[Sca-cooks] FW: Elizabethans using Platina and proper cookware

[Elaine Koogler]

Wow.  This is quite an undertaking.

On 11/26/06, Steve Berry <srberry at teleport.com> wrote:
>
>
> I am going to translate Platina myself instead of relying on Cariadoc's
> translation.
> [Is the term "redaction" really appropriate, or is it an invented
> SCA-ism?]


Are you aware that Mary Ellen Milham has done an excellent translation of
Platina?  I have used numerous recipes from her  newer translation with
great success...including armored turnips!

Also, I have decided to use fontina cheese because it would have been more
> available
> in the 1470s, when Platina's cookbook was written, and it comes from the
> Alps
> near eastern Italy where the book comes from.


I have always used a combination of provolone and mozzarella...but it's up
to you as no specific cheese is mentioned...and your reasoning seems quite
solid.


> I also bought my turnips and I'm keeping them in our cellar as an
> experiment
> because the season is almost over.  I want to see if I can keep them until
> March
> when I would cook the dish.  I have to see if I would have been able to
> even
> cook
> this dish in March using turnips without them getting rotten.


So long as your cellar is cool, it shouldn't be a problem .  When i was
growing up, my folks kept potatoes, sweet potatoes and turnips like this.

  I have
> downloaded an image of an oval roasting pan with handles and a lid from
> Stefan's Florilegium that I think would have been used for the dish.  What
> do you think Elizabethan would have used for this type of cookware, metal
> or
> earthenware, or either?


My suspicion is that they  would have used earthenware.

Emile Henry makes a nice earthenware oval brazier with a lid and handles, so
> I'm wondering if that would be appropriate?  I also have some Pfaltzgraf
> oval and round baking dishes without lids.  Armoured turnips is really
> like
> a modern potatoes au gratin, which I wouldn't normally cook with a lid,
> and
> I always cook it in porcelain.  Advice???


You could bake it initially with a lidded dish, but I would take the lid off
for the last few minutes to let the top brown a big..makes it really great
looking!


Kiri