[Sca-cooks] ANCIENT AND PERIOD RECIPES LINK

[Sue Clemenger]

My mom used to make what was, essentially, frumenty....as a breakfast
cereal.  She'd soak red wheat that we'd grown, overnight (the soaking, not
the growing), and then simmer it until the kernels started to burst.
My brother and I used to call them "rubber wheats."
This was decades before I'd ever even heard of the SCA, so I had a good
laugh when I first encountered actual frumenty recipes....
--Maire, Auld Artemisian Farm Grrrl

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 1:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] ANCIENT AND PERIOD RECIPES LINK


> If I might be so bold, the modern adaptations of frumenty are actually
wheat
> polenta (the word first being used in English around 1000 CE).  Frumenty
is
> made from whole grain, while polenta is made from crushed grain or meal.
> The use of bulgar or cracked wheat is a cheat to expedite the cooking and
> does not produce the "frogs egg" effect of frumenty.
>
> Frumenty mostly refers to whole, hulled wheat grains.  Polenta initially
was
> applied to barley, both whole and crushed, but was being commonly used to
> describe any boiled grain meal by the time of Apicius.  Porridge primarily
> referred to a dish of oatmeal, but was also used to describe other cooked
> grain meals.  I suspect the definitions became more generalized over time.
>
> It might be interesting to compare the various recipes and word usages
over
> time.
>
> Bear