[Sca-cooks] Brawn

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 3, 2010, at 7:13 AM, Alexander Clark wrote:

> <delurk>
> If I may pick a few brains . . .
> 
> Does anyone here know of any evidence of the default meaning of
> "brawn" (said of foodstuffs) in later Middle English? Did it mean
> "boar flesh", or did it already mean something like head cheese? And
> did it refer to any specific body part? (Wiktionary thinks it used to
> refer especially to buttocks and hams.)
> 
> One inconclusive clue that I'm looking at is menus, where one (for the
> coronation of Henry IV) has "braun blanke leche", while another (for
> "the stalling of John Stafford, Archibisshoppe of Caunterbury") has
> "Blanke singuler leche." ISTM that the most likely recipe for both of
> these is "blaunche brawen".

The impression I get is that there is some point (very possibly in the later Middle Ages) at which brawn stopped being "the meat of X from the meaty part of X", such as the breast meat of a capon, where it would often be used as an ingredient in pottages based on the broth of the capon, say, and starts being something you slice/leche. The later brawn recipes, probably from the 16th century, that I can recall involve brining a whole, rolled-up, boneless pig or piget, suckling or merely smallish, as in, not a butchering-type hog, which would be simmered until tender and then glazed/preserved in its reduced stock, which would have jellied. 

So yes, at some point it seems to have defaulted to something akin to head cheese (although possibly a higher-end product by modern standards). I don't recall any specific reference to brawn being from the hind quarters, but maybe, as is often the case, there's some specific reference I simply haven't seen, that has become somebody's generalization.

Interesting, though, that in your two stated examples, we don't know for sure if the blanke singuler leche is in fact a meat dish; we just know it is white or pale, and sliced. For all we know it could be almond milk jelly, and the issue gets clouded further by some dishes that contain teased capon brawn (imagine "pulled" poached chicken) in some sort of solidified, almond-based white matrix. Is it brawn because it's sliced, or because brawn is really the main ingredient?

Okay, I'm down to examining the meaning of the word "is", I get to be President now.

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