[Sca-cooks] strange recipe

[Devra at aol.com]

        I was just looking through Rabisha's Whole Body of Cookery Dissected 
and came across this:
     To Make a Bacon Tart
Take three pounds of lard or thick fat bacon, scrape it as you do butter for 
a dish, put it in water a little warm to draw out the salt, then take it into 
a dry cloath and draw up the moisture, put it into a stone mortar and beat it 
well together with the yolks of eight eggs, when well beaten into a dish, set 
it over a slow fire keep it continually stirring till you have brought it like 
cream, then press it through a strainer, season it with sugar, three or four 
graines of Amber-greece, or musk, close it between two sheets of paste in a 
patie-pan, or else indore it with melted butter, and bake it quick, and send it 
up hot.

     I read this, and parts made perfect sense, and parts just stumped me.  
Is this really bacon (streaky American breakfast bacon) or is it salt fatback?  
How do you scrape it like butter?  It's clear enough about the blanching (to 
remove some of the salt) and then drying it...though why you bother when 
you're immediately putting it into a pan with egg yolks I can't see.  Ok, so then 
you cook the fat and eggs together (sort of like making a custard) and strain 
it (in case of lumps?) and season it. Then you put it into a pastry-lined pan 
and put a lid over it, OR you spread melted butter over it, and bake in a quick 
(Hot?) oven...

     A sweet custard tart? A savory and sweet tart? Obviously you don't need 
to add salt, because the fat will still have plenty, even after blanching....

     Not exactly a quiche Lorraine.  Though I will say that Rabisha's 
directions are pretty clear.
     Devra



Devra Langsam
www.poisonpenpress.com
devra at aol.com