[Sca-cooks] English Food

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Thu Jul 3 08:12:56 PDT 2008


On Jul 3, 2008, at 10:17 AM, euriol wrote:

> Other things to try - Roasted Chicken. If doing Tavern style, I'd  
> suggest
> getting leg quarters and butchering them to the drumsticks and  
> thighs. You
> can get the leg quarters pretty cheap at Wal-Mart (47 cents a pound  
> the
> last time I bought a month ago). You can there make a couple of  
> sauces to
> go with the chicken.


I can state with some experience that people will crawl, naked,  
through open fields of broken bottles and climb the barbed-wire- 
wrapped tree in the middle of it, to get at the sauce gauncile sitting  
in that tree. Some of them will even put the sauce on the barbed wire  
and eat it.

 From Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (I don't have the hard copy  
in front of me or I'd provide the MS data):

> Sauce gauncile.--Take floure and cowe mylke, safroune wel y-grounde,  
> garleke, peper, salt [added in MS ] (Note: added in different ink.)  
> and put in-to a faire litel pot; and se(th)e it ouer (th)e fire, and  
> serue it forthe with the goos [added in MS ] .

Rough quantity suggestions:

1 pint milk
4 Tbs flour [either cheat and make a roux with butter, use Wondra-type  
thickening flour, be good with a whisk, or blend the result to get rid  
of possible lumps]
12 peeled garlic cloves
~1/4 tsp saffron, crushed
salt and pepper to taste

Mix some milk with flour to make a smooth slurry (or use your own  
preferred method for making a non-lumpy white sauce) and whisk into  
the milk. Bring to a simmer until it thickens, reduce heat to minimum,  
add other ingredients, simmer until garlic is very tender.

The recipe doesn't mention this, but options include A) pureeing it  
all, B) removing half the garlic cloves, pureeing the rest of the  
sauce and returning the whole garlic to the sauce, or C) leaving the  
garlic whole. My usual preference is B). This way, just in case anyone  
doesn't know there's garlic in it...

As the recipe suggests, this is probably intended for boiled goose,  
but at feasts I tend to use it on roast chicken. The last time I  
served it, someone came back and asked for more garlic sauce.

"Wow, you guys went through that chicken quickly!"
"Yeah, I guess..."
"Well, I'm afraid I just sent out the last of the chickens, except the  
ones the cooks and servers are eating --"
"That's okay. Is there more sauce?"
"Uh, yeah, I think so, over there. What are you putting it on?"
"Spoons."


Adamantius



"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter



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