[Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach 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?

I'm not looking at any actual documents at this moment, but aren't 
there menu references and recipes to Great Pies and Pies de Paris in 
fifteenth century England? I believe there are also some manuscript 
illuminations that show free-standing pastries: I'd guess (scale 
being what it is in such drawings) that a pie in a medieval feast 
might have been anywhere from maybe six inches high and ten inches 
across, to larger, looking vaguely like a hatbox with a slightly 
domed, but inset/flanged lid. Since we've been discussing this most 
recently, I was struck by the absence of recipes in earlier English 
sources, while Chiquart and Tallevent mention these pies, and give 
fairly detailed instructions for, at least, the fillings.

One could argue the 15th century English recipe for a Grete Pye is an 
evolution from the various flathonys, flaons, and crustades, or (and 
to me, more likely) evidence of importation from the Continent.

>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)?

Good question. One possibility that comes to mind is that the more 
tender pastries might be intended to be eaten, and not as a 
container, and those don't hold their shape as well, for the most 
part, as some of the later hot-water-type doughs or a more simple 
flour-and-water paste. These would need traps, as would anything with 
a custard in it, should a crack or hole develop in it. Think of it as 
hull integrity.

One aspect I believe Johnnae mentioned that I hadn't considered, is 
that pots seem not to have always tended to have flat bottoms (at 
least not with any predictable regularity). Often they were hung next 
to the fire (based on burn patterns and such), rather than being 
placed on a stove rack or hob.

>   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?

Issues might include getting such a shell out of/off of a mold (as 
opposed to forming it and scooping it up on a peel for baking), the 
need to make it larger than the available traps (again, do the traps 
exist to support pastries made with more tender doughs, or do such 
tender doughs exist to take advantage of the support provided by the 
trap -- if a pie falls in the forest, and there's no one there to 
taste it, does it have -- well, you know what I mean -- is form 
following function or vice versa?)

It may also be that large pies, containing birds (as opposed to the 
custardy variants that may also contain small birds, marrow, etc., in 
the filling), were made of tough, free-standing pastry to help get 
them safely to the table intact, and possibly to preserve the filling 
for a time (although that really doesn't kick off until the 
seventeenth century, AFAICT, when you start seeing the pie recipes 
with "great store of butter" being poured in). I guess there may have 
been some visual expectation on the part of the diner, such that, 
when they saw such a large pastry, they expected something like 
pigeons inside, which is what made the live birds inside so cool...

Adamantius

>
>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
>
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"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

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