[Sca-cooks] Spice and cheese question for armored turnips

[Kathleen Madsen]

Greetings, Dame Arwen.

Take every dated list of cheeses with a huge grain of
salt.  The research is quite poor and documentation
pretty much non-existant.  You'll see that many of
these lists are really just regurgitations of other
peoples lists - just recopied from other websites. 
There is very little period documentation for cheese
or cheesemaking and what there is doesn't really refer
much to a "named" cheese (there are some exceptions) -
so it's really difficult to determine what cheese was
used.  Generally speaking you had regions that would
make a "style" of cheese - like a hard cheese or a
semi-soft and it was all based on tradition, the type
of pasture, what kinds of animals it was more economic
to raise in that area, and the climate (which would
affect the lactation cycle).  All of these things plus
what you do to the cheese in the cheesemaking and
aging process dictate what you'll end up with.  That's
why with only a handful of milk options (cow, goat,
sheep, camel, mare, reindeer, etc.) we have thousands
of different kinds and types.

Up in the mountains they would make large cooked-curd
cheeses in the summer because they would keep and
would transport well so that when the vendor would
make their trips up into the mountains every few weeks
to collect the cheeses for sale they would be easier
to transport down off the mountain.  They primarily
use helicopters now.  Fontina is (in my opinion) a
more modern cheese because, although it is made in the
mountains at high altitudes, it is pretty difficult to
transport.  The paste is rather springy and the rind
is wet and sticky and it has a tendancy to dry out and
crack if it's not cared for and inspected regularly. 
It also has a tendency to split down the middle if
it's not supported correctly underneath, darned
finicky to keep at times.  It's a wide, flat cheese
and is only about 5 inches thick.  A difficult wheel
to get out on the back of a donkey - but easy to
transport by cog train or other mechanized method.  It
may have been made down in the valleys as they were
drying up the cow's but late-lactation milk is
difficult to work with and I don't know that they
would risk such a large wheel on chancier milk.

In Elizabethan England trade was quite heavy with the
Dutch, and the dutch make great trading cheeses.  You
would see gouda's, emmental's, maybe an Edam or two,
and possibly some muenster coming off the boats. 
There would be some cheeses coming in from Italy as
well, primarily a few parmeseans (which were designed
for local use and export) and maybe some aged
pecorino's - probably of Sardinian lineage.  No Fresh
cheeses would be making the trip, their life
expectancy is too short for anything outside of their
local area.  That means no mozzarella except for some
limited areas of Italy.

As far as local cheeses go you would have some hard
cheeses that would be transported into cities and
towns from the outlying countryside.  Things like a
gloucester or a caerphilly in texture and density.  I
characterize cheddars and cheeses that use the
cheddaring process as being post-period as I haven't
been able to document the specific milling and
cheddaring process back very far.  It's seen in the
victorian era but I haven't seen it earlier than that.

Generally speaking, when I shop for cheese I look for
"country where made" and "styles" - soft, semi-soft,
washed rind, blue, hard, etc.  I'm not looking for
names unless I'm doing a tasting on period cheeses.  I
will avoid pasta-filata's (stretched curd cheeses like
mozzarella and provolone) if I'm doing English or
German foods and instead try and find something that
is made in the UK or Germany.  Then I look for the
style that I need for my recipe; young/fat, hard/dry,
etc.

When I make my own cheese I go from period
documentation and period images to re-create what they
may have been doing.  I won't end up with exactly what
they would have made as the terroir, animal,
milk-type, etc., etc., can be way off.  I'll end up
with something that's flavored by the wild yeasts in
my region, milk that's affected by the days weather
conditions, what point the animal is in their
lactation cycle, what type of feed the animal at that
day, etc., etc.  It will be unique to my region but
the recreation itself and the techniques used are as
close to period methods as I can get.  Additionally,
the animals in period tended to be multi-use, raised
for milk and/or meat and/or fiber and/or work.  Today
they are very stratified.  You've got your good
milkers which don't always make good fiber animals or
good meat animals.  Plus, most of the milkers have
been bred to produce more milk and of a better quality
than they may have had in period.  We can only make an
approximation today.

So, as you can see there's really no hard and fast
rule or a shopping list that makes cheese selection
easy.  If you're using it for cooking and want a
representative cheese to use in a dish then look for
country and then style of cheese.  If you're doing a
platter or display of cheese then look for named
cheeses that can be documented.

I have found in the last couple of years that the more
I learn about cheese and dairying in period the less I
know.  ;)  I used to go into stores with a list of
cheeses that had been dated off of websites on the
internet thinking I was getting pretty darned close to
what they used back then.  Don't even get me started
on raw milk vs. pasteurized...

Mistress Eibhlin, cheesemaking

> 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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