[Sca-cooks] Natron

[Jeff Elder]

here is this:
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/leavening-msg.html
Simon Hondy


Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 07:44:04 -0500
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] steam-baking

Also sprach Terry Decker:
>In a discussion about the possible use of soda as a chemical leaven in
>China, Paul Buell suggests that it was probably a flavoring agent rather
>than a leaven.
>
>Bear
>
>>How sure are we of this translation? "soda"? I thought that rising
>>agents, with the possible exception of hart's horn were unknown
>>until the 19th Century. Perhaps these chemical rising agents were
>>known to the Chinese earlier? Or maybe this "soda" is not a rising
>>agent and what is actually doing the rising is this "leaven" which
>>I guess could be ale barm.
>>
>>THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra

I've got to go with Bear here. While it appears to be the case that
chemical leaveners as we know them don't appear widely until the
nineteenth century, that doesn't mean that the chemicals used as
leaveners haven't been used for other purposes for thousands of
years. For example, soda --and note that "baking soda", or sodium
bicarbonate, may not even be what is intended here-- was used by the
Romans as a green color fixative and tenderizer for vegetables, just
as it sometimes is in recent European (esp. French) cookery. Modern
Chinese cookery also employs baking soda as a meat tenderizer,
usually for tougher steaks and tripe (you wash it off carefully
before cooking, like the lye solution in the preparation of
lutefisk). The Roman cooking soda appears to be what we call "washing
soda" or sodium carbonate, but I don't know which soda Dr. Buell is
referring to.

Ultimately, such chemicals seem to have been known to the medieval
Chinese, but whether they considered them rising agents is
questionable. Of course, modern steamed bun recipes also sometimes
call for both soda and yeast; it may be a habit so lost in tradition
we'll never know its origin.

Adamantius