[Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns

Sat Feb 19 08:41:12 PST 2005

Also sprach 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".

I was imprecise. By "kick off", I meant, become common (or appear 
to), and I was also referring more specifically to pies filled with 
fat or butter. Previously, large pies seem more commonly to be filled 
with wine syrups and/or custard mixes which would, if anything, tend 
to accelerate funkiness in the contents.

I'd also have to consider questioning whether the first two coffins 
you mention qualify as pies. Yes, the coffins are made of dough, but 
they're not served or presented in the shells, let alone eaten. Even 
if the filled coffin doesn't have to be eaten to be a pie, I'd think 
this is more a case of a box or can being made of paste. (See later 
confit recipes which speak of curing the finished candies in a sealed 
metal coffin.) Structurally similar but functionally, the focus is a 
little different.

As for your third example, you've got me by 13 years, but this is 
exactly the kind of recipe I was referring to. There are a lot of 
them in 17th-century sources ;-).

>   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)

Hmmm. In the above instance, are we reasonably sure the coffin in 
question is, in fact, dough? As far as I can tell, this appears to be 
a recipe for processing a thickening starch by baking flour in a 
sealed box or pot of an unspecified nature, but which may be a sealed 
pie crust, which would also make some sense, given the availability 
of the materials in a kitchen. Does LCC (a source I haven't looked at 
in a while) have these two recipes in sequence?

Adamantius

>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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