[Sca-cooks] Original Recipe Wanted

Helen Schultz meisterin02 at yahoo.com
Sat Jun 7 19:52:00 PDT 2008


I've found the original recipe on my own <sigh>... it helps to look at the bibleography of cookbooks BEFORE one sends out a plea for help.
I found the original in Forme of Cury (#164).  In case anyone is curious about the original, this is what it says (I don't have that letter we all know means 'th' so I have just used 'th' where it was in the original):
 
Crustardes of eerbis on fyssh day.  Take gode eerbys and grynde hem smale with wallenotes pyked clene, a grete porcioun.  Lye it vp almost with as myche verious as water; seeth it wel with powdeour and safrun withoute salt.  Make a crust in a trap and do the fyssh therinne, vnstewed, with a litel oil & gode powdour.  Whan it is half ybaked, do the sewe thereto and bake it vp.  If thou wilt make it clere of fyssh, seeth ayren harde & take out the yolkes & grinde hem with gode powdours, and alye it vp with tho sewe and serue it forth.
 
The modern redaction I have is from a book called "Wild Blackberry Cobbler and Other Old-Fashioned Recipes," by Katie Stewart and Pamila Michael. It is in the section of English recipes from the 14th to the 19th century.  It is as follows:
 
6 oz shortcrust  pastry                      
2 lbs fresh haddock fillets                              
salt & fresh ground pepper                            
pinch of ground cinnamon                            
2 Tbsp olive oil                                              
 
Sauce:
4 oz shelled walnuts
a bunch of fresh parsley
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 springs fresh lemon balm
1 small sprig fresh rosemary                                                                     
juice of 1 lemon, with same amount of water                                                                   
generous pinch of saffron
 
Roll out the pastry and line an 8-9" pie plate and set aside. Using a sharp knife, skin the fish and chop the flesh into rough pieces. Fill the pastry case with the fish and season well with salt & pepper and the pinch of cinnamon.  Spoon over the oil and place in the center of a moderate oven (350 degrees) for 20 minutes.
 
Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. Chop the walnuts coursely, wash and strip the herbs from their stalks and chop finely or pass through a parsley mill and place in a saucepan with the walnuts. Add the lemon juice, water and saffron. Season with pepper and simmer for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat.
 
Spoon sauce mixture over the top of the partly baked fish and return to the oven for a further 10 minutes. Serve hot.
As I mentioned before, I didn't follow this exactly, but made little individual pillows of dough (I actually used canned biscuit dough) and spooned the sauce over them when plated.  I don't recall any of them coming back to the kitchen untouched, but some might just have been thrown away <shrug>.
 
~~ Katarina Helene
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
Meisterin Katarina Helene von Schönborn, OL 
Shire of Narrental (Peru, Indiana) http://narrental.home.comcast.net 
Middle Kingdom 
http://meisterin.katarina.home.comcast.net 
 
"A room without books is like a body without a soul." -- Cicero 
 
"The danger in life is not that we aim too high and miss. 
The problem is that we aim too low and hit the mark." -- Michaelangelo 
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