[Sca-cooks] Salt Crust

[steve montgomery]

I had my doubts as well. The site that mentioned Apicius just use the name.
I've looked through Medieval Arab Cookery and A Mediterranean Feast and
found nothing.

I completely agree with Bear about the need for salt and fresh fish. Just
because some chef babbles that it is over a 1000 year old technique and a
blog claims to have seen references doesn't make it true.

Time to post a direct question to the writer of the blog.

aeduin

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:

> 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
>>
>
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