No subject


Sun May 28 20:04:55 PDT 2006


Crustade Lumbard. Take good cream and leaves of parsley and eggs,
the yolks and the white and break them there and strain through a
strainer until it be so stiff that it will bear itself, then
take fair marrow and dates cut in two or three and prunes and put
the dates and prunes and marrow into a fair cofyn made of fair
paste and put the cofyn in the oven until it be a little hard
then take it out of the oven, take the liquor and put onto and
fill it up and cast sugar enough on and salt, then let it bake
together until it is done enough and if it is Lent leave the
eggs and marrow out and serve it forth.

My redaction based on Cindy's.

1 9" deep dish pie shell
1 1/2 cup diced prunes
1/4 cup diced dates
1/2 Tablespoon cooked marrow
1/2 Tablespoon butter
1 cup heavy cream
2 eggs
Sugar
dash of salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Put the prunes and dates in the pie shell and dot with
the butter and marrow.
Cook for 20 minutes until the crust is golden.

While the pieshell is baking whip the cream to soft peaks,
beat the eggs and fold into the cream.

Remove the pieshell and spread the whipped mixture over the
top, sprinkle the top with sugar and a dash of salt.

Turn the oven down to 325 F.

Bake for 1 hour or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Serve warm.

I didn't add the parsley and added a bit of butter since I didn't
have much marrow. In the future I would like to add a bit of
red wine to the prunes and figs. The pie came out tasting a
lot like a prune danish and was wonderful as breakfast the next
morning.

>How do you mean using honey and butter? If you mean immersing the
>meats in the honey or butter, aren't these just two different types
>of potting?

Basically. But by "potting" I meant making a pate and sealing it
with fat or butter. The honey and butter method is immersion similar
to a confit.

>The idea being to exclude air (and the bad beasties)
>after killing the bad beasties with heat? What evidence have you
>run across that this was done in period?

I'll have to check some of my books but I do have evidence.

>What I've seen shows
>potting the meat in honey or butter, but after the meat had
>cooled, therefor allowing the meat to get infested again.

It's possible. But the honey and/or butter was usually warmed
as well. There is the possibilty of something going wrong but
I feel the possibilty is pretty slim. In many ways no worse than
the eternal stockpot on the stove or eating the Thanksgiving
turkey a couple of hours after dinner and it's been sitting
on the buffet.

>It appears
>that it took half a century after they started potting in the
>middle of the 16th C for them to start potting the meat while it
>was still hot. Most of this, I think, for Ann Hagen's books.

I'm pretty sure the cooks tested the meat before serving as
we would do now. They weren't idiots back then and if the method
survived that long then people weren't keeling over everytime a
dish was served. And I planned to seal the meat hot anyway.

>Are you going to pot some meat and then taste a little at
>succeeding meetings to find out how long it will stay safe? :-)

I plan on preserving the meat a month or so before the class
and testing a batch beforehad to make sure. I think a month
is sufficient time to show preservation without having to stretch
the limits.

>Stefan li Rous

Gunthar

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