[Sca-cooks] alec sauce

Mairi Ceilidh jjterlouw at earthlink.net
Thu Aug 23 07:16:16 PDT 2012


>From Apicius, A Critical Edition with an Introduction and English
Translation by Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger:

"Allec:  This by-product of fish sauce production was used as a fish paste
in its own right."  

It goes on for a couple of paragraphs to give a deeper definition.

If you are interested in Apicius and do not own this book you need to
rectify that.  Of all the versions I own this is the most informative
available.  Sally Grainger also did a companion cookbook, but it only has a
fraction of the recipes redacted.  Worthwhile none the less. 

Mairi Ceilidh



-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Sandra J. Kisner
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2012 8:11 AM
To: Cooks within the SCA (sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org)
Subject: [Sca-cooks] alec sauce

There's an interesting post (and query) at The Old Foodie today
<http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2012/08/alecsize-that-fish.html> about alec
sauce.  Does anybody here know anything about it?

An extract from the post:

Still wishing to pursue the notion of `alec sauce', I think I came a step
closer with a definition frm
A new English dictionary on historical principles : founded mainly on the
materials collected by the Philological Society (1888)

Halec, Halecize, var. ALEC, ALECIZE.
Halecoid, a. and sb. Ichth. [f. mod.L. Halecoides, f. halec, alec, sauce
prepared  from small fish, and perh. the fish itself:.]
a. adj. Of or belonging to the herring family,
b. sb. A clupeoid fish.

Other sources suggest it was a `form of garum' or `thickened form of garum.'
Oddly, perhaps, I have been unable to find any recipes for `alec sauce' -
although this may well be due to my poor linguist skills. Maybe one of you
with knowledge of Latin, or ancient cookery, can help?

Sandra
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