[Sca-cooks] Steam was Sweating meat

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

Some of this is very interesting, but not what I would call  steam-cooking.

For comparison's sake -
- from  pseudo-Apicius:

"419 Stuffed sardine
Properly, ought to be treated in  this manner: the sardine is boned and 
filled with ..... wrapped in parchment and  placed in a flat dish about the 
steam rising from the stove."

- from Societe d'Agriculteurs, Cours Complet d'Agriculture, ou  
Dictionnaire Universel d'Agriculture, Abbé Rozier, ed., Delalain, Paris, 1789  
(VIII:207)

"Take a stew pot and put in it water, and on top a tinplate strainer,  
supplied with two curved handles inside.
This strainer will hold the  potatoes.
The stew pot will be tightly closed with a cover and put on a  stove. The 
water soon starting to boil, the potatoes find themselves plunged in  a 
burning cloud, are heated from every side, their constituent parts  imperceptibly 
unite, becoming soft and supple, resulting in what is called  cooking, 
during which only a little moisture evaporates , benefiting the  flavor.
This stew pot with steam naturally can be applied to other edible  roots..."


The steaming in the Menagier is a cleaning step; the actual cooking is done 
 in wine and water.

I realize there was a strong French influence on England early on, but I'd  
be cautious about considering recipes as late as 1500, or not in 
Anglo-Normand  (for instance), as being at all representative of French practice. As 
it is, the  first recipe essentially includes two different processes; I 
presume the  reference is to the second one (the first, though very interesting, 
involves  enclosing the food in a tight container and then warming that in 
water). Right  off, I'd quibble with glossing "eyre" as steam; literally, of 
course, it is  "air". Yes, this probably refers here to a vapor from the 
cooking, But it  clearly does not mean "steam", since no water is mentioned.
 
This is more like a (French, not Cajun) etouffee, a method - "smothering"  
the vapors in the pot - which as I mentioned earlier is indeed found in the  
period. The Enseignemenz includes this (very like the one in the Viandier 
that  mentions "alaine" (haleine) ), in a similar vein:


"Small bird  grané
If you want to make grané of small birds, put the birds in a completely  
dry pot, with grilled pieces of fatty bacon, and add wine in water and pepper  
and ginger, and keep it well covered so that the vapors do not seep out 
before  everything is cooked."
 
 
The last one with wine is closer, but the second part seems to be saying  
that the cooking is finished with the syrup actually on the capon.
 
Nothing here really suggests food "plunged in a burning cloud, ... heated  
from every side". So I'm still inclined to think that steaming was basically 
not  a significant method in our period. As far as that goes, even the 18th 
century  reference was probably barely known in its own time.

Jim Chevallier
www.chezjim.com

A History of Coffee and Other  Refreshments in Early Modern France 
by Pierre Le Grand d'Aussy 

In a  message dated 4/15/2013 9:54:18 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
dmyers at medievalcookery.com writes:
Green Eel Stew. Steam and skin, or simply  skin the eels and put them to
cook in water with wine in very small pieces,  then grind parsley and
darkly toasted bread, and put through the sieve: and  have ground
beforehand prepared ginger and saffron, and put it all on to  boil
together, and when almost done add small squares of cheese. [Menagier  de
Paris (France, 1393)]


There's also a couple from English  cookbooks where the meat was placed
on splints to keep it up off the bottom  of the pot and out of direct
contact with the liquid - these being from a  time where there was so
much contact between the English and the French that  the English
cookbooks were almost half French.

A drye stewe for beefs.  Take a grete glasse, and do thi beef therin, and
do therto onyons mynced, and  hole clowes, and maces, and raisinges of
corance, and wyn; then stop hit  welle, and scthe it in a pot with watur,
or in a cawdron, but take gode care  that no watur goe in; or take a
faire urthen pot, and lay hit well with  lplentes (smail pieces of wood)
in the bothum, that the flessh neigh hit not;  then take rybbes of beef
or faire leches, and couche hom above the splentes,  and do therto onyons
mynced, and clowes, and maces, and pouder of pepur and  wyn, and stop hit
well that no eyre (steam) goo oute