[Sca-cooks] Onion rings?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Pat:
>XXXIX, For to make a Porrey Chapeleyn.
>
>Tak an hundred onyons other an half and tak oyle de Olyf and boyle 
>togederí in a Pot and tak Almande mylk and boyle yt and do theríto. 
>Tak and make a thynne Paast of Dow and make therof as it were ryngis 
>and frye hem in Oyle de Olyve or in wyte grees and boyle al togederí.
>
>
>
>Boy, this guy canít even spell it the same way twice in a paragraph.
>
>Okay, let me see what I can do with this.
>
>
>
>First a translation.
>
>
>
>Take a hundred and fifty onions and take Olive oil and boil together 
>in a Pot.  Take almond milk and boil it and do thereto.  Take and 
>make a thin paste of dough and make, as it were, rings, and fry them 
>in Olive oil or lard and boil all together.
>
>
>
>I think, maybe, you are to make the dough rings and fry them 
>separately.  Fry the onions in the olive oil, then add the almond 
>milk and the fried rings and return it to the boil.   Sounds almost 
>like onion gravyÖwith donuts in it... for a hundred people?

This is one of my favorite period recipes. I think the recipe is 
calling for a hundred onions, or a half a hundred -- IOW, lots. We 
did this here for a Crown Tourney in Northpass for... I forget, maybe 
as many as 325 people? We used concentric biscuit cutters to cut 
wonton wrappers into the ring shapes, fried them until crispy, and 
made a thick white onion soup with the rest of the ingredients, and 
added the faux onion rings at the last moment of cooking. The onions 
are sauteed in liberal amounts of olive oil, but not deep-fried, and 
if you cook the dish a couple of times, you find a point at which you 
have the right amount of oil and onions to have the mixture boil, 
mixing the oil and the onion juices into a temporary emulsion. You 
then hit it with the almond milk and it becomes more stable.

The main point I thought the cook needed to look out for was to cook 
the onions until soft and concentrated in flavor, without browning. 
Almost like an onion confit... the onions also probably needed to be 
nice and soft to make them easier to spoon up without the diner 
wearing them. The recipe doesn't specify whether, or how, to cut them 
up, but if you cook them properly, it almost doesn't matter. Leaving 
them whole, if they're large, is probably a bad idea.

>Does Cury on Inglish have this one?

Yes, it's in the second book, "Diuersa Servicia", from MS D, ff. 
86r-96v., published by Samuel Pegge in the 18th century as "Ancient 
Cookery".

Adamantius

>
>
>"Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org> wrote:Ok. I came across this 
>recipe. It's posted here:
>http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/FoC162small.html, number XXIX, in the
>middle of the page (scanned facsimile).
>
>Is this a pottage? Is it more of a creamed onions? Or could it be onion
>rings? I can sort of read it as any of them, but at the same time not. It
>sort of makes no sense!
>
>(And now I'm really hungry for onion rings! Big, fat ones with thick slices
>of onions...)
>
>'Lainie
>
>___________________________________________________________________________
>O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it
>like a giant--Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II
>
>
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>
>
>Pat Griffin
>Lady Anne du Bosc
>known as Mordonna the Cook
>Shire of Thorngill, Meridies
>Mundanely, Millbrook, AL
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-- 




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Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

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