[Sca-cooks] FW: spice and cheese question for my turnips recipe

Steve Berry srberry at teleport.com
Sat Dec 2 19:12:31 PST 2006


Dame Arwen Lioncourt here again,

Hopefully I'm not being a bother, but as I said, after 16 years of serving
the SCA as a chirurgeon/herald/entertainer, I realized that I don't really
know ANYTHING about period food and what it takes to make it authentically.
Hence the kingdom A&S entry.....

Of course now that Pandora is out of her box, I'll never be able to cook
Spaghettio-s at a camping event again.... more's the pity!

To that end, I've been reviewing all the versions of the Armored Turnips
recipes that I've gathered from Platina, Epulario, some modern websites, and
my father's version.  The biggest differences are in the types of cheeses
used and the spices.

I'm going to use fontina, and I'm pretty happy with that choice because I
can date it back to the 1200s in the mountains northwest of Venice (unless
one of you more learned folks thinks I'm whacked).  Of course, how Arwen
would have gotten an Italian cheese like fontina in 1576 Ipswich is a
question I need to answer..... Can anyone point me to resources for the
cheese trade in Elizabethan England?  Was there one?  I'm assuming at this
point that they might have brought cheeses with them along with whole spices
on merchant ships from Italy?

So, to the spices:  Some recipes say to use poudre dolce with sugar as the
focus, but I have always used a more poudre forte version with a stronger
note of pepper/cinnamon.

For folks who have cooked the recipe or simply have opinions, what do you
think?  I really think that sugar is the wrong answer.  I really think that
a poudre forte of cinnamon, black pepper, galingale, nutmeg, clove, and
grains of paradise would be the best to capture the savory and sweet.
Thoughts?

Thanx!  You are all a REAL brain trust!!!

Dame Arwen Lioncourt OP
Lioncourt Manor
Three Mountains
AnTir




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