[Sca-cooks] medieval caviar

[Stefan li Rous]

Gunthar mentioned:
<<< And then there was Sir Guy's vigil at Pennsic where I found out  
about
it that afternoon and the Bellatrix clan shoved a couple hundred dollars
in my hand and told me to prepare something. That was interesting
but I did manage to make a rather nice, if not period, buffet. My  
favorite
part of that was being told by one of my runners he'd been mauled by
a bunch of dukes who stole his full platter of caviar canapes and pushed
him back towards the prep tent telling him to get more. Since when do
big dumb stickjocks like caviar!? >>>

While that particular caviar dish may or may not have been period, it  
is my understanding that caviar, or other fish roe, was likely to  
have been eaten in period. We think of sturgeon being primarily a  
Russian or southwest Asia fish today, but I seem to remember comments  
that sturgeon ran in many of the rivers of western Europe during the  
Middle Ages.

Okay, I just did a search on the Florilegium. A lot more on sturgeon  
than on caviar. However, both do show up in this file:
Romanian-ckbk-art (112K)  1/25/04    "A Translation of a 17th Century  
Romanian
                                        Cookbook" by Lord Petru cel  
paros Voda.

So does anyone have any other mentions or period recipes of caviar?

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****