[Sca-cooks] oxtail soup, Vol 57, Issue 36

[Daniel Myers]

Hi Malhavick,

I'm curious about several of the statements you've made below - it's a
bit complicated, so I've interspersed my questions and comments
throughout.

> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Todd Olson <malhavickarminduclayn at gmail.com>
> 
>  My first time responding to an enquiry on the list, Please take anything I
> say with a grain of salt as I am fairly new to "modernizing" a period
> recipe.
>
> In my research into Medieval Cooking, most of our "period cook books" come
> from the Manors and halls of Kings. Many "peasant dishes" are not included
> unless it was a common dish of the area.

To a certain degree this is true, and we do need to be aware that what
the cookbooks describe was not necessarily the typical fare for the
average medieval person.  That being said, there is a wide variety of
dishes in many medieval cookbooks, including dishes like "gruel" and
"garbage".  I've even seen medieval recipes that call for a cow's udder,
so I think the lack of an oxtail recipe in the medieval corpus is not
insignificant.

> Animals were rarely butchered, but sometimes that was how you paid your
> taxes, with faire or fayre beef or meats. Only the fayre beef was considered
> for tax collection, the rest left to the peasant, tail, organs, trimmings,
> etc. to feed his or her family or the manor stock pot.

Could you tell me where this information comes from?  I ask because it
does not mesh with what I've seen in several sources.

My understanding is that:
1. Depending on location and time, animals of all types were butchered,
sometimes with great frequency.
2. More often than not, taxes were paid in grain, and complex accounts
were kept of who had what credit or debt.
3. Offal was (to a degree) valued, with contracts stating who in a
manoral setting was to get certain organs (there are also heaps of
recipes for kidney pies).

If you (or anyone else) has good sources on any of the above that points
otherwise, I would be happy to read them.

> While finding a period recipe will be difficult, taking a modern recipe and
> deleting or replacing modern ingredients (tomatoes, etc.) with period ones
> would not be difficult.

Extreme care should be used when taking this approach.  More often than
not, if you substitute a medieval ingredient for a modern one in a
modern recipe, the result is a modern recipe.  For example, soups made
with meat and vegetables are exceptionally rare in medieval English
cooking, so substituting turnips for potatoes in a modern beef stew will
not make it medieval.  Similarly, no amount of substitution is going to
make a cheeseburger medieval.

> You can also take a period soup of beef or venison recipe and simply
> substitute the oxtail for the meat. back then, you used what was available
> or on hand at the time, much like today in our economy.
>
> I no longer cook with veal or other expensive meats and stick to basic pork,
> chicken, or beef for recipes especially while experimenting with a modern
> version of a medieval recipe.

This is a reasonable approach, but again should be used with care. 
Substituting beef for venison, for example, could easily result in very
un-medieval dishes.  While both beef and venison dishes in England were
frequently seasoned with cinnamon for example, the beef dishes usually
used a number of other spices as well, while the venison dishes
typically used fewer.

I also usually use the more common meats when experimenting with a
recipe, but sometimes - like with capon - there are aspects of the more
expensive meat that are unique.

- Doc