[Sca-cooks] Boiled salad and High Table dishes

Michael Gunter countgunthar at hotmail.com
Tue Nov 13 10:19:10 PST 2007


> Nice! Say, can I get your recipes for the Boiled Salad <
>From my Laurel's Prize Tourney notes:
 
An Excellent Boiled Salad
Country Contentments or The English Huswife
By Gervaise Markham (1615)
To make an excellent compound boil'd Sallat: take of Spinage well washt two or three handfuls, and put it into faire water and boile it till it bee exceeding soft and tender as pappe; then put it into a Cullander and draine the water from it, which done, with the backside of your Chopping-knife chop it and bruise it as small as may bee: then put it into a Pipkin with a good lump of sweet butter and boile it over again; then take a good handfull of Currants cleane washt and put to it, and stirre them well together, then put to as much Vinegar as will make it reasonable tart, and then with sugar season it according to the taste of the Master of the house, and so serve it upon sippets.
 
Spinach was boiled soft and then drained. Then chopped with the back of a
heavy chef's knife.
 
The greens were placed into one of the frying pans and a good lump of unsalted butter was added and stirred in.  The heat was brought up gradually until the juices began to lightly simmer.  When temperature was reached I added a good handful of golden raisins and let them cook until they began to release their sweet flavor.  Red wine vinegar was then added to taste. 
 
The slowly increasing temperature was because I cooked it in a period earthenware skillet.
 
>and the Cheryse please? <
 
I'll look it up and send it in a few.
> On another note, do folks from different places typically serve some special dishes only to High Table? We do around here. It's either something that is very good but too costly to prepare for the masses or something we know is either a particular favorite of someone at High Table or perhaps just an illusion food of something they particularly hate (beets come to mind here) or some wonderous marvel of some sort.> 
 
I very rarely make something only for High Table. I like everyone to enjoy
all of my feasts. I know it is proper to give special dishes to the High Table
but I've also attended feasts where the populace got horrible food but the
people at High Table raved about their meal. Too much attention was
focussed on the Royals and not enough on the Populace.
 
One or two dishes is nice. I remember a magnificent salmon with seafood
sauce presented to High Table at the Coronation of Miguel & Conal I. I 
got to sit up with them and it was an amazing dish. But it couldn't have been
served to the full populace and the fact that Miguel only eats fish or fowl
allowed him to have something different than the main Populace course.
 
If another group wants to bring a dish for Head Table they are welcome to,
but generally Head Table eats what the rest of my feasters get. Of course
Head Table dishes are prettier than the rest.
> Olwen
Gunthar
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