[Sca-cooks] Period or no?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Elaine Koogler:

>Then you need to try the Lomdardy Tarts from Dining with William 
>Shakespeare (yes, I know that a lot of you think that it should be 
>made with the greens rather than the root...we had this discussion 
>some time ago).  I have fed that to dyed-in-the-wool beet haters who 
>tried it because I said it was good (kinda scarey, isn't it??). 
>They loved it!!
>
>Take Beets, chop them small, and put to them grated bread and 
>cheese, and mingle them wel in the chopping, take a few Corrans, and 
>a dish of sweet Butter, & melt it then stir al these in the Butter, 
>together with three yolks of Eggs, Synamon, ginger, and sugar, and 
>make your Tart as large as you will, and fill it with the stuff, 
>bake it and serve it in.

Do you remember, in the short form ;-), what it is that makes the 
author of "Dining With William Shakespeare' believe beet roots are 
what the recipe calls for? Is there some reason other than the 
assumption moderns tend to make, and the fact that the author made it 
work that way, so the question just sort of never came up?

I'm not dissing the author of the idea (I have that book here 
someplace; when I win the lottery I'll hire someone to catalogue my 
library), I'm just wondering if it was the result of a conscious 
decision or just a default that may or may not be justified -- to me, 
the big reason for thinking it would be greens is the lack of 
pre-cooking, or at least no specific mention of it. You can get away 
with that using the tender parts of the greens; but I imagine the 
roots would need to be pre-cooked: even with the breadcrumbs 
providing some stabilizing effect, that's going to be a long time to 
cook eggs.

FWIW, most of the beet-haters of my acquaintance are also won over by 
the non-period but fun concept of beet frites, which are just raw 
beets peeled, julienned in a mandoline, dusted in a little cornstarch 
to dry their surface, and deep-fried like potatoes. A lurid pink they 
become, too... we were always afraid to take the next logical step 
and make beteraves gaufrettes a la mandoline...

Adamantius

-- 
  "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04