[Sca-cooks] parmasean tarts

[Terry Decker]

While reading Taillevent looking for recipes for a feast later this year, I 
found a recipe for Parmesan Pies, lifted here from the Gode Cookery website 
to save on the typing.

197. Tourtes parmeriennes: Parmesan Pies. Take mutton, veal or pork and chop 
it up sufficiently small; then boil poultry and quarter it -- and the other 
meat must be cooked before being chopped up: then get fine powder and 
sprinkle it on the meat very sensibly, and fry your meat in bacon grease. 
Then get large open pastry shells -- which should have higher sides than 
usual and should be the size of small plates -- and shape them with 
crenellations; they should be of a strong dough in order to hold the meat. 
If you wish, you can mix pine nut paste and currants among the meat, with 
granulated sugar on top; into each pastry put three or four chicken quarters 
in which to plant the banners of France and of the lords who will be 
present, and glaze them with moistened saffron to give them a better 
appearance. For anyone who does not want to go to such expense for poultry, 
all he has to do is make flat pieces of pork or of mutton, either roasted or 
boiled. When the pies are filled with their meat, the meat on top should be 
glazed with a little beaten egg, both yolks and whites, so that this meat 
will hold together solidly enough to set the banners in it. And you should 
have gold-leaf or tin-leaf to glaze the pies before setting the banners in 
them.

- Scully, Terence, ed. Le Viandier de Taillevent. An Edition of all Extant 
Manuscripts. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988.

Not exactly fish, but interesting.

Bear