[Sca-cooks] cow butter?

[Susan Lin]

I know there was a discussion not long ago about schmaltz.  I was raised
with schmaltz being rendered chicken fat but I know others who grew up with
other cultures who recognize schmaltz as the fat of other animals.  The
entire thread is probably available through the Florilegium somewhere.
-S

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 7:43 PM, <wheezul at canby.com> wrote:

> >
> > Another thing in the recipe that has me wondering is the mention of "cow
> > butter". Is there no general term for "butter" in Spanish? Or do recipes
> > tend to call out specific types of butter?
>
> Thanks for bringing up the question of butter, because I too have some!
> First, I did go spend the time to read through the florilegium files and I
> learned quite a bit from it - thanks everyone!
>
> In Anna Wecker's cookbook (I am now up to almost all of part 3 creating an
> ingredient list) - she specifies in a recipe to use butter, and that goat
> butter is preferred if available.  She also mentions cow, goat and sheep
> milks and cheeses.  I like her style of cooking - she says something like
> 'use this if you have it, or substitute x, y or z if you don't'.  Very few
> of her recipes have rigid guidelines for measurements.
>
> Specific questions I have are terminology related to fats.  The most
> prominent fat reference is to schmaltz which since I haven't found a
> 'tell' in the recipes I consider an animal fat - probably pork, but could
> certainly fall into the 'what you have on hand' category as well from pan
> drippings.  She mentions sweet almond oil specifically, and I don't seem
> to recall a reference to olive oil yet in the work.
>
> She also calls out for 4 types of butter (or 5 if you count the goat
> butter) - "butter", "anken", "sweet butter" and "May Butter".  To go back
> to the florilegium commentary, the citations by the compilers in several
> of the period German cookbooks I have been reading tell that May Butter
> refers to the fattest butters of the year because the cows gave the most
> milk fat in May.  In terms of Wecker's recipes, especially in how to make
> almond "May Mushes" that include extra butter or cream than the more
> regular mushes made with more or less the same ingredients, there is no
> hint that the freshest May Butter used in the rather nummy looking almond
> torte was meant to have medicianl value.
>
> I am confused by the interchangeability of the terms anken (which my
> dictionaries show as butter) or butter itself.  I just finished
> translating an inventory of 1528 of the Bishop of Strassburg's effects.
> In the cellar are 4 pots of schmaltz and 2 pots of anken - so probably
> different things entirely.  If anken is butter, than why does Anna switch
> between anken and butter?  If anken was preserved butter, that might make
> sense...
>
> So would 'sweet butter' mean freshly made butter?  Or would it mean that
> it wasn't allowed to sour at all as in the overnight step?  Or was the
> stored butter of a sour quality?  There is also a keg of 'gumpost'
> (compost) which my books suggest was a tub of soured milk.
>
> One last question from me.  When I experimented with making croissants a
> while back, one internet source said that European butter was drier than
> the US butter.  Is there a way of drying ours out more?
>
> Katherine in An Tir
>
>
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