[Sca-cooks] 'Viking' recipes

[Terry Decker]

Lyme grass is one of those non-standard seeds ground to flour in Iceland, 
Greenland, and probably cultivated and used at L'Anse-aux-Meadows, 
Newfoundland.  (Journal of Ethnobiology 1 (2): 200-207, Dec., 1981.) 
Basically lyme grass replaced cereals when they were not available and was 
in turn replaced when cereals were available and affordable.

Availability and affordability are the keys to the why, when and where of 
alternative flours with famine being the nadir of availability and 
affordability.  Alternative flours are poverty food and as such have only 
scattered reporting in period texts.  You might check out "Parisian 
Journal," an anonymous diary of the early 15th Century (of which you may be 
more familiar than I) where it describes the results in 1420 of the arrival 
of the Queen or France and the Queen of England and their retinues in 
reducing availability of flour and inflating the prices such that many 
Parisians were priced out of buying bread and other foodstuffs.  IIRC, there 
is a reference to pea flour.  You'll find alternative flours where price 
inflation outstrips wages.  I expect alternative flours were common enough 
practice among the poor, but real references are few and far between

And what is the ritual signifigance of boudin noir?  Icky thump, perhaps? 
Sorry, couldn't resist.

Blood has been used as food for a long time by many different peoples 
without a sense of ritual.  The Odyssey has a scene roasting blood and fat 
in a stomach.  The Mongols used blood and mares milk as field rations.  It's 
possible the strictures you reference are an objection based on the 
Eucharist rather than any pagan rite.  Then again, the blood may have ritual 
signifigance, depending whether it was actually determined to be there 
(remembering the precise statement) and upon the purpose of the loaves that 
contained it.

Bear



> In France, I've only seen this referenced during famine periods. Do you
> know if it was ever common practice there? (I know the stomach contents of 
> bog
> bodies are sometimes quite eclectic.)
>
> I would assume the blood had some  ritual significance. Its use also gives
> more credibility to strictures in the  French penitentials against 
> consuming
> other bodily fluids in food, apparently  addressing pagan practice.
>
> Jim  Chevallier
> www.chezjim.com
>
> Newly translated from Pierre Jean-Baptiste  Le Grand d'Aussy:
> Eggs, Cheese and Butter in Old Regime France
>
>
> In a message dated 2/10/2013 11:37:09 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
> t.d.decker at att.net writes:
>
> The use  of non-cereal seeds and legumes for flour is fairly common
> medieval
> practice and it is in keeping with the problems of raising adequate crops
> in
> the Scandinavian climate.  What is surprising is Prof. Lund's  opinion 
> that
> blood may have been an ingredient in some of the  breads.
>
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