[Sca-cooks] Apicius birds stuff with olives

[Stefan li Rous]

Johnnae replied to me with:
> The recipe says "boil" so in this case the cook chose
> to put some seasonings into the water. They look like ordinary
> stock ingredients to me intended to flavor the plain water.

Well, yes. That was my assumption. However, the original recipe doesn't 
mention them. Does that mean adding  them to the recipe makes it 
inauthentic? That was the reason for my comment that this gets into the 
philosophy of redacting. I suspect different folks are going to have 
different opinions on this. I note that Master Cariadoc later today in 
the pasta thread questions the use of salt since it isn't mentioned in 
the original recipe there.

> As to olives, there are at least a couple dozen books on olives
> on the market. I am afraid I don't own enough of those to tell you 
> which
> or what
> olives would be most like those found in Classical Rome that
> Apicius might have used, how similiar those are to modern olives,
> and what that all means when shopping at the local mega mart in Texas.

Well, this was an open question to everyone here. I'd hoped that 
someone else might have some more direct experience with olives. The 
mega marts here don't usually have a large variety of olives, although 
there are some stores such as Central Market or some Middle Eastern 
ethnic stores which have a fairly wide range of olives. Still, my main 
question was less on a particular type of processed olive to use and 
more on whether an unprocessed "fresh" olive would/could have been 
used. Those olive books you mention may or may not be of much use on 
whether olives in the Classical world were used unprocessed or what 
their recipes meant by "fresh". If the "fresh" olives leave a bitter 
taste, I could see where they might still be used. But if they are 
inedible, that could be different. I could see where they might be used 
in stuffing a chicken, even if inedible, and still not make the chicken 
inedible since they are being removed and discarded. Comments anyone? 
Perhaps its time to go back and review the comments in my olives-msg 
file. :-)

However, I am also unlikely to find unprocessed olives here. Still, 
assuming the recipe is asking for processed olives only because I can't 
get unprocessed ones, doesn't sound like a good process.

> I'd suggest experimenting with perhaps chicken breasts and
> a variety of olives until you find a combination you find pleasing.

Yes, if I can come up with evidence that it is likely a processed olive 
which is meant. I may find though,  that stuffing the chicken with 
olives has little effect upon the chicken, no matter what type of olive 
is used. :-)

Perhaps the olives are removed after cooking because the olives are the 
unprocessed and inedible. Actually leaving the olives in the chicken is 
cooked and serving them that way sounds like it might be rather good, 
at least for processed olives. Especially with some added cheese. But 
maybe the roasting juices do something to the olives which makes it 
better to remove them.

Stefan

> > As for the redaction, Apicius doesn't mention "bay leaves",
> > "peppercorns", "onions", "carrots" or "celery stalks". But perhaps
> > like salt they can be assumed?
> >
> > Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****