[Sca-cooks] Rape Seed Oil, Canola Oil, and the Early Norse

Daniel And elizabeth phelps dephelps at embarqmail.com
Thu Apr 25 15:25:07 PDT 2013


Domestic "oils" available to the Norse would be oils rendered from sea creatures; whale, porpoise, seal and walrus.  I really doubt that they were used for ccoking, and butterfat from cows, sheep, goats and perhaps reindeer.  Lard but that has already been mentioned.

Best I can come up with.

Daniel

----- Original Message -----
Recently I took part in a weekend demonstration of Viking-era Norse living
and one of the foods that we attempted was little handpies, some heated on a
dry 'frying pan' metal surface while others were fried in oil in a pot. For
the deep frying, we used rape seed oil... which had me laughing at myself
after spending nearly $17 on the can of it only to learn once I returned
from the store that it was basically canola oil.

Since the demo, I've wondered what sort of cooking oil would actually be
available to the Viking-era Norse. We know that a small amount of luxury
olive oil was imported but aside from lard - what would have been most
commonly used? I doubt it was what we used last weekend.


Hrothny

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