[Sca-cooks] [jp_sca at yahoo.com: Re: what larded milk recipe?]

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise:
>This is the larded Milk recipe Christopher used. It's supposed to be
>from Le Viandier de Taillevent. What's interesting is that in this
>recipe lardons are equated with wine/verjuice for the curdling.
>
>Larded milk. Take some [cow's] milk, boil it on the fire,
>lift it down from the fire, put it on a few coals, and
>thread in beaten egg yolks. If you wish it for a meat day,
>take lardons, cut them into two or three bits, and throw
>them into the milk to boil. If you wish it for a fish day,
>do not add lardons, but throw in some wine and verjuice to
>curdle it before you lift it down. Remove it from the fire,
>put it in a white cloth, let it drain, wrap it in 2 or 3
>layers of the cloth, and press it until it is as firm as
>beef liver. Put it on a table, slice it into strips the
>size of a full palm or three fingers, button them with
>whole cloves, fry them until they are browned, set them
>out, and throw some sugar on top.

I wonder if there's a typo somewhere along the line: in Scully's 
translation, there's a semicolon between the part about not adding 
bacon on a fish day, and then the instruction about adding wine and 
verjuice to curdle. I suspect a better colloquial translation for 
that passage might be something like, "take lardons, cut them into 
two or three pieces, and throw them into the milk to boil. If you 
wish it for a fish day, do not add lardons, but [in any case/either 
way] throw in some wine and verjuice..."

In other words, I think maybe there's been a slight shift in the 
meaning of the word "mais", and it probably isn't an either/or 
situation.

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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