[Sca-cooks] Re: coffyns

[she not]

 All of these appear to bave been baked in a form. Woodcuts from about 
> 200 years earlier show pastries being baked in round deep walled 
> dishes (trappes). These look suspiciously like what would come out of 
> the dishes in the woodcut.

*choke* *sputter* *cough*

Eh? Um ... are any of these woodcuts where I could get a good look at 
them?

- Doc

ME TOO!!

> Bear asked: 
My question is "what do we know?" I'm asking for facts , not speculation. 
I have found that when I gather facts and examine them, they produce a very 
different picture from what "everyone knows."

Well, "facts" are slippery things-The archeological record frequently presents direct contradictions to what is "known" from documentary sources (I'll give you some specific examples off list, if you like)..(Informed) common sense is a more reliable guide to interpretation than you may think..

>
"Most of the recipes we reference are from noble households which had to feed 
lots of people. They had considerable resources including well stocked 
kitchens and, often, well stocked bakeries....From the the woodcuts I've seen baker's had the habit of using pans 
(trappes) for baking pastries. The medieval heat mass oven produces an even 
heat matched only by a modern convection oven. Possibly the lack of a 
suitable pan, but I want to see the evidence. Professionals have and use 
professional tools, and the cooks and bakers of the Middle Ages were no 
exception."


At the moment, most of the available evidence is circumstantial-Hence my advice to look beyond the recipes to what is known about households  and non professionals whose recipes were not preserved, so that you can draw reasonable inferences! Please understand, I'm not arguing against documentation  per se here, only against the complete dependence on *limited* documentation which often gets in the way of historical reconstruction, especially when documentation is done without   knowlege of the relevant historical background. I simply do not believe that it's possible to produce period food without any understanding of the period beyond a recipe.

...and btw, a pan helps prevent even baking, even in a modern convection oven, by conducting heat differently than the air outside the pan..:)


households > had 2-5 pans of different sizes, small to medium, very small households 
> (widows, etc) had just one or two small pots, and wealthy households and 
> large farms with many workers had 8-12 pots, including 2-3 large ones and 
> a few special purpose pans. holidays and weddings were 
> community efforts: (loaning these pots was a social duty affirming communal relations 
> and mutual dependency, as well as a custom enabling suitable display for a 
> celebration, comparable to the borrowed lying-in gear gathered from 
> various noble connections you will see in the Lisle letters.)

"Interesting, but of little import unless it can be demonstrated that peasant 
families in the High Middle Ages baked raised coffins. The fact that raised 
coffins appear lower on the social scale in Late Renaissance and Early 
Modern does not necessarily support their use at those social levels in the 
Middle Ages."


Unless you happen to find a petrified pie in a peasant privy, it may never be "proved". However, it seems unreasonable to suppose that peasants in 1330's had more or better equipment  than they did in the 1930s, given the weight of the evidence against that theory. And even a well equipped professional baker (who would probably not set up shop in a peasant village) is unlikely to loan out his pans for goodwives to put their pies in before they bring them in for baking. (a well documented practice, btw) Thus, if they ate pies, and  literary references indicate that they did, it's reasonable to suppose that they occasionally ate pies baked without any of the special use pans their descendants didn't possess- which should explain why I offered (and remembered!) that "circumstantial" info in the first place.


may I suggest: Baldwin, F.E., Sumptuary Legislation 
and Personal Regulation in England, John Hopkins Press, 1926.

May I be permitted to envy you your library and your bibliography?

gisele


>



"all men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that not being a dog I can't bite them."   Lord Byron
		
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