[Sca-cooks] sops
Gretchen Beck
grm at andrew.cmu.edu
Mon Jun 5 10:42:46 PDT 2006
--On Monday, June 05, 2006 10:11 AM -0700 tom.vincent at yahoo.com wrote:
> I don't disagree that 'sop' later became a verb and the tool rather than
> the liquid, but here are four period sop recipes.
> You could just have easily claimed that 'sop' is another word for 'onion'.
>
> You can now more clearly see that bread is what sop is served *on top of*
> and not what sop *is*. The last, especially, makes that clear.
That interpretation is only possible if you are looking at these four
recipes specifically. There are others sops recipes, and some that make it
clear that sop = bread. There are also other references in literature to
sops that make the interpretation of "something that goes on bread" rather
than "bread" a little less likely. Here's what I've found in a search of
the Corpus of Middle English website (which includes the 2 15th C cookbooks)
Here's the Oyle Sops recipe from the Douce manuscript MS 55 (about 1450)
Oyle Soppes . Capitulum lxiiij.?Take and buille mylke, and take yolkes
of eyren tryed fro the white, and draw hem; then cast to the milke and hete
it, butt lete it nat buille, & [leaf 34b.] styrre it well till it be
summe-whate thikke: then cast ther-to sugre and salte, and cutt feyre
paynemayne in soppes , & cast the soppes there-on, & serue it forth in
maner of potage.
**Note that this explicitly states that the sops are cut from white bread
and cast into the mess.
The Soppes pour Chamberleyne in the Harlein MS 4016 also makes an only
slightly less explicit statement that "sops" is the bread.
Soppes pour Chamberleyne. ¶ Take wyne, Canell, powder ginger, sugur/ of
eche a porcion¯; And cast all in a Streynour, And honge hit on¯ a pyn¯, And
late hit ren¯ thorgh a streynour twies or thries, til hit ren¯ clere; And
then¯ take paynmain, And kutte hit in a maner of Browes, And tost hit, And
ley hit in a dissh, and caste blanche pouder there-on¯ ynogh; And then¯
cast the same licour vppon¯ þe Soppes , and serue hit forthe fore a good
potage.
and then there's Creme Boyled from the same manuscript that says to "cut
then fair painmain sops"
Creme boiled. ¶ Take mylke, and boile hit; And þen¯ take yolkes of eyren¯,
and try hem fro the white, and drawe hem thorgh a streynour, and cast hem
into þe mylke; and then¯ sette hit on¯ þe fire, and hete hit hote, and lete
not boyle; and stirre it wel til hit be som¯-what thik; And caste thereto
sugur and salte; and kut þen¯ faire paynmain soppes , and caste the
soppes there-on¯, And serue it in maner of potage.
The Lamprey I-bake recipe from the same manuscript has an almost identical
line: "And lete boyle ouer þe fire; And take paynmain, and kutte hit and
wete hit yn¯, And ley þe soppes yn¯ the coffyn¯ of þe lamprey"
The recipe for Lyode Soppes (which appears right above the Soupes Dorroy
Harlien MS 279, 1420) says pretty much the same thing:
Lyode Soppes .?Take Mylke an boyle it, an þanne take yolkys of eyroun
y-tryid fro þe whyte, an draw hem þorwe A straynoure, an caste hem in-to þe
mylke, an sette it on þe fyre an hete it, but let it nowt boyle; an stere
it wyl tyl it be somwhat þikke; þenne caste þer-to Salt & Sugre, an kytte
fayre paynemaynnys in round soppys , an caste þe soppys þer-on, an
serue it forth for a potage.
There there are the two Chaucer references that make clear that a sop is
something put into a broth:
In the prologue, about the Franklin is written "Wel louede be þe morwe a
soppe in wyn"
and in the Clerks tale: "Thus labourith he tyl the day gan daweAnd thanne
he takyth a soppe in fyn clarree" (He worked until the day was done, and
then he ate a sop in fine claree wine)
The Boke of Curtasye instructs the young lad
"Of breed with þi teeþ no soppis þou make;"
(Don't make sops by biting the bread {yuck!})
GIven all this, I'll stand by my original statement.
toodles, margaret
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list