[Sca-cooks] 'Viking' recipes

[Daniel And elizabeth phelps]

Google soapstone+pot and you will find a myriad of companies selling such as well as griddles and other things of the like.  The re is nothing new under the sun just old things constantly being rediscovered.

Daniel 

----- Original Message -----
> I wonder about the habit of using bouillon/stock for making soup.
> A Viking-age household might have kept a stockpot, or not, but I
> can't think offhand of a piece of equipment that would readily lend
> itself to the purpose. In my experience, the riveted iron kettles that
> most Viking reenactors use lend themselves better to  relatively
> quick cooking (I get good results heating fat, then adding the meat
> and cereal ingredients, and then water). Earthenware pots would lose
> a lot of the good stuff when used for cooking stock, I would rather
> use them for making soups or porridges with the meat directly.
> Soapstone could work, but I don't think they were that common.

It appears that soapstone was far more common than we'd expect - Viking-era
sunken merchant boats seem to be nearly bursting at the seams with them and
a few areas were known for supplying them. It is very difficult for a
reenactors to find soapstone with safe qualities (too much asbestos,
generally) for cooking, and of course that doesn't include finding someone
to shape the stone correctly and safely. 

So far my research into Viking cooking indicates that once meat was boiled
in a large pot, it was removed and the broth used for cooking veggies, then
again for cooking grains of some sort. There are one or two literary
mentions of things such as "thrice-cooked meat" which appear to reflect the
practise. Broth for broth's sake is something I'd not expect to find. More
likely whatever broth was left over from cooking the evening meal would end
up as a base for the morning porridge.

It is possible that the rich would have been more wasteful of their
resources as a show of conspicuous consumption. Broth prepared in a riveted
(or as I own, a hammered) pot could be poured into a pot for storage. There
are many ex-pots with matching wooden lids at the Jorvik site, some of which
contain enzymes from either/or meats and vegetables.

Hrothny 

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