[Sca-cooks] leather cooking vessels

[Stephanie Ross]

My thought on how to make a leather cooking vessel is to boil the leather
like one does when making bazubands and form it around or into a pot when
hot. After it is dried I planned to lightly wax the outside of the vessel.
I am hoping that hardening leather in this way will keep it from stretching
out when it has hot water in it. In order to use it for cooking, I would
build a fire in a pit using river stones as a base. After the stones were
good and hot, I would sweep the coals off to one side of the pit and place
my leather vessel on the stones. I would then fill it with water, and drop
additional hot stones from the pit into the water until it boiled. I hope
that the hot stones the pot is sitting on would help keep the water boiling
so that I could make a pottage of some sort - pease porrige or lentils
would be good. I don't think cooking chunks of meat in a stew would work in
this methoud, but if they are spitted until cooked and then added to the
pottage it would be good. Ann Hagen, in her book _A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon
Food_ intimated that there is archeological evidence for use of leather
pots in cooking, but damned if I can find anything so far. I did find a
very interesting website that shows how the Neolithic Britons might have
cooked in hides over a fire according to a description by Heroditus.
www.lionsaltworkstrust.co.uk/documents/Mundling%20Stick%20Vol%2010%20No%203.
pdf   The author has used it successfully for making salt cakes. He invited
me to call him to discuss leather vessels, but he is in England or Wales
and I haven't remembered to call him early enough in the morning. I will
take notes and let you all know what he said though. To me, it is quite a
scary thought that the Saxons had to resort to Neolithic cooking methouds
once the Romans left. That in itself would make it the Dark Ages IMO. How
much stuff on Anglo-Saxon cooking is in the Florilegium Stefan? I have a
handout from a class I taught on Anglo-Saxon cooking if you want it. It is
a synopsis of the subject taken from several books and put into my own
words with a short bibliography.


~Aislinn~
Et si omnes ego non.