[Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns

[Daniel Myers]

On Feb 19, 2005, at 1:59 AM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

> 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...

Depends on what you mean by "kick off".  Here's two 15th c. recipes and 
a 16th c. one using pie crusts as a preservation method:

Source [Liber cure cocorum]: For lyoure best. Take drye floure, in 
cofyne hit close, And bake hit hard, as I suppose. Thou may hit kepe 
alle thys fyve 3ere, There-with alye mony metes sere. (England, c. 
1430)

Source [Liber cure cocorum]: To keep herb3 over the wyntur. Take floure 
and rere tho cofyns fyne, Wele stondande withouten stine. Take 
tenderons of sauge with owte lesyng, And stop one fulle up to tho ryng. 
Thenne close tho lyd fayre and wele, That ayre go not oute never a 
dele, Do so with saveray, percil and rewe. And thenne bake hom harde, 
wel ne3e brende. Sythun, kepe hom drye and to hom tent. This powder 
schalle be of more vertu, Then opone erthe when hit gru. (England, c. 
1430)

Source [The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchen, Stuart Peachey 
(ed.)] To make a pie to keep long. You must first perboile your flesh + 
press it, + when it is pressed, season it with pepper and salt whilest 
it is hot, then lard it, make your paste of rie flower, it must be very 
thick, or else it wil not holde, when it is seasoned + larded, lay it 
in your pie, then cast on it before you close it, a good deale of 
cloves and Mace beaten small, and lay upon that a good deale of Butter, 
and so close it up: but you must leave a hole in the top of the lid, + 
when it hath stood two houres in the Oven, you must fill it as full of 
vinigar as you can, and then stop the hole as close as you can with 
paste, and then set it in the Oven again: your Oven must bee verie hot 
at the first, and then your pies will keep a great while: the longer 
you keepe them the better wil they be: and when ye have taken them out 
of the oven, and that they be almost cold, you must shake them betweene 
your hands, and set them into the Oven, be well ware that one pie touch 
not another by more than ones hand bredth: Remember also to let them 
stand in the Oven after the Vinigar be in, two houres and more. 
(England, c. 1588)

- Doc


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