turns the purple into
violet; heat makes some colors fade. Some clothes
get permanent stains that can't be removed." They
were excited to discover an old book on taking 
out stains at the Huntington.

This nerdy purism has led to real discoveries.

"We've found that bronze utensils cook
beautifully," said Meltonville. "Certainly,
they're immensely heavy, but if you were the 
king, that was no concern of yours.

"And when you need to fry onions really dark
brown, you have to do it in iron. Stainless steel
pans never get them as dark. And mincing meat
really fine with a knife gives meatballs a much
finer texture than grinding.

"The oddest thing we've found was an instruction
in a Victorian cookbook to rub a chicken through 
a sieve — a raw chicken. It turns out that when
you do it, you get a perfectly smooth purée for
making quenelles, and all the skin and fat and
tendons end up in a neat ball inside the sieve."

That discovery shows one reason why Meltonville —
a historian of ceramics — and Fitch — a leather
worker — were chosen to research recipes: They
aren't trained cooks. So they aren't tempted to
assume an ancient recipe couldn't possibly mean
what it says. They follow recipes literally, no
matter how crazy they may look.

And they pay attention to the kind of detail a
practical cook would ignore as a matter of 
course. For instance, 18th century cookbooks
include very detailed diagrams of how dishes
should be arranged on the table. "There would be
footmen standing behind you to make sure
everything was made symmetrical again after
anybody served himself," Meltonville said.

"But when the table was 6 or 7 feet across to 
hold all this food — how did the diners possibly
reach it? We still haven't figured this out."

So what are the best dishes their research has
turned up so far?

"One of our greatest discoveries is the luxury of
real roasted meat," said Meltonville. "Meat
roasted on a spit over a wood fire comes out
wonderfully moist, with a nice brown crust. And 
it works with cuts you wouldn't expect, such as
flank steak.

"Of course, it was a way of showing off how rich
you were. It needed fresh meat and a big, 
wasteful wood fire with plenty of people to tend
it."

Another one of the Palace Kitchen Boys' 
favorites is split peas boiled for three or four
hours, then enriched with a whole lot of butter.
"It's better than mashed potatoes," Meltonville
said.

In fact, it tastes a bit like mashed potatoes,
particularly with all that butter. Ground celery
seed (if indeed that is what is meant by "fine
powder of March" — "march" is an old name for 
wild celery) adds a wild, herbal flavor that cuts
the stodginess of split peas.

Perhaps this is, at last, the proverbial pease
porridge hot.

*

Split pea toast points

Total time: 3 hours, 15 minutes

Servings: 10 to 12

Note: This is adapted from a recipe "For white
peas pottage" from Thomas Dawson's "Good Huswifes
Juwell" (1596), which asks the reader to "Take a
quart of white Pease or more, and seethe them in
fair Water, close, until they do cast all their
husks, the which cast away as long as any will
come up to the top. And when they be gone; then
put into the Pease two dishes of Butter, and a
little Vergious, with Pepper and Salt, & a little
fine powder of March. And so let it stand till 
you will occupy it, and serve it upon sops. You
may see the Porpoise and Seal in your pease,
serving it forth two pieces in a dish."

If you don't have any porpoise or seal meat, 
don't worry; it's optional. Verjuice, unripe 
grape juice, is available at gourmet shops and
Middle Eastern markets, or substitute lemon 
juice.

5 cups water

1 (1-pound) bag yellow split peas (2 1/3 cups)

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cut into pieces

3 tablespoons verjuice

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3/4 teaspoon ground celery seed or to taste

6 slices white sandwich bread

1. Bring the water to boil in a large saucepan.
Add the split peas and return to a boil. Lower 
the heat and simmer, covered, until the peas have
become a purée, about 2 to 3 hours. Remove the 
lid from time to time and stir. Add more water if
necessary to prevent scorching.

2. When the peas are done, stir in the butter 1
tablespoon at a time. Stir in the verjuice (or
lemon juice), salt, pepper and ground celery 
seed.

3. Toast the bread and cut off the crusts. Cut
into triangles. Spoon the peas over the toast
points and serve hot.

Each serving: 370 calories;

14 grams protein; 38 grams carbohydrates; 
0 fiber; 19 grams fat; 12 grams saturated fat; 
50 mg. cholesterol; 313 mg. sodium.


=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.

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