[Sca-cooks] medieval steaks

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 16, 2006, at 1:44 PM, Terry Decker wrote:

> To quote myself from a column I did for Serve It Forth!,
>
> "There is no doubt that steak is a Medieval dish, as the following  
> recipe from Harleian Manuscript 279 atests:
>
> To make Steyks of venson or bef. Take Venyson or Bef, & leche &  
> gredyl it up broun; then take Vynegre & a
>
> litel verious, & a lytil Wyne, and put pouder perpir ther-on y-now,  
> and pouder Gyngere; and atte the dressoure
>
> straw on pouder Canelle y-now, that the steyks be al y-helid ther- 
> wyth, and but a litel Sawce; & then serue it
>
> forth.
>
> We know that in this instance, steaks were greased, cooked, and  
> served in a spiced wine sauce.

In light of a subsequent post, I was wondering about this. Are we  
assuming the steaks were greased because we don't want them to stick,  
or is there some confusion about the meaning of the verb "to leche",  
which, I always understood, means to slice? As in, cut your hunk of  
meat into steaks...

Adamantius





"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04