[Sca-cooks] Re: Larded Milk

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Martha Oser:
>Hmm, interesting...  The recipes I have don't mention either lard or 
>vinegar or lemon juice.

The lard is the bacon, fresh or cured, added to the mix in some 
sources. Other recipes omit it and go to some lengths to achieve a 
multicolored, streaky effect, which may or may not be an attempt to 
recreate a bacony appearance. Which, given that most of the bacon in 
the world isn't the stripey stuff eaten in the US, seems unlikely. 
It's only comparatively recently that "lard" was interpreted to mean 
"rendered pork fat".

>   I was wondering how they got it to thicken.

Whole eggs, sometimes with wine added. Probably a slightly higher 
proportion of egg than is represented in the posted adaptation.

>  The recipes I've been looking at are from "Libellus de arte 
>coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book", edited and translated 
>by Rudolf Grewe and Constance Hieatt.  Published in 2001 at the 
>Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
>This book is a compilation of 4 cooking texts that date (I think) to 
>the 13th century - maybe 12th.  Someone who knows the book better 
>can correct me.
>The recipes are as follows:
>From Manuscript Q
>Recipe XVIII
>One should take fresh milk, and add to it beaten eggs, and add pork 
>meat cut into dice, and add to it ground bark (cinnamon) and 
>saffron, and let it boil all together.  Then take it up and let it 
>cool, and cover it well while it cools.  Then let all the water that 
>is therein strain off, and wring it in a cloth so that all that is 
>water runs off.  Afterwards cut it in slices, and place thin slivers 
>on a gridiron, and broil it there.  It is called "larded milk."
>From Manuscript W
>Recipe XVIII
>Next, one should take fresh milk, and add to it beaten eggs and 
>bacon, cut into small particles, and let it cook with crushed 
>saffron.  When it comes to a boil, one should place it over the 
>embers and cover the pot with a bowl.  Let the whey run out, and 
>squeeze it through a towel.  Slice the milk thus and roast it on the 
>grill; place reeds under it.  It is called "Larded Milk."
>Both of these manuscripts then also give directions for taking the 
>larded milk and wrapping it in a dough made of flour, saffron and 
>eggs and frying it to make what's called "gilded milk."
>So my newbie question then is am I missing some implied use of 
>something acidic in these recipes to make them congeal, or are the 
>original cooks simply relying on the thickening power of cooked eggs?
>-Helena

I get the feeling that A) eggs are the intended main curdling agent, 
and that B) the adaptation of the recipes as posted seems designed to 
move away from the egg-curdling technology and closer to a more 
recognizable panir/queso blanco product, which would be curdled with 
an acid. I suppose this allows for the use of fewer eggs, if that 
were ever an issue for some cooks, but otherwise I'm not sure why 
this was done. If experiments were done which suggested the mixture, 
made as instructed, didn't curdle properly, I'd look at both 
homogenized milk and rendered lard as likely culprits (the tendency 
of fat to prevent the formation of long protein chains is, 
supposedly, why it is called "shortening").

Adamantius
-- 
"As long as but a hundred of us remain  alive, never will we on any 
conditions be brought under English rule.  It is in truth not for 
glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are  fighting, but for freedom 
-- for that alone, which no honest man gives  up but with life 
itself."
	-- The Declaration of Arbroath, 1320

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