Piecrust revisited, was, Re: [Sca-cooks] Books for Cooks at British Library
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Thu Mar 10 10:36:42 PST 2005
Also sprach Johnna Holloway:
>Ok, this is worth bookmarking, folks.
>
>British Library has an online display up on
>Books for Cooks
>http://www.bllearning.co.uk/live/text/cookery/
>
>http://www.bllearning.co.uk/live/text/cookery/medieval/
>This one highlights medieval foods.
>It includes actual digital scans of recipes from such things as
>The Forme of Cury manuscript - Blank Mang
>
>There's also one for the 1500's
>http://www.bllearning.co.uk/live/text/cookery/1500s/
The first link I visited at random turned out to be the Forme of
Cury's recipe for Coffins and Chastelets. As per the quoted recipe on
the website (which may or may not jibe with what other copies say):
>Take and make a foyle of gode past with a roller of a foot brode.
>and lyngur by cumpas. make iiii Coffyns of ©e self past uppon ©e
>rolleres ©e gretnesse of ©e smale of ©yn Arme. of vi ynche
>depnesse. make ©e gretust in ©e myddell. fasten ©e foile in ©e
>mouth upwarde. and fasten ©ee o©ere foure in euery syde. kerue out
>keyntlich kyrnels above in ©e manere of bataiwyng and drye hem
>harde in an Ovene. o©er in ©e Sunne. In ©e myddel Coffyn do a
>fars of Pork with gode Pork and ayrenn rawe wi© salt. and colour it
>wi© safroun and do in ano©er Creme of Almandes. and helde it in
>ano©er creme of Cowe mylke with ayrenn. colour it with saundres.
>ano©ur manur. Fars of Fygur. of raysouns. of Apples. of Peeres. and
>holde it in broun. ano©er manere. do fars as to frytours blanched.
>and colour it with grene. put ©is to ©e ovene and bake it wel. and
>serue it forth with ew ardaunt.
Or, in more modern English (and I spotted at least one error already):
> Take and make a roll of good pastry with a rolling pin of a foot
>broad, and longer by circumference. Make 4 coffins (pie dishes) of
>pastry passed upon the rolling pins, the greatness of the small of a
>thin arm, of 6 inches deepness. Make the greatest in the middle.
>Fasten the pastry roll in the mouth upwards, and fasten thou other 4
>in every side. Carve out quaint kernels (battlements) above in the
>manner of embattling, and dry them hard in an oven, or in the sun.
>In the middle coffin do a stuffing of pork, with good pork and raw
>egg with salt, and colour it with saffron and do in another crème of
>almonds. And put in another cream of cow milk with egg. Colour it
>with sandalwood. Another manner, stuffing of figs, of raisins, of
>apples, of pears, and make it brown.
>
>Another manner, do stuffing as to blanched fritters, and colour it
>with green. Put this to the oven and bake it well, and serve it
>forth with hot water.
What interested me most were the instructions for rolling and forming
the pastry: the main tower, it seems, is rolled on a rolling pin a
foot wide, and longer by cumpas, or circumference (I had assumed it
was longer _by comparison_, but this makes more sense, I suppose).
The final product seems to be a central tower formed on a rolling pin
roughly a foot long by 4 inches in diameter (i.e. 1 foot
circumference divided by <ahem> pie <harumph> equals roughly
one-third of a foot...). This is formed on the pin, I suspect, and no
mention of sealing it up or adding a bottom, except that it is then
set up standing with its mouth, or opening, upward. Essentially, a
vase, which one could easily form from a ball of dough right on the
pin, giving it a final roll to thin and dislodge the pastry from the
pin, and after a twist of the pin, pulling it out to leave the
standing pastry "vase".
This is then surrounded by four smaller towers, the diameter of the
small of your arm (3-4 inches or so? most pastrycooks of my
acquaintance have fairly strapping, well-developed forearms), six
inches high.
I get the sense that rolling pins (which in period tended not to have
a central axle or handles, and were either a wooden cylinder or
slightly tapered toward the ends) varied in size, and some were quite
large. One end of a four-inch diameter rolling-pin would have served
admirably to form such small coffins.
I'm not sure that that's how it would have been done, and today, as
I've said, I believe you can get wooden forms which are really just
modified rolling pins anyway, for mass production of small pie
shells. But it does seem possible, and not unlikely.
BTW: the mistake in the translated recipe, as far as I know, is in
their translation of "eau/ew ardent" as "Hot water". Eau ardent is
brandy, I believe. This is probably a flaming subtlety... [Phlip, are
you getting all this?]
Adamantius
--
"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
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry
Holt, 07/29/04
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