[Sca-cooks] white wine and butter sauce

Daniel Myers dmyers at medievalcookery.com
Thu Jul 28 06:31:39 PDT 2011


Here are some recipes that are vaguely close:

A broth for a Neatstung. Take Claret wine, grated Bread, Corance, sweete
Butter, Sugar, and Sinamon, boyle them altogither. Then take the Neats
tung and slice it and so lay it in your dish with sippets and serve it
in. [A Book of Cookrye (England, 1591)]

1 - To boile a Flounder or Pickrell of the French fashion. Take a pinte
of white wine, the tops of young Thyme and Rosemary, a little whole
Mace, a little whole Pepper, seasoned with veriuce, salt, and a pieece
of sweet butter, and so serve it: this broth will serve to boile fish
twice or thrice in. [Delights for Ladies, (England, 1609)]

172 Pike in May butter. Take a pike, let it come to a boil in salted
wine with water, and when it is half done, then draw the skin off of it
and put the flesh in a pan and put a large amount of fresh butter, good
wine, ginger and cinnamon thereon. Do not oversalt it and let it cook
together. Do not make too much sauce. [Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin,
(Germany, 16th c.)]

To roast a Legge of Mutton on the French Fashion. PAre all the skin as
thinne as you can: Lard it with sweet Lard, and stick about it a dozen
cloues: when it is halfe roasted, cut off three or foure thin pieces,
and mince it small, with a few sweet hearbs, and a little beaten Ginger.
Put in a Ladlefull of Claret wine, a piece of sweet Butter, two or three
spoonefuls of Uergis, a little Pepper, a few parboyld Capers: when all
this is boyled together, chop the yolke of an hard Egge into it. Then
dridge your Legge, and serue it vpon Sawce.  [A NEVV BOOKE of Cookerie,
(England, 1615)]

To garnish a duck in the Irish style. Put to boil a good duck, when
cooked take some malvoisie, new butter, and take the roots of radishes
well ground: put sugar & cinnamon therein, and make it boil, and cast it
onto the duck, and serve so.  [Ouverture de Cuisine, (France, 1604)]

There are also numerous recipes for meats stewed in wine and butter.

- Doc


> -------- Original Message --------
> From: "Philip Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
> Date: Wed, July 27, 2011 11:13 pm
> 
> On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 21:29 -0500, Stefan li Rous wrote:
> > I had posted the message below to the Atlantia list and Baroness Julia  
> > Windsor replied with:
> > "Perhaps a nice white wine and butter sauce.".
> > 
> > So, what is a white wine and butter sauce? Is it just white wine and  
> > butter whisked together? Is it emulsified? Is it period?
> > 
> > I also stated below that I thought bechamel sauce was post-period. Is  
> > it?
> 
> As I recall, white wine emulsified with butter appears in 17th-century
> recipe sources for fish dishes. Bechamel, apart from a non-typical
> 15th-century basis for a garlic jance, is less typical of period
> cookery.





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