[Sca-cooks] Crane Cookery: Was OOP - Unusual Meat

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings! Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC), Issue 25, discusses crane 
cookery in some detail - 4 pages, in fact. The author Joop Witteveen, 
mentions that Apicius had six recipes, one for roasted and 5 for braised 
crane. Witteveen quotes, "...see that the head does not touch the water 
but is outside it. When the crane is cooked, wrap it in a warm cloth and 
pull the head; it will come off with the sinews, so that the bones 
remain. [This is necessary] because one cannot eat it with the sinews.

This following info is from Witteveen's article. Cooking takes place in 
2 stages: cooked in water with salt and dill; when the meat is stiff and 
firm it's dried, then cooked in oil and liquamen with oregano and 
coriander added. Defrutum added after a while for color. Sauce is sweet 
and sour, made from ground pepper, lavas, cumin, coriander, laser root, 
rue, carenum, honey, vinegar and cooking liquid, thickened with amylum. 
Apicius gives variations on this.

Continuing with Witteveen: First Italian recipes from the 14th century; 
bird now roasted, no longer braised in sauce. Still prepared in 2 
stages: boiled in water for a while, then spitted and roasted. Sauce is 
fried onions with wine, with saffron soaked in the wine. Then, seasoned 
with spices. Crane cut into pieces and briefly simmered in that sauce. 
Then, sauce thickened with roasted bread, soaked in crane's cooking liquid.

French preparation around 13090 was same as in Italy: dry-plucked, 
plunged into boiling water. Wings were then cut off (not the head and 
legs), spitted, roasted, and eaten with fine-grained salt, no sauce. No 
French recipes from the 15th C for crane. At the beginning of the 18th 
C, it was recommended to eat only young crane while soft and tender. 
When older, crane meat became hard and had to be hung a long time.

England: recipes are brief and to the point, which I (Alys) believe were 
cited in previous posts. In the 15th C, Witteveen notes info about 
killing and plucking a crane. No info on whether it was larded or basted 
during roasting from this time period. It was often served with sauce 
cameline. At the end of the 16th C, the sauce was "galandine" (which 
sounds similar to cameline).

In the Netherlands, the crane was prepared like herons, wild geese, 
partridges, female pheasants and was basted during roasting. In winter, 
it was served with a pepper sauce. (Witteveen gives the proportion of 
ingredients for this sauce, if you are interested.)

Rumpoldt (1581), Germany, doesn't give any recipes for crane but notes 
that it was a bird to be eaten.

Hope this adds some useful info!

Alys K.
-- 
Elise Fleming
alyskatharine at gmail.com
http://damealys.medievalcookery.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8311418@N08/sets/