[Sca-cooks] What constitutes modern food

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 24, 2010, at 1:31 PM, Antonia di Benedetto Calvo wrote:

> Ian Kusz wrote:
>> Actually, I have this idea about sandwiches.
>> 
>> Sops are period (of course).  But what if a cook had a sop that they cooked
>> too long, and it became dry?  You could still eat it, but then you'd have an
>> open-faced sandwich with a sort of mushy "filling" with mixed meat and
>> vegetables.  So, would this kind of open-faced sandwich with a cooked
>> topping be allowed by our period police?  What say you?  I'm thinking,
>> cooking it down to the consistency of, oh, exceedingly lumpy mashed potatoes
>> with pieces of meat and vegetable mixed in.
>>  
> 
> Suddenly, I seem to be stepping into the role of the period police.  What the heck is the *point* of this exercise?  It sounds like ruining a good soup so you can serve squish on toast and pretend it's period?

The other question to be addressed is whether our target audience ate much toasted bread that wasn't sops, and whether this was considered healthy, or even if everybody concerned could chew it.

I mean, the recipes from the sixteenth and seventeenth century that go into detail as to how sops are prepared and slowly moistened, seem to suggest that sops are pretty well puffed up and jellylike by the time they're served. You have to wonder whether this could be accomplished by the kind of over-reduced pottage being spoken of.

Although a kid named Ronald Meinke in the second grade did traumatize me by not only bringing to school a sandwich consisting of Chicken a la King on white, Wonder-style sandwich bread, but by chewing with his mouth open... but I'm mostly over it now; it's only been, what, forty years?

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