[Sca-cooks] cow butter?

Susanne Mayer susanne.mayer5 at chello.at
Mon Jun 28 12:20:28 PDT 2010


Hello all, due to my vacation I have over 70 posts to work through so I am 
late,...


Schmalz (in Germany and Austria most likely rendered porkfat) can also be 
Butterschmalz with the butter omitted:  rendered butter akin to ghee.
 karapfen or other sweet yeast dough bakery goods baked in fat today uses 
either  pork and or butter-schmalz or a mix of both,  Butterschmalz gives 
Krapfen the buttery taste without burning the dough.

4 types of butter:

I would assume that sweet butter is like today made from sweet (cream) and 
not soured (sourcream) milk.
May and Summer butter is made from milk collected during May (spring 
pastures are very rich in herbs) and "summer" meaning milk from Cows out to 
pasture or having been fed at least on fresh grass and has a distinct, 
richer flavor (especially may butter).
I have not yet come across the term of anken but it seems still to be used 
for butter in Switzerland. (see alemanisch wiki 
http://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter)

as to goat butter: the one I got here in our bio food store was white, 
goaty, and not very *fatty* in texture. For a middleeuropean used to only 
cow butter very strange tastig.

Katharina


>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 08:06:15 -0600
> From: Susan Lin <susanrlin at gmail.com>
> To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] cow butter?
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTimRLojces1UD0X6Q_qhr9AiHOcyrbhIrKPf3mor at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> 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:
>
>>
>> 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.
>>




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