[Sca-cooks] lent, wine, indulgences, de Nola

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> As for lamb, anyone got recipe recommendations?  Anything particularly
> springy, from pre-1550.  Most of the recipes I can think of are for
> mutton, not lamb.

Sabina Welserin, # 153 or #154, with #53:


153 To prepare an Easter lamb

Take the lamb and draw off the skin and leave him the ears and the feet and
the
tail , cover with a wet cloth, so that the hair does not burn. Roast the
whole
lamb in this manner in the oven on a board. And if you would like for it to
be
standing, then stick a spit into each leg. When it is almost roasted, then
baste
it with eggs and take it out. Let it cool, take a cloth that is three spans
long, fill it full of butter and bind it up and press it through with a
stick.
It gets crinkled like real wool, then take it and make wool out of it for
the
lamb. Stand it then on a nice board. Make a fence out of butter around it,
in
the manner which follows. [17]

53 To make a fence out of butter

Take butter or May butter and sugar, knead it in, so that it becomes sweet,
and
then take an icing bag and fence it around. The fence posts that go with it,
make from cinnamon sticks. Also there belongs inside the fence, roasted fish
or
whatever you have that is good.

154 A lamb of another sort

Make it exactly as the preceding description, cover it, however, with a
multicolored covering. It is made like so: Take eggs, put the whites
separate
from the yolks, beat the eggs, put some salt into it and sugar, take a pan,
put
pure fat into it, let it become hot, pour the fat completely out of the pan,
put
the egg white into it, let it run here and there around the pan, hold it
over
the fire, not too long, however, only until it begins to quiver. Afterward
hold
the pan on the fire, until it becomes dry, and hold it not too near, so that
it
remains white, and make in this way as many pancakes as you wish. Do not
make
them too thick, not thicker than a thin cloth. Afterwards make the yellow
ones
exactly like this, put saffron in the egg yolks. Brown is made precisely so,
take cherry jam strained through with the eggs and make pancakes out of it.
So
you have four colors, cover the lamb with them and cut the colors according
to
the length, as wide as you would like. After that take cinnamon sticks, make
small nails out of them, push them with the thick end into Strauben batter,
which should be yellow and fry them in fat, then they have buttons. If you
would
like, you can gild or silver them. Then take hard-cooked eggs and cut them
open
at the end, take the fried cinnamon sticks, stick them through the tips of
the
eggs and fasten the colors in the fashion on the lamb. And color half the
eggs
yellow and leave the others white. Make a fence from good spices around the
lamb, put the lamb on the board. After that take smoked meat, that is very
red,
cook it and cut off the outside. Chop it very small, then take eggs, cook
them
hard, cut them apart, the white from the yellow, chop each by itself, and
when
the lamb is ready, then put the white on one side of the board and the
yellow on
the opposite side, in one place or the other lay the whole hard-cooked eggs
on
it and also the pancakes, also if you have it or want it, honey. This lamb
is
better for eating than that described earlier. When the meat is prepared in
this
way, it does not become ugly and everything is edible except the board.

I have every intention of doing this recipe at some point for a feast-
anybody in EK who wants to cut me loose on it as part of their feast, let me
know. It's far to complicated for me to try to be Head Cook as well as do
this.

>
> Would rabbit be another thing to do for spring?

Well, it kinda depends. Rabbits are associated with Spring because of their
fertility and the whole Easter thing. It might be a slam to some folks to
associate the Easter Bunny and roast (or whatever) rabbit. If it were me,
I'd do rabbit at another time of year- they're fertile year round, and easy
keepers- they might also make a good dish for a hunting themed article.
>
> Yours,
>
> Katherine

Saint Phlip,
CoDoLDS

"When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
 Blacksmith's credo.

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....