[Sca-cooks] Bourbelier of Wild Pig

[Saint Phlip]

On 9/15/06, Patrick Levesque <petruvoda at videotron.ca> wrote:
> I'm almost tempted to drive across the whole kingdom now :-)) (Just Kidding,
> we have an event here tomorrow anyway - no feast, yes!, means I can fight!)

Well, you're more than welcome to come ;-) We aren't cooking it until
tomorrow night. Tonight it's a rather nice commercial version of
tempura shrimp ;-)

> Anyway, I'm a lazy bum and I don't feel like walking upstairs to check the
> Viandier's version, but here's what in the Menagier from Cindy Renfrow's
> online version:
>
> BOURBELIER DE SANGLIER. Primo le convient mettre en eaue boulant, et bien
> tost retraire et boutonner de giroffle; mettre rostir, et baciner de sausse
> faicte d'espices, c'est assavoir gingembre, canelle , giroffle, graine,
> poivre long et noix muguettes, destrempé de vertjus, vin et vinaigre, et
> sans boulir l'en baciner; et quant il sera rosti, si boulez tout ensemble.
> Et ceste sausse est appellée queue de sanglier , et la trouverez cy-après
> (et là il la fait liant de pain: et cy, non).
>
> The Miscellany's translation is pretty adequate.

Yeah, looks like.

 I'm wondering, though,
> since in a footnote there is a musing about the meaning of "queue de
> sanglier" whether you do find an accumulation of fat in boar's tail (similar
> to mutton tail fat and its use in ME cuisine)?...

Well, if so, it wouldn't be very much. I mean, a standard sheep's tail
is rather like a thick dog's tail, and it would be quite possible for
it to expand to store fat (the sheep most of you have seen have their
tails docked when very young). A pig's tail, however, is very short
and skinny, more akin to a bit of string, rather than something that
might expand to include fat.

> And what the heck, I'll go get the Viandier, just a minute...
>
> Ok, the 4 various manuscripts compared by Scully rather agree with the
> Menagier, with the difference that after the pork is roasted and basted, it
> is cut in smaller sections to be boiled in the sauce.
>
> Numbles, by the way, is Nomblet.  Couldn't find it in a dictionnary. Did
> find this definition of Bourbelier in a period dictionary:
>
> Une viande
> fort friande que les
> anciens faisoyent des tetines d'une truye apres qu'elle avoit cochonné.
>
> A tasty dish that the Ancients made with the udders of a sow after she had
> born piglets.

Thinking that this might be a meaning drift. The Latin translators
usually use the word "bacon" to translate the word "lardum" for
example, and I caught on when reading Anthimus, where he talks about
"bacon" (lardum) from the leg (bacon as we know it being usually side
or belly meat) that lardum might more properly be translated as "fat
meat", which opens up a realm of possibilities.

Similarly, "numbles" or "bourbelier" may have had a particular
meaning- maybe akin to "offal" as used to refer to non-prime cuts from
the beast. I mean, until the recent fad for " Buffalo Wings", wings
were often sold very cheaply, just to get rid of them, and considered
offal, pretty much. In this case, the meaning may have started from,
or included, sow's udder- possibly with the term being used to refer
to a famous dish (how many bison have wings?- will confuse the Hel out
of future SCAdians in a millenium or so ;-) and migrated over to the
non-ham bits of the beast, as I suggested before.

And, looking at the ingredients, I can't think that the combination of
cooking tecxhniques and spicing would do very well with something like
the liver alone, as in a previous suggestion. Udder might do well, or
even brains and heart, but to my modern mind, the recipe looks ideal
for a good pork roast, such as we're using.

> Good luck with this one!!!
>
> Petru

Don't need luck, just patience- I know the recipe will be good ;-) Am
just interested in its original intent ;-)

-- 
Saint Phlip

Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

Has anyone seen my temper?
I seem to have misplaced it at Stalag XXXV....