[Sca-cooks] Cut-Off Date for Cookery Books?
JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
Wed Jan 29 12:57:23 PST 2014
I'm presuming by "period" you mean SCA period and not Medieval period? The
distinction may be obvious to many here, but it;s important to avoid any
confusion (1600 is already well into the Renaissance and nudging the Early
Modern era).
My own advice would be to go recipe by recipe and check each against
earlier similar recipes. Recipes evolve.
Here is how Wikipedia defines a galantine:
"A galantine is a French dish of de-boned stuffed meat, most commonly
poultry or fish, that is poached and served cold, coated with aspic. Galantines
are often stuffed with forcemeat, and pressed into a cylindrical shape."
This is in keeping with other definitions out there.
Now here's a galantine from the Enseignemenz:
"Lamprey galantine
If you want to make lamprey galantine, take leavened bread, and crush it,
and set it to cook with the blood of the lamprey[s] and good white wine,
and let them be raised [poached?] in this same wine, and put in a great deal
of pepper, and enough salt, then take the lampreys and put under a cloth to
cool, and then take bread, crush it and soak it with vinegar. And when you
have done this, strain it through a bag and then put it in a clean frying
pan, and boil it, stirring constantly so that it does not burn, and then let
it cool, and stir it well, and then take your powders of ginger, cinnamon
and clove, put them before on your lampreys and spoon and put into your
bowls."
No aspic, nor anything similar.
Blancmange changed drastically over the centuries, century by century. One
would have to go recipe by recipe to see how this:
"Blancmange
If you want to make blancmange, take the wings and the feet of hens and
set them to cook in water, and take a little rice and soak it in this water,
then cook it over a low fire and then shred the meat into a very fine
tangle and set it to cook with a little sugar. Thus you will have what is called
laceis [“lacey”]. And if you want to put whole rice to cook with the
hen's broth or with almond milk, thus you will have what is called engolée [“
gobs”]."
ended up as a sugary pudding.
On the other hand, I'm just reading Barbara Ketcham Wheaton's "Savoring the
Past" and she writes that La Varenne included recipes that remained
fundamentally Medieval. But one would have to be very careful in picking through
La Varenne to choose the ones that were. And the simple name of a dish is a
very poor guide as to how much it resembles its ancestors.
So it's doable, I suppose. But fraught with possibilities for drifting out
of period. And certainly you'd want to make your reasoning clear in using
these in any context where people actually cared.
Jim Chevallier
www.chezjim.com
"Making Early Medieval food"
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/01/making-early-medieval-food.html
In a message dated 1/29/2014 5:03:32 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
alysk at ix.netcom.com writes:
I'm having a discussion with someone about using cookery
books which were printed after 1600 and whether they can be considered
"period" or not.
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