[Sca-cooks] January 2009 MK Cooks Challenge

[ranvaig at columbus.rr.com]

>How are you defining sauce?
>
>How did Rumpolt define sauce?
>
>This sounds like a fascinating project.
>
>Eduardo

Rumpolt only uses the word "Salsen" in the introduction.  The various sauces are referenced by name "mit einem süssen Pobrat", "in eim schartzen Pfeffer", "mit einem Epffel Gescharb darvnter" without the word sauce.  Usually without giving directions for it, but searching the text finds the sauce elsewhere.  The references are very common, and Rumpolt seems to assume the reader will know what the sauce is.  Like a modern recipe might tell you to add a white sauce without giving  a recipe.

When the recipe says "ein Pfeffer" rather than the spice,  it means a pepper sauce, made with blood, onions, spices, sugar, sometimes thickened with bread.  Usually the food is cooked in the sauce.

Gesharb sauce has either chopped almonds or apples and onions sauteed in butter, mixed with broth or wine, vinegar, raisins, thickened with flour  It can be yellow or white, sweet or sour.  Food can be cooked with the sauce or the sauce added at serving.  Gesharb can mean a shallow pottery dish and the sauce is named after the dish it is served in, or it can mean shards or fragments and may refer to the coarse texture of the sauce.

Pobrat sauce is usually thickened with sugar but sometimes also flour, flavored with spices (saffron, cinnamon, cloves and pepper) and wine, sometimes with stock, sometimes vinegar, and slices of orange or lemon.  It can be yellow, black, or grey (but I don't see how you get the colors). It can be sweet or sour.  Make it without fat if it is to be served cold.  It seems to be something added at plating, rather than cooking the item in it.  The Webster's online dictionary says Pobrat is a Czech word meaning "take all", that might or might not be connected.

There are a couple of others, but these were the three mystery sauces.

Ranvaig