[Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns

[Terry Decker]

Interesting idea, Adamantius.  It is a shaping tool I hadn't considered.

However, this raises some questions in my mind.  Do we know anything about 
the shape of raised coffins prior to 1600?  Do we have any references as to 
their place in a feast?  What do we know about raised coffins other than the 
recipes?

If one has trappes, why raise a free standing pie shell rather than  form 
the shell inside or outside of the trappe (to steal Da's exterior mold 
model)?  IIRC, Martino's live birds in a pie uses a trappe to form the shell 
and a filling of flour to hold the shape of the top crust.  Why raise a 
coffin, rather then mold a shell?

Bear



> True, but I was just talking about using a form for mass-producing 
> identical shells somewhat more quickly than you might otherwise. At least 
> that's the rationale in modern pork pie production when the wooden block 
> form is used (there are also extremely fancy hinged molds you can buy for 
> larger pies and pates, but that's not really to address mass production 
> issues).
>
> The way it works is, you roll your pastry into a smooth ball (having first 
> determined, more or less, how much you'll need to do the job, either 
> through past experience or a trial attempt), and then squoosh (that is a 
> technical term) the wooden block, which resembles a hockey puck on a 
> stick, with the stick protruding from one of the flat surfaces, into the 
> dough, which spreads it out and forces the surface of the dough ball to 
> begin to wrap itself around the block and up the sides. You then pat the 
> sides, turning the whole thing occasionally via the stick, a la a potter's 
> wheel, until they come evenly up the sides of the form, taking on its 
> shape. You have the option of trimming the sides to smooth the edges.
>
> To remove the dough from the form, you roll it on its edge on your pastry 
> board, which thins it slightly and, consequently, increases its 
> circumference and diameter accordingly, which tends to create a space 
> between the form and the dough (hot-water pastry isn't sticky), making the 
> form easy to remove with a twist of the stick. The pastry will also harden 
> pretty dramatically as it cools off.
>
> Now, I have no compelling evidence to suggest that this method was used in 
> period, nor that anything like a hot-water dough appears until the 
> seventeenth century, but it's tempting to assume such a thing could have 
> been done (whether or not it actually was is another story), since the 
> technology clearly existed for other types of manufacture.
>
> As for the question of the thickness of the pastry and whether you need 
> support, it also becomes more stable when the pastry is filled with 
> something fairly solid, and a lid sealed in place.
>
> Adamantius