[Sca-cooks] 'Viking' recipes

[Terry Decker]

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.  It would be 
interesting to determine if this is true and get some idea of what flours it 
was used with, if not all.  Blood might be used as a replacement for fat for 
cohesiveness of the dough or it might be simply to add calories to the 
bread, an unusual form of enrichment.

Some of the loaves were leavened, but there is no breakdown of how many 
loaves were leavened and which flours were used in the leavened breads.  I 
would suspect that the leavened breads contained large percentages of wheat 
and/or rye flour which would produce an effective rise, but leavening is 
sometimes used with other flours.  As the loaves discussed fall between 400 
and 1050 CE, the possible leavens are ale barm, mead dregs and spontaneous 
yeast.  Carbon dating of the loaves might help date leavened bread in 
Sweden.  The Gothic migration into the region should have introduce ale barm 
leaven between 300 BCE and 100 CE and an early appearance of leavened bread 
on the timeline would help support the historical evidence.

Since most of these loaves are grave goods, there is a possibility that they 
may not represent bread in common use. but are specially prepared to honor 
various dieties.  A comparison between the various grave loaves and the 
loaves excavated in Boberget and Helgo would be of some use in determining 
whether or not there were differences between ritual and common bread.

The paper is a useful summary of the research, but it leaves me with a 
number of unanswered questions.

Bear



> Actually we do have SOME idea:
>
> "Microscopic  analyses of Swedish prehistoric bread loaves have shown that
> not only flour from  cereals was used, but also flour from peas, vetches,
> flax, gold of pleasure and  fieldweeds. Most of the loaves were baked from
> finely sieved flour and have not  been leavened."
>
> "_4. Pseudo-breads_ (http://civilisations.revues.org/1432#tocfrom1n4)
> 10There are also further organic materials which  resemble bread, but do
> not constitute bread. One example is a bread-like find  from a migration
> period ringfort on Öland, one of Sweden’s larger islands in the  Baltic 
> Sea. This
> on microscopic and chemical analysis turned out to be very  special : 
> whole
> seeds of gold-of-pleasure (Camelina sativa) and flax (Linum 
> usitatissimum)
> were clearly evident. The seeds of these species have a high  fat content,
> which here resulted in the seeds sticking together into a  « cake » when
> accidentally heated. This organic material was probably  never baked 
> (Hanson et
> al. 1993)"
>
> Pre - and protohistoric bread in Sweden :  a definition and a review
>
> _http://civilisations.revues.org/1432_
> (http://civilisations.revues.org/1432)
>
>
> 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 5:34:53 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
> johnnae at mac.com writes:
>
> We donít  really know what sort of bread Viking families made and ate,
>
>
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