[Sca-cooks] Re: 14th c Italian cookbook , answers

[Louise Smithson]

   There are a handful of recipes for some kind of vegetables called "senacioni" (singular, "senacione
The book says this> Senacioni: o senecioni, genere di composite tubuliflore. Or a plant with a composite flower. Knowing that many of the names of things in Italian are similar to their latin names I searched google with senecioni and eventually came up with Senecio vulgaris. Which is known in Italian as senecio commune. And in English as Groundsel (which is still collected and eaten as a pot herb in some parts of the country). See here for a picture and details. 

http://www.dijon.inra.fr/malherbo/hyppa/hyppa-a/senvu_ah.htm

Which is a weed site, but if you search with groundsel you can get some more interesting sites. 

2) There are two recipes -- one for chicken in lemon sauce, one for chicken in pomegranate sauce (which I can post here in case anyone is interested) -- that both call for something called "amido non mondato" to be ground in a mortar. <snip> If that's the case, what kind of grain might "amido" refer to?

Looking at the recipes in question. The recipe for chickens with lemon says this "pesitisi l’amido non mondo e distemperesi col brodo de la carne del porco, e colisi" or grind unpeeled amido and temper it (blend it) with pork broth and strain it. I have always translated amido as wheat starch. So one could postulate that it’s use here means that you are taking whole wheat berries (wheat rather than spelt was cultivated in Italy by this point in time), grinding them in the mortar, extracting the starch from them with broth and using this starch to thicken the broth. This is basically cutting out the step where you prepare amido by grinding soaked wheat in water, straining it and drying the starches to produce what we would typically understand is amido or wheat starch. 

   What is "mondato" doing here? It can mean either "cleaned" (as in washed), or "peeled" (or skinned, or hulled, etc) depending on its context. If it's referring to a cereal, what could it mean? 

I have always translated mondato as peeled, it always turns up in context with a fruit, nut or grain that has a tough outer skin. I take it that these are whole grains, with the germ, endosperm and everything. When you look at how it is used (strained) it doesn’t really matter if it has been husked or not, you are simply extracting starch. 

4) In both of these recipes, you're supposed to grind the "amido non mondato" before cooking with it. So, would something as fine as flour be acceptable?

As you are not adding the whole ground grains to the dish the substitution of some other soluble starch (e.g. wondra, corn strach, rice flour) mixed with liquid would be appropriate.

In any case, thanks in advance for any help (and if you've read all the way to this point in the email, thanks for your patience as well)!

No problem and I would like to make a suggestion. One of the things that the culinary history group would like to see is proof reading of the translated documents. I.e. are they translated accurately. I’ll do yours if you would do mineJ . 

Plus are you planning on webbing your translation? I hope you are. If you need help I managed to web mine with little or no experience with web pages. It isn’t pretty but it is there for people to use. 

Helewyse

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