[Sca-cooks] Brawn

[Alexander Clark]

On Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:43:21 -0500, "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus
Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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.

Sorry, I didn't finish explaining what I meant about "blanke singuler
leche". It fills approximately the same place in the menu as "braun
blanke leche", and its name seems to contain a word for wild boar
(though it's usually spelled without a "u": "singler"). So this
suggests to me that they *might* be the same dish, and if they are
then they *might* contain boar. Anyway, I don't know another word
besides "singler/senglere" that might have been meant by "singuler",
and I only know one lechemete named for its white color.

-- 
Henry of Maldon/Alex Clark