[Sca-cooks] Candied horseradish

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Mistress Brighid gave her translation of a period candied horseradish 
> recipe:
>
>> Chapter VIII -- To Conserve Horseradish
>> Take the horseradish and pare it and clean it very well with water.
>> And then cut it very small, and then set it on the fire with water and
>> put there a good fistful of salt, and boil it until it is quite soft.
>
>
> Interesting. I made this recipe a few months ago using the translation 
> provided by Vincente (which can be found in the horseradish-msg file 
> in the Florilegium).
>
>> Chapter Eight To Candy Horseradish
>> Take the horseradish and scrape it and make it clean with water.  And 
>> then
>> chop it all finely, and then put it on the fire with water and add a 
>> good
>> handful of salt and boil it enough so that it is very soft.  
>
>
> A little bit different in wording and perhaps thus affecting the 
> interpretation. I took "chop it all finely" to mean finely diced, 
> about 1/16 inch cubes.

Subtleties of wording are difficult.  We're accustomed, in modern 
cookbooks, to very precise directions, and we know there is a difference 
between chopping, and dicing, and mincing, etc.  The verb in the 
original Catalan is "telar", which means "to cut".  In the 1520 Catalan 
edition of de Nola's Libre de Coch, "tallar" is used to refer to 
carving, cutting meat into walnut-sized pieces, and cutting chicken into 
serving pieces.  By itself, "tallar" tells us nothing.  The crucial part 
is "menut tot", which I translated as "very small" and Vincente rendered 
as "finely".  I honestly don't know what would be the right degree of 
smallness.  My cubes were all 1/2 inch or smaller, which was small 
enough to cook through, and to let the honey thoroughly penetrate the 
horseradish.

Most of the other candied fruits and vegetables in the same cookbook are 
preserved whole, or in slices (the gourds are to be cut in thick 
slices).  So, I don't get the feeling that mincing is called for -- just 
small enough to cook through.  IMO.  As I said, I haven't studied 
Catalan, and I may be missing something.

-- 
Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
Robin Carroll-Mann *** rcmann4 at earthlink.net