Piecrust revisited, was, Re: [Sca-cooks] Books for Cooks at British Library

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

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