[Sca-cooks] mustard soup, sops and bread

[Stefan li Rous]

Molli commented:
> My first mustard soup was at Meridian Maneuvers over a year ago. I was
> honored to be feast helper for the Glorious Mistress Mairih
> (spelling) and
> the lovely HL Dinah. Oh yummmm mustard soup. That was...just...heaven.

Molli, do you know if the soup you had was redacted by Mistress  
Mairih or whether it was based on the redaction by HE Salaamallah's  
which has been floating around the SCA for years. Salaamallah's  
recipe is apparently quite good, but it takes some pretty big  
liberties with the medieval recipe that it appears to be based upon.  
this file in the Florilegium FOOD section has more details, as well  
as the original recipe and his variation:
mustard-soup-msg  (13K)  4/ 3/02    Mustard soup. HE Salaamallah's  
version.

> I love sauces. IMO sauces can make a meal. A less then dazzling  
> piece of
> meat can be saved by just the right sauce. I was raised a "sopper".
> Sopping
> was an art form in our home. A good sauce, drippings, juices...a  
> hunk of
> bread either with fingers or fork...sop. If with a fork, stab some  
> meat, a
> bit of bread, dip in gravy, sauce, juice...bite.

Hmmm. I'd gotten the impression that sops were bread put into a bowl  
with the broth then poured over them, although I don't know if the  
bread was just dampened or totally immersed such as you usually see  
in "French Onion Soup". As opposed to the bread being dipped into the  
soup/sauce/drippings. "Sop" is apparently the root for "soup".  
Comments anyone?

sops-msg          (12K)  2/13/04    Slices of bread soaked in a sauce.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/sops-msg.html
> I love the process of making bread.....so off I go on a
> tangent when I have other things to attend to.

Lol. Naw, none of us here ever do that...  I have heard of folks  
going to the Florilegium to look up something and somehow getting  
diverted down other paths.

Take a look at the FOOD-BREADS section of the Florilegium. There are  
less than a dozen, documented period bread recipes but a number of  
experienced folks such as Bear have developed reasonable, possible  
recipes. A number of these original, period bread recipes can be  
found in the breads-msg file as well.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****