[Sca-cooks] Salt Crust

[Terry Decker]

I've taken a quick look in a couple volumes of Apicius and I don't find any 
reference to salt encrusted fish.  There is a meat recipe that has been 
interpreted to be salt encrusted, but I have my doubts.

Such a dish requires the availability of salt and fresh fish (anyone think 
salt encrusted salt cod is a good idea), so if it appears, I would expect to 
find it in the Mediterranean corpus.  I haven't found a reference yet.  It 
appears to be a "traditional" dish in Tunisia and some other parts of North 
Africa and to have been adopted in other places, but that does not 
necessarily make it of medieval origin.  Neither have I found trout baked in 
terra cota.  What does appear is fish baked in pastry, which within SCA 
period would have been more available and less expensive than salt.  And you 
can cook salt cod in pastry.

This is an interesting question and I'll keep looking, but I think salt 
encrusted fish is probably more modern than medieval and that someone made 
an oft-repeated but very tenuous historical link with no real evidence.

Bear


> Does anybody have any actual references on salt crust cooking on fish? I
> have looked through the salt and fish files in the Florilegium,
> godecookery.com and a couple other places. One blog mentioned Apicius but 
> I
> haven't found my copy yet in unpacking.
>
> Lots of blather about it being an ancient thing but no real sources.
>
> Thanks,
> aeduin