fish-msg - 5/4/19

Medieval fish dishes. Fish in the SCA. Recipes. Medieval fried fish. Whale and porpoise.

NOTE: See also the files: seafood-msg, anchovies-msg, salt-msg, salt-comm-art, stockfish-msg, caviar-msg, pickled-foods-msg, fish-pies-msg, eels-msg, frogs-msg, shrimp-msg, stockfish-msg.

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NOTICE -

This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.

The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.

Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).

Thank you,
    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
To: sca-cooks at eden.com
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:11:51 -0400
Subject: Re: sca-cooks fish

A couple of cooks, Michael F. Gunter included, wrote:
> > I'd like to try some medieval fish recipes and this sounds good.
> >
> I was planning on making waffres at Coronation but they got changed to 
> something else in the planning process.  Waffres are basically a tuna or 
> salmon mousse in pastry.  I'm hoping to do them at my dream "small intimate 
> feast of 200.
> 
> > Unfortunately, since I am in Ansteorra I am unlikely to ever get fish at
> > a feast. (meat is good. vegatables are what meat eats. fish is just
> > another vegatable. etc.)
> 
> I'm hoping to do some fish dishes in the future, but it's just so expensive!
> 
> > Anyone have any good recipes using salted fish? I've never had any and
> > since that was a staple in parts of medieval europe, I'd like to try
> > some.
> 
> Once again something that was going into Coronation but was cut because my 
> source of salt cod was going for $8 a pound!
> 
> > Stefan li Rous
> 
> Gunthar

How recently was the price of $8/lb quoted? It wouldn't have been right
before Easter, would it? You might consider checking it again. Also, for
what it's worth, a pound of salt cod, soaked to desalt, weighs in at
around two and a quarter pounds before cooking.

Adamantius, whose Province includes the Fulton Fish Market.


From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
To: sca-cooks at eden.com
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 16:13:17 -0400
Subject: Re: sca-cooks fish

Angelina Capozello wrote:
> Hmmm, here's a question, what did medieval fisherman and sailors eat?  We
> all know the later centuries of British naval fare (biscuit, salt beef or
> pork, peas, grog, etc.) Our Canton of Ivyeinrust is holding a sea
> collegium in the near future, and I'd like to help with the cooking.
> Any recipes for salt fish, etc., or sources where I can find recipes would
> be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Rafaela di Napoli

It seems likely that sailors would eat such fish as they either couldn't
sell or wouldn't keep well without extensive preparation. So, until
fairly recently, on the Mediterranean coast, sailors ate things like
bouilliabaise, traditionally made from a variety of fish, some rather
bony and/or fatty. The dish appears to be far older than the
comparatively recent addition of tomatoes might suggest. The rest of the
ingredients sound to me like a pretty classic medieval fish pottage:
olive oil, leeks, fennel, wine, oranges, mixed fish and saffron, served
on sops of toast.

Adamantius


From: Aldyth at aol.com
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 16:26:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - Re: sca-cooks fish

In a message dated 97-04-15 03:01:06 EDT, Clarissa writes:
<< 1) lots of folks don't like fish - at least at all the events in 
 Ansteorra and the East and Atlantia where I have seen fish served it has 
 been the least eaten dish at the event.
 2) bones!
 3) I don't much like fish
 
 I do like shellfish but the folks I know with shellfish allergies are 
 violently allergic (even the smell can get 'em) so I have never cooked it 
 for a feast. >>

Aldyth here.

I have been to MANY feasts where fish was served.  I said served, not eaten.
I will cook fish for feasts, and have.  When trout is donated for our
Hunters Feast each winter, it is cooked and almost all eaten. I recall
another feast which featured seafood (Spanish, I believe) and one course was
whole mackerel.  I think the problem I found with the mackerel might be the
problem with fish in general.  They were cooked whole (as per the recipe) and
served "naked."  Most sea dwelling fish have a dark fat vein that if not
removed makes them "fishy" tasting.  I have no doubt that our esteemed
ancestors thought that fish was supposed to taste that way.  Our modern
palates have evolved, and unless we have prefer that fishy taste, we seem to
stay away from it.  How many of us would really use liquamen as the Romans
did, on toast, and in every dish they made..(almost).  Freshwater fish don't
taste as fishy when prepared, but you still have to think about that fat vein
in most of them.

I also don't usually do fish (unless specifically asked) for a feast because
of the expense involved.  Wyoming is expensive to have fresh fish trucked
into.  I have a supplier for hake, but at $5 a pound it is prohibitive.

Mistress Aldyth
Aldyth at aol.com


From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 01:57:03 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - fried fish and other foods

Mark Harris wrote:
> I'm assuming you are talking about coating the fish in flour or batter
> and frying it in grease or oil. (like British fish and chips?)
> 
> So, my question for anyone is, Is such fried food period? I'm wondering
> about other meats too, not just fish. I thought fried chicken was from
> the American South but I'm not sure.

There are late-period recipes for frying chicken, but it doesn't seem
like crisp was what was being aimed for. It seems to be more of a situation where the the chicken is browned in a frying-pan, and thesauce ingredients are adeded to finish cooking. By modern standards it is really braised. 

In answer to the inevitable next question, I am only awake at this hour because my wife was having a computer problem, and may be able to find the original source in the morning.

> If so, what was the cooking medium in period? Olive oil? lard? fish oil?
> Did they use breading or just cook it in the oil?

Seems as though the commonest method would be to fry with no coating at all, using olive oil or "whyte grees": effectively lard or rendered suet. Taillevent mentions frying certain fish dishes with no coating of flour, presumably he wouldn't mention this unless the habit existed. The recipe for cuminade de poissons in Le Menagier de Paris calls for the fish to be fried before adding it to the sauce...that I have a redaction for already on disk, which I will post in the a.m. if anyone wishes. 

>   Stefan li Rous

Hot cha cha,
Adamantius


From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:44:14 -0400
Subject: SC - Fish recipe, Was "Fried Foods"

Uduido at aol.com wrote:
> Please do post the recipe! :-) You are right on the button about not coating
> the fish with flour or whatever. So far as chicken is concerned, if you fry
> it slowly with the SKIN attached it developes a nice crusty exterior without
> the addition of  extraneous material. The main secret to frying without a
> coating is to constantly monitor the fat's temperature and make sure that it
> does not rise to a level where the food is dessicated or burned before the
> interior is cooked.

> Lord Ras

Okay, here's my redaction for Le Menagier's cuminade de poisson. You'll
notice that it allows for the fish to be baked rather than fried. That
is only because I was originally serving 400 with this recipe, before I
cut it down. It was served at East Kingdom Twelfth Night, A.S. XXIX.

Enjoy!
Adamantius
_______________________________________________________________________

Cuminade of Fish

	Poultry flavoured with cumin. Cut it into pieces and put it to cook in
a little wine, then fry it in  fat;  then take a little bread dipped in
your broth and take first ginger and cumin, moisten them with verjuice,
bray and strain and put all together with meat or chicken broth, and
then color it either with saffron or with eggs or yolks run through a
strainer and dropped slowly into the pottage, after it is taken off the
fire. Item, best it is to make it with milk as aforesaid and then to
bray your bread after your spices, but behoveth it to boil the milk
first lest it burn, and after the pottage is finished let the milk be
put into wine (meseemeth this is not needful)  and fry it. Many there be
that fry it not, nathless it tastes best so.
	(Bread is the thickening and afterwards he saith eggs, which is
another thickening,  and one should suffice, as is said in the chapter
concerning the creton'. Verjuice and wine.--If you would make your
pottage with milk behoveth not to use wine or verjuice.)
	"Commine" for a fish day. Fry your fish, then peel almonds and bray
them and dilute with pure' or fish broth and make milk of almonds; but
cow's milk is more appetising, though not so healthy for the sick; and
for the rest do as above. Item, on a meat day, if you cannot have cow's
milk, you may make the dish of milk of almonds and meat as above.=94
Le Menagier de Paris, trans. Eileen Power; Harcourt, Brace  New York
1928

	I envision this dish as something like fish fillets in an almond -
curry flavored cream sauce. Almond milk made with cream or half-and-half is appropriate for a fish-day, and eliminates the need for any additional thickener. Since neither Le Menagier nor his source, Taillevent, mentions a garnish of any kind, I've decided to cheat and top the whole shebang with fried
onions; both a consistently appropriate medieval garnish for pale pottages, and a way to introduce a flavor I feel will improve the dish. The dish is intended as a spoon-food, so the fish should be either in chunks or soft enough to break up easily.

   For eight servings:

   2 pounds white, lean ("non-fishy") fillets or steaks, such as cod, bass,
       monkfish, etc. 
   oil, butter, lard, or bacon fat
   1/4 pound finely ground blanched almonds (1 cup)
   1 pint half and half
   1 small onion, finely grated or pureed (capricious and unnecessary but good)
   1-inch chunk ginger root, grated or 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
   3-4 Tbs ground cumin seed
   1 pinch saffron,
   salt and pepper

	Season the fish with salt and pepper and either saute or bake at 400 degrees F in a greased pan. Vegetable oil is best for this. Cook for about eight
minutes per inch of thickness of your fish, til fish is barely opaque
inside and flaky. Keep the fish warm. 

	Meanwhile, cook the onion and ginger over low heat in a saucepan, with
a little more oil. When they are soft and aromatic, but no longer
volatile (you'll know it when you see it), add cumin and saffron. Do not
brown. Add half and half and mix thoroughly. Raise heat a bit and bring
it to a boil. Beat with a whip and add the almonds in a steady stream.
Bring back to a boil, stirring frequently. Season to taste with salt and
pepper, and add more cumin if you feel like it. You can blenderize
and/or strain the sauce if you want it smoother and/or thinner. Pour it
over the fish and mess it forth.


From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:07:20 -0500
Subject: Re:  SC - fried fish and other foods

Hi, Katerine here.  Stefan asked about fried fish in period.  I don't pay
as much attention to fish recipes as I do to others, so I can't speak
offhand with authority to what English recipes _did't_ do, I am fairly
certain the medieval corpus includes recipes for fish fried on a skillet (
unbreaded) using (but not precisely in) olive oil.

- -- Katerine/Terry


From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:10:06 -0500
Subject: Re: SC - fried fish and other foods

Hi, Katerine here.  Adamantius writes:

>Seems as though the commonest method would be to fry with no coating at
>all, using olive oil or "whyte grees": effectively lard or rendered
>suet. Taillevent mentions frying certain fish dishes with no coating of
>flour, presumably he wouldn't mention this unless the habit existed.

Are you certain that either lard or suet was ever used?  I ask, because
all records show virtually no consumption of fish outside of days of
abstinence, when both lard and suet would be forbidden.

- -- Katerine/Terry


From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 13:21:20 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - fried fish and other foods

Ron Martino Jr wrote:
>         Batter coated deep frying, agemono (tempura, etc.), was introduced to
> Nippon by Europeans in the 16th century, and the Japanese took the idea
> and made it their own, as they do with many things. I don't know any
> details, though, such as what the Portuguese were frying, what was used
> for the batter, or what oils were used. 

There are various Iberian versions of the shrimp fritter that still
exist today, made from little brown shrimp too small to be individually
peeled and deveined. Kind of like whitebait pancake in Britain. The fish
being too small to individually batter and fry, you just mix them into a
batter and fry it as a cake. That may well be what  the Portuguese
version of Tempura would have looked like. By the way, the word
"tempura" seems to be a variant on a Latin term, and not a Japanese word
at all. It may well be a corruption of "tempora" as referring to the
time of Lent, or possibly that it is fried for a certain time, and no
more. I don't have the information in front of me or I would tell you
more.

Adamantius


From: L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt <liontamr at postoffice.ptd.net>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 18:30:19 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #75

I have to contribute a favorite tale of a traditional wierd fish dish:
Stargazy Pie, made with a regular double pie crust, whole fresh Sardines,
Gammon, and Saffrom Milk. The heads of the fish are left to poke out of the
crust, staring upwards (thus "Stargazy").

 Classify it under *Things that make ya go HMMM?* Top that, whydoncha!

Aoife


From: "Karen Farris" <farrisk at macom.com>
Date: Fri, 09 May 97 08:57:37 EDT
Subject: SC - Fried Whiting

     I found a set of thin English Heritage books on a recent trip to the 
     motherland.  This one is from 'Food and Cooking in 16th Century 
     Britain:  History and Recipes' by Peter Brears.  He cites the source 
     as 'The Boke of Cokery' by Richard Pynson with Temple Bar London 1500. 
     He furthermore states the only known copy of this work is in the 
     collection of the Marquis of Bath, Longleat House.
     
     I hope this helps the battered fish debate and am glad to be able to 
     lay my hands on them after recently moving to Dragonspine.  For .95p 
     each I couldnt go wrong with the purchase, but am curious to know if 
     there are any errors with his redaction.
     
     Lillian Clare du Chateauroux
     
     To fry Whitings:  First flay them and wash them clean and seale them, 
     that doon, lap them in floure and fry them in Butter and oyle.  Then 
     to serve them, mince apples or onions and fry them, then put them into 
     a vessel with white wine, vergious, salt, pepper, clove and mace, and 
     boile them together on the Coles, and serve it upon the Whitings.
     
     Brears redacts the recipe thusly,
     
     8 oz apples or onions, minced
     butter or oil for frying
     1/2 pt white wine
     1 tbls wine vinegar
     1 tsp salt
     1/4 tsp pepper
     1/4 tsp ground mace
     a pinch of ground cloves
     1-1 1/2 lb whiting fillets
     
     Fry the apples or onions in a little butter or oil in a small sauce 
     pan until thoroughly cooked, but not browned.  Stir in the wine, 
     vinegar, salt, pepper, and spices.  Allow to cook for a few minutes, 
     then keep hot ready for use.  Remove any skin from the fillets, dust 
     them with flour, fry in butter or oil for 15 minutes and serve with 
     sauce.


From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 17:22:01 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - Fried Whiting

Terry Nutter wrote:
> Hmmmm.  I know when Pynson was -- he was a printer, not a cook -- and the
> language of the recipe is suspiciously modern.  I suspect it's been updated.
> That said: Pynson set _Noble Boke off Cookry_ in print; the only surviving
> copy of the Pynson printing is, you guessed it, in the Longleat collection.
> I suspect this may be it.  There is no recipe in the manuscript version (or I
> should say, in the appalling Napier edition thereof) with "whitings" in
> the title.  But the title may have  been modernized with the recipe.  Perhaps
> someone who knows fish better than I can suggest a medieval equivalent?  If
> so, I can look up quickly and find out whether this is indeed an NBoC recipe,
> and if so, provide the NBoC-via-Napier version, which may tell us something.

Yes, it does sound a bit idiomatic of modern speech, doesn't it?

The recipe for mortrews of fish in Utilis Coquinario calls for, among
others, merlyng. This is probably a cognate of merlin, which is still a
French term for whiting. Also, whiting being a rather bland, soft fish,
it is perfect for mortrews (or as perfect as any fish can be for
mortrews).

Taillevent uses the term "merluz" for a similar, though slightly larger
fish.

The whiting known in England is the Northern Whiting, a cousin of the
various hakes, which are in turn related to cod.  They are distinguished
by relatively large pectoral fins like wings, small scales, and a weird
cartilage rib-cage, like a box, in an otherwise ordinary bony-fish
skeleton. They get up to about two or three pounds these days, which
indicates nothing about what they may have weighed in period.

Adamantius


Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:04:54 -700 MST
From: "Jeanne Stapleton" <jstaplet at adm.law.du.edu>
Subject: Re: SC - Re: sca-cooks fish

> Stefan, 
> I don't cook fish for events for a variety of reasons:
> 
> 1) lots of folks don't like fish - at least at all the events in
> Ansteorra and the East and Atlantia where I have seen fish served it
> has been the least eaten dish at the event. 2) bones! 3) I don't
> much like fish
> 
> I do like shellfish but the folks I know with shellfish allergies
> are violently allergic (even the smell can get 'em) so I have never
> cooked it for a feast.
> 
> Clarissa

***WARNING***  Non-redacted-from-period-source but doable at SCA feast 
fish-recipe-that-even-fighters-will-eat about to follow:

Fish rarely gets served at SCA feast, and I can understand why; 
Clarissa admirably summed up the reasons above.

HOWEVER:  I do have a signature dish that feasters scrape the pans on 
and I've had fighters ask me for the recipe.  At a Coronet feast in 
Oertha, all of it was consumed and there were leftovers on the Boeuf 
Bourguignonne.

HALIBUT BERENGARIA

For every "panful" (rectangular baking dish--about six nice-sized 
fillets or chunks) of halibut (the real catch:  in Oertha, I could 
get fresh frozen halibut cheaply!--other firm white fish work quite 
well, also), pour over sauce made of:

1 cup sour cream
1 cup melted butter
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Cover dish with foil and bake about 40-45 minutes at 350 (depending 
on size of oven and number of pans).  Remove foil for the last five 
minutes of baking time to allow sauce to brown and get that nice 
cheesy crust.

It is not low in calories nor cholesterol.

jstaplet at adm.law.du.edu
University of Denver


Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 22:11:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Uduido at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks fish-longish

<< ***WARNING***  Non-redacted-from-period-source but doable at SCA feast 
 fish-recipe-that-even-fighters-will-eat about to follow:
 
 Fish rarely gets served at SCA feast, and I can understand why; 
 Clarissa admirably summed up the reasons above.
 
 HOWEVER:  I do have a signature dish that feasters scrape the pans on 
 and I've had fighters ask me for the recipe.  >>

Another way which was successful for me with the  results that there was nary
a piece left was to dip whiting fillets in beer batter and deep fry it. I
added ground galengal and cubebs to the batter. The only complaint I had was
from someone who was allergic to fish and didn't read the menu.

I try to serve a fish dish at every feast I do. The reactions are always the
same. If they like fish, they love it. If they don't, they hate it. As far as
shellfish goes. A bushel of clams was donated for a feast. We steamed them
and sent them around to each table for anyone who would like them. Once again
they all disappeared. 

I think that serving fish at a feast for the most part is frowned upon
because the responces are so emotional both yea and nay from the diners that
most cooks just don’t want to deal with it. My feelings are serve it. If
people don't want it they can always eat off-board ( meaning bring their own
food) or eat something else they do like. 

I NEVER withhold an item from the menu just because I don't personally like
it. Mundanely, I make the best potato Salad (or so I've been told. :-)). It
gives me the dry heaves just to smell it! :-0

Lord Ras


Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 20:04:27 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #218

L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt wrote:
> Aoife
> P.S. Have you ever "Made a pudding in a breast/belly of __fill in the blank___?"

I remember an extremely late or post-period recipe for "To Bake a(n)
____ (some kinda fish) With A French Puddynge in His Bellye", if I
remember correctly. I have also boned out a leg of lamb and filled it
with a stuffing of the mixture that goes into a haggis. Does that count?

My all-time favorite one of these is in Isaak Walton's "The Compleat
Angler" (Roughly contemporary to Sir Kenelm Digby or the Diaries of
Samuel Pepys, ~1669 or so). It involves roasting a whole pike, drawn
through the gills, with a pound of butter, the juice of several Seville
oranges, some lemons, pickled oysters and/or anchovies, the liver of the
fish, pureed through a sieve, claret wine, and an optional clove of
garlic. This turns into a sauce while the fish is roasted, and the sauce
pours out of the fish when you cut into it.
 
Adamantius


Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 20:30:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: SC - Novice Only Redacti

A quick note on what "draw" meant for that perch....

  "Take a preche, and drawe him in (th)e throte"

To draw would be to gut.  You can gut a fish, basically, two or three ways.
The classic is to cut from claspers to head, along the bottom edge of the
fish.  (Where you cut sole, I dunno :-)

The other is to gut the fish through the gill holes, and not notch the
belly.  I believe the Pike recipe Adamantius wrote about is done that way,
and the belly stays intact.  Good for stuffing.

I suspect that the "throte" means to slit the belly and remove the grotesque
bits.

A classic recipe from my childhood, written in a period style.... I'm
challenging myself today....  (Comments welcomed)

  "Blue fysche ygrilled.  Take {th}e yong blou fish, draw hym clene
  from the throte.  Take garlic fyne, and whole mint foils, and mustard
  ground rough, and put thereto in the stomack.  Wrap, and cooke on the
  gridiron till it be enow.  Serve."

Take young bluefish (also snapper works), gutted and cleaned, and place
minced garlic, mint, and rough ground mustard in the belly.  Wrap in oiled
tin foil, and cook on the barbeque grill, about 7 minutes on a side.  Serve
hot.

I know they grilled things, but I don't think they wrapped them in tin
foil...  (:-)  So I didn't know how to say it properly.

	Tibor


From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 12:43:47 -0400
Subject: Re: Re- SC - Meat for a week

Mark Harris wrote: 
> Cariadoc explained:
> A fowl is taken, roasted, jointed and thrown in a jar into which are put
> coriander, pepper, cumin and cinnamon. Verjus is added, and mint, tarragon
> and fresh thyme are cut over it, and good oil is poured over it. Fresh
> spices are minced onto it, and it is decorated with chopped cucumber.
> 
> >>>>>
> Could someone please post a redaction of this for me? I'm afraid I'm not
> quite up to redacting my own yet. This sounds similar to preserving soft
> cheese in oil that we discussed a while back. I'm not sure how much of
> each of these spices to use. How would you serve this? Take the pieces
> out of the oil and warm them up? Rinse them off like salt fish? (I assume
> not, but...)

This sounds a lot like the Spanish fish dish escabeche, which is
apparently derived from Arabic sources. Small "pan-dressed" (deheaded,
gutted, and scaled) fish or fish steaks are seasoned liberally with
salt, fried in oil and removed from the pan. Then onions (and sometimes
sweet or hot peppers in some recipes) are very briefly sauteed in the
same pan with peppercorns, bay leaves, and other appropriate pickling
spices. This vegetable mixture is alternately layered in a stone crock
with the fish, and the oily pan is deglazed with a generous amount of
vinegar (ideally about half as much vinegar as oil, but 1:1 is okay, so
long as the total liquid is enough to cover the fish), and the liquid is
brought to a boil and poured over the fish. The crock is then covered.
This will keep for a few days at room temperature and for at least a
week or two in the refrigerator, perhaps more depending on your
tolerance for bacteria, which was probably generally somewhat higher in
period. 

I know I have seen recipes for this in late- or just-post-period
European sources (c. 1600 C.E.).

Interesting to note how fine restaurants where I live have begun making
this dish with chicken (usually breastmeat medallions) as a wonderful
modern innovation on an ancient classic ;  ).

Adamantius


From: "Nick Sasso (fra niccolo)" <grizly at mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 15:12:41 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - Definition

> For those of us who are .... vocabularily challenged<g>, what is
> "liquamen"?
>
> =Caitlin

   "liquamen":  another name for garum.  A fermented fish sauce used in
ancient Rome.  Made by layering in a well sealed barrel, fatty fish such
as mackerel or sardine, strong herbs, and about
1 1/2" of salt.  Layer this until the barrel is filled and seal.  Leave
in the sun for about seven days.  After this fermentation, stir daily
for 2-3 weeks until it has turned to liquid.

You'll find a detailed description of various methods and varieties on
pages 27-29 in _A Taste of Ancient Rome_ by Giacosa.  I have used
oriental fish sauce, but it lacks the punch described of the original.
Maybe adding the strong herbs to steep for a while in the fish sauce
would help.  Ant other suggestions would be appreciated as this is a
common Roman condiment in cooking.

Giacosa also offers two suggested preparations for garum on p. 29 for
those who wish to avoid the seven day fermentation :o)
- --
In Humble Service to God and Crown;

fra nicol¢ difrancesco
(mka nick sasso)


Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 20:57:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: Uduido at aol.com
Subject: SC - Beer Batter

<<Do you have a recipe for this beer batter ...<snip>>...? 

BEER BATTER
(Not Medieval)

1 egg, beaten
3/4 cp beer
1 tsp melted fat
1cp siftef flour
1/2 tsp salt
3/8 tsp cubeb berries, ground
1/4 tsp galingal, ground

Combine egg, beer and fat. Add flour and salt; beat until smooth. Let stand
30 minutes. TO USE: Heat deep hot fat to 375 degrees F. Dip fish fillet in
bater. Drop carefully into hot fat. Fry 'til costing is light , crisp and
golden brown. Drain on unglazed paper. 

Copyright 1997, L. J. Spencer.

<<Is there any evidence of beer being used in the batter of any medieval
dishes? I know this is a British traditional food, but I don't know if it is
medieval.>>

I do not have any documentation that this is "period". But all of the
ingredients are period. :-) It is a way I am able to serve fish and get it
eaten in what you could term a "medievalish" manner. :-) However, if anyone
knows for sure or has a period recipe that might be interpreted in this way,
please do share.

<<If you are actually mixing your batter using beer, do you prefer a lighter
or a darker beer or does it matter? >>

I always use regular light colored beer for this batter. To my taste darker
beers and/or  ales tend to leave a somewhat more pronounced flavor that
overpowers the delicate flavor of the fish.

Lord Ras


Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 21:40:57 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Beer Batter

Uduido at aol.com wrote:
> BEER BATTER
> (Not Medieval)

<snip>

Actually, with saffron instead of the galingale and the grains of
paradise, this would probably qualify as a proper medieval pancake or
fritter batter. Whether or not the idea of dipping fish into it is
medieval, is a different matter ;  )

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 09:32:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: SC - My redaction.....

Boiled Perch

  "Perche boiled. Take a preche, and drawe him in (th)e throte, and make
  to him sauce of water and salt; And whan hit bigynneth to boile, skeme
  hit and caste (th)e perche there-in, and seth him; and take hum uppe,
  and pul him, and serve him forth colde, and cast uppon him foiles of parcelly.
  and (th) sau[c]e is venegre or vergous."

1 whole perch
boiling salted water
flat parsley
cider vinegar

Start a pot of salted water boiling.  Gut, scale and rinse the perch,
removing the guts and head.  Use those to make a fish stock out of the
boiling water.  Remove the head and entrails, and boil the fish for five
minutes, or until done.  Remove and pat dry, bone and skin the fish,
removing the tail as well.

Take the resulting filets, chill in the refrigerator.  Just before serving,
sprinkle with chopped parsley leaves and a few drops of vinegar.  Serve
cold.

	Tibor


Date: Thu, 31 Jul 97 10:54:06 -0600
From: "Stephanie Rudin"<rudin at okway.okstate.edu>
Subject: Re[2]: SC - My redaction.....

     Just a note from someone who poaches fish quite often.  Boil is 
     probably not the best term to use.  You want to poach fish at
     a nice simmer, not a roiling boil, especially a smaller fish.
     
     Mercedes


Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 19:02:18 +0000
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - extraneous misc.

And it came to pass on  4 Sep 97, that Marisa Herzog wrote:
>I wish I could find where I had seen bitter orange listed as
> a probable verjuice source

In various recipes in the _Libro de Guisado_ (Catalan/Spanish, 16th 
century), orange juice is listed as an alternative to verjuice or 
vinegar, and is used as the primary sauce ingredient in many of the 
fish dishes.  Presumably this would be from sour/bitter oranges; I 
believe that the sweet varieties are modern.

Barbara Santich, in _The Original Mediterranean Cuisine_, says, "The 
standard accompaniments to fried fish were lemon juice (or the tart 
orange juice of the time) or green sauce."  She comments elsewhere in 
the book that vinegar and verjuice were interchangeable in many 
recipes, and that lemon juice or the juice of bitter oranges were 
other substitutes.

> -brid

Brighid ni Chiarain of Tethba
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom


Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 01:42:16 -0400
From: marilyn traber <margali at 99main.com>
Subject: Re: SC - back on topic (was re:  below the salt)

kat wrote:
> Can anyone suggest one or two above-the-salt-type recipes for the
> final remove of a feast I am trying to put together in March?

Cod a la bretonne-made with whole cods instead of the fillets-better
presentation

take leeks, celery and carrots in fine julienne, saute til almost done in butter
in parchement[or multiple layers commercial aluminum foil if doing on
covered grill outdoors] place 1/3 of the veggies. place fish next
stuffed with 1/3 of the veggies, add fresh thyme leaves, fresh parsley
leaves and fresh basil leaves, salt and white pepper to taste, wrap in
gauze to keep it from falling apart when you remove it from the foil then
top with the rest of the veggies, dot with butter, sprinkle with white
wine and arrange slices of lemon. seal in well.
place on very large cooking sheet and bake at 425*f 10 minutes per inch
of thickness or place on the grill and cover with a large piece of metal
to hold the heat in for about the same.

take out, place the veggies on the platter, then carefully put the fish
on top, add assorted small garnishes around and serve.

If you want a really neat form of period presentation, take regular
pastry and make a fish shaped dome lid and blind bake, glazing with
saffron and eggyolk wash to make it golden. Place over the fish and
veggies and carry in with pomp and ceremoney.

margali


Date: Sun, 28 Dec 1997 18:28:18 EST
From: melc2newton at juno.com (Michael P Newton)
Subject: SC - a question on a redaction

Relooking thro' my cookbooks, I found _Early American Cooking: Recipes
from America's Historic Sites. In which I found the following recipe:

To Seeth a Cod or Bass

First take a Cod and boile it in water and salt, then take of the broth
and put in a little pot, then put thereto as much Wine as there is broth,
with Rosemark, Parselie, Time and margerum bounde together, and put them
in the pot, put thereto a good manic of sliced Onyons, small raisons,
whole maces, a dish of butter and a little suger, so that it be not too
sharp not too sweet, and let all these seth together: if the wine be not
sharpe enough then put thereto a little Vineger, and so serve it upon
soppes with broth.
>From _The Second Part of the Good Huswifes Iewell, T. Dawson, 1597

Ok, so I'm cutting it close on the date, and it's from an American
Recipes cookbook, but since it has originals recipes, I'd thought I'd
practice. By the by, has anyone heard of/seen/ has _The Second Part of
the Good Huswifes_?

What I'm reading from this recipe is that:
after cooking your cod/bass in some water, enough to cover it, you take
the fish out and set it aside. To the water, you add an equal amount of
wine (white, perhaps?) and simmer the liquids with a tied bundle of a
rosemary sprig, a sprig of parsley, some thyme and margerum. to the
simmering liquid you add one sliced onion (how much is a manic of onion
anyways?)say a 1/2 C of raisins, a couple of blades of mace, a 1/2 C of
butter (a dish normally equals 1 stick around our house) and a Tbsp. of
sugar. Simmer the sauce together until the flavors meld together, taste,
if it's too sweet, add a teaspoon or two of cider vinegar. Lay the
Cod/Bass on bread slices and pour the sauce over both.

I haven't tried my redaction yet,(still looking for that sale on fish,
sigh) but I'd thought I'd go ahead and ask all of your opinions of it.

Lady Beatrix


Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 19:14:22 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Will's- more recipes

Here are the few recipes my co-feastocrat at Will's Revenge, His Lordship
Thorstein,  was willing to share. :-) Sorry for the lack of documentation but
this isn't my work. Enjoy. They are wonderful. :-)

Parma fish pie
sufficient pastry for a large, 10 in deep-dish double crust pie
2 lb. cooked fish
1 cup raisins
8 prunes
6 figs
10 dates
1/2 cup pinenuts
1 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons fine oil
2 cup chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram
2 teaspoons fresh sage
2 tablespoons fresh grated ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon grains of paradise
pinch saffron
1 cup white sugar
1 cup almond milk
3 tablespoons rice flour

Flake fish and set aside
Wash fruit.  Cut into small pieces
Combine all fruit and pinenuts in bowl and add white wine, set aside
In pot over low heat, combine oil and herbs.  Add fruit and wine mixture
Combine spices and sugar.  Stir into fruit mixture.  Continue heating until
sugar is dissolved.
Reserve some almond milk for brushing on crust
Add almond milk to rice flour and stir until smooth; add to fruit mixture
Fold in 1/2 of fish.  Pour into crust.  Layer remaining fish on top.  Cover with
top pastry.  Brush with almond milk.  Bake at 425º for 10 min. reduce to
375º for another 20-30 minutes.  Serve hot or cold.


Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 15:23:00 -0500
From: allilyn at juno.com (LYN M PARKINSON)
Subject: SC - Re: gooseberries + jelly

>>Gooseberries.   Find me a period recipe (primary source only please)
that uses them.<<

<snip of info on gooseberry sauces>

As an antecedent to the mackeral/gooseberry combo, some fish sauces are
definately tart: they contain sorrell, lemon and other piquant tastes, so
your combo in in line with prevailing tastes, just not currently
documentable.  Fruit jellies are so popular with meats in Europe, that
tart jellies may sometimes have taken the place of tart sauces.

Whoa!!! Hold!!! Just found something else in LaVarenne!

62.  Fresh mackerells rosted.  Rost them with fennell, after they are
rosted, open them, and take off the bone; then make a good sauce with
butter, parsley, and gooseberries, all well seasoned; stove a very little
your mackerells with your sauce, then serve.

Have just glanced at a number of her fish sauces; none seem to have cream
or milk added, yet.  Is 'short broth' a reduced cooking liquid, do you
think?

Allison


Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:01:14 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Carnival and Ducal University

allilyn at juno.com writes:
<< Actually, how widespread was the use of whaling products? >>

According to the documentary it was quite widespread. Incomparable to the
Victorian whaling industry, by all means, but not an insignificant part of a
fishing town's annual "fish" harvest.

<< Is this something our noble houses would have had available to order?>>

I don't see why they wouldn't be able to aquire it. If they did, it was
probably fed to the servants. It is my understanding that  whale "bacon" was
almost exclusively comsumed by the poor in urban areas. Unfortunately, I am
only beggining to look into this subject and currently have litle actual
ionformation at hand.

 << ....<snip>......Perhaps something like the whale oil would have been mainly
 available to seaside towns, and businesses such as sardines in oil, etc,
 for export inland as finished products. >>

As you can see the possibilities are endless, I was hoping someone on the list
may have delved into this area and share  the information with us. :-)

Ras (spelled A'aql)


Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:42:32 -0400
From: "Gedney, Jeff" <gedje01 at mail.cai.com>
Subject: RE: SC - Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Carnival and Ducal University

I understand that the Whale was considered "the King's Meat", and all
whales that were taken or beached in England were to be reported to and
taken possession of by the Crown. The King's men would then distribute
whatever they did not take to the town.
This was in effect from before 1200, AFAIK.
Whale Oil and (especially) Spermaceti were the only really useful
lubricants for a lot of Late period machinery and clockworks. vegetable
oils and most rendered fats break down too quickly under high load.
Whale oils were an important item of commerce, Traded widely, and a
single beached Whale could provide as much as 40 or more barrels of the
stuff.
Ambergris used in perfumery before 1500, and worth a fortune.
Whale meat ( though, I am assured, probably not Kosher ) would have been
rich and high caloric in protein and fat. As I understand it, it was
delicious.

Porpoise meat, would have been easier to obtain, and netted or speared,
as one would any large fish, such as sturgeon, and was apparently common
enough to have recipes in the corpus throughout period. Porpoise was a
favored meat of the Tudors, IIRC.

Brandu


Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 11:13:33 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Carnival and Ducal University

Allison asks:
>Actually, how widespread was the use of whaling products?  Is this
>something our noble houses would have had available to order?  How about
>households like the Menagier's, or country estates like Lady Fettiplace's
>place?  Perhaps something like the whale oil would have been mainly
>available to seaside towns, and businesses such as sardines in oil, etc,
>for export inland as finished products.

Menagier writes: "GRASPOIS. This is salted whale, and should be sliced raw
and cooked in water like bacon; and serve with peas", and he has a pea
recipe which uses bacon for meat days and this salted whale on fish days.

The editor of the French text of Menagier has in a footnote to this: "A
lawsuit which lasted several years in the Paris parliament and which had to
do with the seven stalls owned by the king in the Paris markets, of which
stalls five were for salt fish and two for "craspois", tells us that the
"craspois" was only found in Paris in Lent: it was "Lenten bacon", the fish
for the poor; during Lent four thousand people lived on "craspois", dried
fish and herring."

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 07:15:48 EDT
From: Balano1 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - A Taste For Whale

If you can't find a supply of whale meat to sample, the following may give one
an approximation of its taste  ;-)

In perusing  a dusty old book store, I found:

An Illustrated History of French Cuisine - From Charlemagne to Charles de Gaulle
by Christian Guy, Translation by Elisabeth Abbot, 1962

Contained therein is a chapter titled:
The Apotheosis of Whale Meat

It begins with a discussion of the re-awakening of French cuisine at the end
of the thirteenth century.  As famine abated, the French began to give more
thought to improving their menus.  The markets were filled with all manner of
previously unavailable foodstuffs and those which were difficult to come by.

    “In Paris, which was a tedious journey from the coasts in those days, the
fishmarkets were filled with salmon, trubot, brill, mullet, sole, dab, plaice,
mackerel, whiting, haddock, sturgeon, weever, conger-eel, sardines, lobster,
shrimps, mussels, codfish, red mullet...  This era was also the apotheosis of
whale meat.  In those days the great mammals wandered close to the shores of
France and throughout the Middle Ages vast quantities of them were eaten.
Whale meat was the crajois or Lenten fare, one of the principal sources of for
for the poor who were not discouraged at having to cook that tough meat at
least twenty-four hours before it was edible.

     Nowadays, there is no more whale meat, at least in the French Markets.  The
last time it was served was in 1892 in a Paris restaurant near the Halles
Centrales.  One of the guests, Dr. Felix Bremont, tells us:
    “I can’t say anything bad about that whale meat, but neither do I feel I can
say much that was good.  Take a piece of lean beef and boil it in water in
which a stale mackerel has been washed, mix this broth with some sort of
piquant sauce and you’ll have a dish similar to the one served to me under the
name of Escalope de baliene a la Valois (Escalope of whale a la Valois).”

Enjoy! - Sister Mary Endoline


Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 11:22:49 -0400
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: SC - Re: Baconn'd Herring Breakfasts

Back in February we were discussing 'Baconn'd Herring' without resolution
as to what it meant.  I just ran across this in Le Menagier (The notes are
M. Pichon's):

"SAUMON frais soit baconné,(1) et gardez l'eschine pour rostir; puis
despeciez par dales cuites en eaue, et
du vin et du sel au cuire; mengié au poivre jaunet ou à la cameline et en
pasté, qui veult, pouldré (2)
d'espices; et se le saumon est salé, soit mengié au vin et à la ciboule par
rouelles.(3)

(1)Fumé. Voy. Du Cange au mot Baco.

(2)Peut-être faut-il lire pouldre en sous-entendant avec.

(3)G. C. , 69."

Translation please?

Cindy/Sincgiefu


Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 12:56:52 -0400
From: Phil & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Fish at Feasts

Some fish dishes that I've served with success: hot-smoked whiting (which is
ridiculously cheap where I live) and pickled shrimp, both of which are good
sitting atop a sallet, egerdouce, fried fillets in a sweet-and-sour sauce with
dried fruit (children seem very fond of this one), saumon gentil, poached
chunks of extruded minced salmon (basically meatballs), sprinkled with cumin
and sitting atop a green sauce (this last prompting a diner to successfully
silence an entire feasthall while he told the tale of Fionn Mac Cumhal and the
Salmon of Wisdom -- _I_ thought that was pretty cool), steamed mussels in
white-wine-vinegar-butter sauce (very similar to your basic French moules
mariniere), Apician shrimp isicia, and my all-time favorite, the cuminade de
poissons from Le Menagier de Paris.

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 21:58:47 -0400
From: Phil & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Fish at Feasts

> Sigh! I would love to serve and eat more fish at feasts, but here in the
> southern part of the midwest, it would probably break most feast budgets
> to have more than one entree be fish or shellfish related. (unless you
> made it out of catfish : )  IS there any period recipes using catfish? )
> Beatrix

I'm not aware of any under that name, but there are period recipes that simply
specify "fish", and there are even those that specify various firm white
freshwater fish, some of which are similar in flavor and texture to catfish.
In addition, the admittedly post-period "Compleat Angler" by Izaak Walton (a
contemporary of Kenelm Digby's) gives instructions for catching, identifying,
and, if I remember correctly, dressing and cooking bullheads, which are a
variety of catfish found in, unless I've been misinformed, the Southern
Midwest of the U.S. The illustration of the bullhead in the book certainly
suggests a catfish-y fish of some kind.

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 23:43:58 -0400
From: Phil & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Fish at Feasts

Craig Jones. wrote:
> >Beatrix asks:
> > IS there any period recipes using catfish? )
> >
> >Actually, I think catfish is New World, but it sure is good. Wondering if
> >any of the old world fishes might be similar enough in flavor and texture
> >to substitute? Anybody have a clue?
> >
> >Phlip
>
> Maybe another bottom dwelling mud sucker, perhaps loach which I've
> seen in a few period sources here and there.

Bottom-dwelling, maybe, but mud-sucker generally applies more to carp-type
fish, which catfish are not.

Loaches, now, are pretty similar to catfish: scaleless, with large heads and
mouths, and whiskers or barbels. The fish that Walton refers to as a bullhead
looks somewhat like an American bullhead catfish (several species of the genus
Ictalurus), but apparently is not, unless it is now extinct in Europe.

A.J. McClane's "Complete Encyclopedia of Fish Cookery" says that there is only
one actual European catfish, Siluris glanis, commonly known as a wels. What
language this is supposed to be in is not clear, but McClane clearly states
that while there is a fish known as a katfische in German, it is a marine
wolffish related to wrasses.

I suspect American bullheads were called bullheads by European settlers in the
New World who thought they had some resemblance, in one way or another, to the
European fish. This isn't unprecedented: in Pennsylvania walleyes used to be
called salmon because they were cheap, plentiful, and occupied the same
socio-economic niche (i.e. primarily a food for servants and lower middle
classes) as the salmon did in Europe at the time many European settlers
arrived in PA. This same fish is called a walleyed pike (it isn't even
remotely like a pike, except it swims and has scales) in the Northern MidWest
of the U.S., and, I think, is commonly known as a yellow pike in Canada. It
is, in fact, a type of perch.

Loach recipes might do very well using catfish, as a matter of fact, but I
don't think there are too many fish recipes that were considered to be
immutably for a specific species of fish. Many specify several types of fish,
maybe on the assumption you will have access to one or another of them.

Adamantius


Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 21:50:36 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Catching & Cooking carp

upsxdls at okway.okstate.edu writes:
<< IIRC, it takes 90 minutes at 15 lbs pressure. >>

The correct pressure would be 10 lb. but the timing is correct.  Also remove
the dark portions of the meat as these tend to impart a muddy taste to the
meat.  Carp taken in cold waters or cold seasons such as fall and winter tend
to have a firmer flesh and a finer flavor.  When taken in warm weather such as
summer, they tend to have a muddy, unpleasant fishy flavor and there flesh is
soft and insipid.

Carp were the most commonly used fish in the monastery fish ponds of the MA.
As such they would have been used for everyday types of meals and seldom used,
if at all, at major feasts.

Ras


Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 15:46:39 -0500
From: allilyn at juno.com (LYN M PARKINSON)
Subject: Re: SC -  carp and lebkuchen

I was looking up some info on the lebkuchen in some of my German
referances, and noticed the statement that carp is traditionally cooked
in Germany on Christmas Eve, as it goes back to the monks' ponds.
Evidently, they kept carp as a staple.  The fattening of the Christmas
carp might begin as early as August.  So, as soon as we're home from
Pennsic, we rush out and feed the fish!!!  They didn't say what was used
to fatten the carp, or what monks used in place of cardboard boxes of
fish flakes.

My German family has a herring salad, with beets, for Christmas eve and
other special family events, but I think that comes from the
great-grandfather who was a trader based in Riga, Russia.

Allison


Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998 23:19:32 EDT
From: Mordonna22 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Fish and Vinegar

melc2newton at juno.com writes:
>  What the heck type of fish is a soal?

Sole, a flat fish, a flounder

Mordonna DuBois
Haven of Warriors
Atenveldt


Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 22:18:20 -0400
From: Phil & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - meat days and fast days - MIXED?

Mary Morman wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Phil & Susan Troy wrote:
> > Chiquart speaks of the need to be accomodating to the
> > guest cooks brought in by His Grace's guests who are on special diets of all
> > sorts; I believe he mentions abstaining from meat on meat days, for whatever
> > reason, as one such aberrant diet to be accomodated.
> >
> > Adamantius
>
> wonderful reference, adam ant!  can you get me the quote?

        From Chiquart's "Du Fait de Cuisine", transl. Terence Scully, © Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 1986, ISBN 0-8204-0352-0, pp. 14-15:

        "Since at such a feast there may be very high, mighty, noble, venerable and honorable lords and ladies who will not eat meat, it is necessary to have
similar amounts of sea-fish and fresh-water fish, both fresh and salted, and
these in as varied preparations as can be.

        "And because the dolphin is king of all the other sea-fish, it will be put first, then congers, grey mullet, hake, sole, red mullet, John Dory, plaice,
turbot, lobsters, tuna, sturgeon, salmon, sprats, sardines, sea-urchins,
mussels, eels, bogues, ray, calamary, weever and anchovies; the eels, both
fresh and salted.

        "Of freshwater fish: large trout, large eels, lampreys, filets of char, great pike filets, great carp filets, great perch, dace, pollacks, greylings,
burbots, crayfish, and all other fish.

        "Because there are at this feast a few great lords or ladies, as was
mentioned before, who will have with them their Chief Cook whom they will
order to arrange and cook particular things for them, that Chief Cook should
have supplied and dispensed to him, quickly, fully, generously, and
cheerfully, anything he may ask for or that may be necessary for his lord or
lady, or for the both of them, so that he may serve them as he should."

> i'll put it with my reference from the abbot at bury st. edmonds about
> instructing the cook to cook and serve a regular meal with meat dishes and
> sweets even though the abbot himself only ate fast day foods - this was an
> act of charity so that the leftovers could go to the infirmary or to
> others at the table, or to the beggars at the gate.

Cool! Hope this helps!

Adamantius
Østgardr, East


Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 17:48:45 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: RE: SC - meat days and fast days - MIXED?

At 12:41 PM -0700 10/29/98, Stapleton, Jeanne wrote:
>       Cool!  does he specify some dishes?

To put it mildly, yes. The book is webbed at:
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Cookbooks/Du_Fait_de_Cuisine/du_fait_de_c_con
tents.html

"And as at such a feast there could be some very high, puissant, noble,
venerable and honorable lords and ladies who do not eat meat, for these
there must be fish, marine and fresh-water, fresh and salt, in such manner
as one can get them.

And as the sea-bream is king of the other sea fish, listed first is the
sea-bream, conger-eel, grey mullet, hake, sole, red mullet, dorade, plaice,
turbot, sea-crayfish, tuna, sturgeon, salmon, herrings, sardines,
sea-urchin, mussels, eels, boops, ray, cuttle-fish, arany marine,
anchovies, eels, both fresh and salted.

Concerning fresh-water fish: big trout, big eels, lampreys, filleted char,
fillets of big pike, fillets of big carp, big perch, ferrés, pallés,
graylings, burbot, crayfish, and all other fish."

And lots of recipes.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 09:28:04 -0600
From: mfgunter at fnc.fujitsu.com (Michael F. Gunter)
Subject: Re: SC - Viking Sweets, my creative adventure

> The prunes sound good, Tyrca, but what I am REALLY waiting for is the
> Ansteorran Royal redaction of buttery cheese sauce on sushi!
>
> Allison

Easy.

From "Master Arglebargle's Booke of Dysshes for the Strange and Pyckee"
Dated 1512, Published by Blackfinger Press, London,Wales

Tyk goode butter and sethe hyt well, add fat cheese and softe cheese.
Season hyt with pepyr and goode spyce. Serue toppd on sippets.

Then tyk freshe fysshe and clene hym and cutte hym into leches. Boyle
rys til hit bursteth then tyk the rys into thine hand and presse him into
balls. Lay the balls on the cheese and topp with the fysshe.

Gunthar


Date: Sat, 09 Jan 1999 10:33:47 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - once again bread & FISH

Stacie wrote:
> Does anyone have a tasty recipe for  Lake Erie Walleye.....I have some that
> is begging to be taken out of the freezer......I usually just bake it in the
> oven with a little lemon and butter (sprinkled lightly with salt and pepper)
> but i would like to try something new....

A walleye being basically a perch on steroids, there are some period
recipes for perch that should do really well. One that comes to mind is
egredouce (fried fish in sweet-and-sour sauce) which is ideally suited
since walleye, as I recall, needs to be skinned before eating, so
skinless, boneless fillet chunks are a perfect presentation for both the
fish and the dish. (Yeah, the recipe doesn't specify the fish is boned,
but it does make it easier to deal with the sauce, etc.)

From the "Forme of Cury" (which specifies rabbit or kid as the meat, but
fish was commonly eaten in this sauce:

Egurdouce
Take conynges or kydde and smyte hem on pecys rawe, and fry hem in white
grece. Take raysons of Corance and fry hem; take oynons, parboile hem
and hew hem small and fry hem. Take rede wine, sugar, with powdor of
peper, of gynger, of canel; salt; and cast therto; and lat it seeth with
a gode quantite of white grece; ans serue it forth.

Quantities _loosely_ adapted from Hieatt & Butler's "Pleyn Delit":

2 lbs Lake Erie Walleye ;  )
Flour for coating fish
lard for frying plus 1 - 2 Tbs for the sauce, or use vegetable shortening
1/2 cup currants
3 onions, parboiled (optional) and minced
1 1/2 cups red wine
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon each ginger and cinnamon
1/4 tsp pepper (I like more)
1 tsp salt or to taste

H&B call for a thickener of bread crumbs, but I feel it's gratuitous.
The white grease added at the end of the cooking process provides some
slight thickening power; you have to have the sauce at a hard boil when
you add the lard in tiny bits for it to work. It becomes temporarily
emulsified into the rest of the syrupy sauce, cutting some of its
sharpness and making it just slightly thicker, but lighter in texture.
Another possibility, and far more faithful than breadcrumbs, would be to
take perhaps half the solids from the sauce, run them through a food
mill, and return them to the sauce. The flour for frying really isn't
much of a departure: Taillevent speaks of frying fish _without_ flour,
suggesting it was done at least sometimes in 14th century France. The
recipe speaks of parboiling the onions before mincing and frying them;
it seems to make little or no difference in the finished product, and if
you don't buy the medical theory that probably motivates the
instruction, you might well omit the extra step.

Anyway, I suggest coating the fish with seasoned flour (use a plastic
bag), frying it in lard or shortening, removing the fish to keep warm
for a few, and make the sauce by removing most of the fat from the pan,
sauteeing the onions and the currants, adding the remaining sauce
ingredients except for the lard, bringing it to a boil, adding the lard
if you want to use it for thickening, otherwise mill, sieve, or puree
part of the currants and onions strained from the sauce, adding them
back, and pouring the sauce over the fish.

The original recipe says you should fry the currants first, then the
onions. This suggests to me the onions should not become browned in the
frying, and may also be part of why the onions are parboiled first, to
be sure they're soft enough.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East


Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 23:42:26 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - New pet peeve

melc2newton at juno.com wrote:
> and was told that they were their own, but that they had used all period
> ingredients.( Although Clam Chowder is my favorite, the cream based type,
> especially from scratch, I have difficultly believing it's Norman French,
> even Generic Norman French... but I degress... )

Your difficulty is understandable. Chowder, especially in the form you
refer to, is an at-least-second-generation American interpretation of
Breton dishes now known as bourride and matelote, made from herring or
other rather small fish, and eels, respectively.

The earliest American chowders appear to have been layered, baked
constructs like a lasagna, or a fish-based Irish stew, made from salt
pork, ship's biscuit, potatoes, onions, fish and fish stock, with butter
added as a garnish at the table. Even these are only loosely related to
European originals, bearing about as much relation to French soups as if
a French immigrant to the New World had said, "Okay, what have we got
around here to make a hotpot out of?"

Clams don't seem to be as widely eaten in Western Europe as they are in
the USA, and if the recipes are anything to judge from, the same seems
to have been true in period.

Clams were added later, probably in the early 19th century, and "New
England Clam Chowder" as we know it today, with milk and cream, potatoes
only (and sometimes roux) without ship's biscuit or cracker crumbs,
_and_ sans tomato product, seems to appear for the first time in Fannie
Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cook Book in, what, 1896?

I'm extremely fond of pointing out to sanctimonious fans of
"traditional" NE chowder that tomato was widely used in NE chowders till
around 100 years ago, and probably still would be if they could grow
good tomatoes in New England and preserve them properly in a ketchup
that tasted good. (Real tomato ketchup, a thin but highly flavored,
sweet, tangy, and _spicy_ condiment, has gone the way of all flesh, but
it was often included in fish and clam chowders until the late 19th
century, as an alternative to fresh or canned tomatoes.)

Speaking of pet peeves and all...I guess you can tell this is something
of a push-button for me.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 22:36:13 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - 14th Century Food

From: Margo Hablutzel <margolh at nortelnetworks.com>
>I am not sure that tuna was eaten in
>period, it doesn't seem to be from the right places (could be wrong).

The small white tuna (albacore) and the larger bluefin tuna were very common
from ancient times in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean. They were
appreciated by the Phoenicians, the Romans and also in the Middle Ages, not
least pickled in brine. I think most old recipes that call for tunny fish
(the version used until the 19th century) actually refer to albacore. Very
popular on fast days!

Nanna


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 22:20:03 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - 14th Century Food

margolh at nortelnetworks.com writes:
<< I am not sure that tuna was eaten in
 period, it doesn't seem to be from the right places (could be wrong).>>

Tuna was a fish used by the Romans. IIRC, there are a  few recipes in Apicius
that use tuna. It was in fact a Mediterranean fish until the oil tankers all
but killed that sea in this century. :-(

Ras


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 23:14:10 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - 14th Century Food

Margo Hablutzel wrote:
>I am not sure that tuna was eaten in
> period, it doesn't seem to be from the right places (could be wrong).

No, I'm pretty sure tuna is mentioned as a food in Taillevent's
"Viandier". Certainly it was caught and eaten by much of the coastal
Roman World. It also figures rather heavily in Chiquart's "Du Fait de
Cuisine", as the main fish ingredient in the fish-day version of his
Parmesan Pies, among other uses. I believe the feast Chiquart is writing
about, several years after the fact, took place in 1405 or so.
Technically not the 14th century, but sooo close.

Adamantius


Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 08:16:05 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - 14th Century Food

And it came to pass on 20 Jan 99,, that LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> Tuna was a fish used by the Romans. IIRC, there are a  few recipes in
> Apicius that use tuna. It was in fact a Mediterranean fish until the oil
> tankers all but killed that sea in this century. :-(
>
> Ras

Tuna appears in 15th century Spanish recipes.

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 07:17:43 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - 14th Century Food

Shari Burnham wrote:
> I don't have a copy of that, could you please provide a recipe for the
> Parmesan pies? (the fish-day version?)  That sounds like a nummy dish to try 
> with tuna.

Yes, it does. I have a photocopy of the Scully translation, and
reproducing it here would involve squinting at small print in
not-very-bright light, early in the morning... .

So, instead, I'll quote from Elizabeth Cook's translation of "Du Fait de
Cuisine", courtesy of HG Cariadoc's web pages:

----------
 40. Now I, Chiquart, would like to give to understand to him who will be  ordered to make parma tarts of fish, let him take slices of tuna if he is in a place where he can get marine fish, and if not let him take as much of those of fresh water, that is large filleted carp, large eels and large filleted pike, and of this take such a great quantity as he is told to make the said tarts; and take candied raisins, prunes, figs, dates, pinenuts, and of each of these take what seems to him right to take according to the quantity ofthe said tarts; then, for the said tarts, let them be cut into pieces, cleaned and washed andput to cook well and cleanly; and, being well cooked, draw it out onto fair and clean tables or boards and let the bones be removed and take them out very well and properly so that no little bones remain, and chop them well and finely; and let the aforesaid raisins have the stems very well removed, let the pine nuts be cleaned very well, let the figs, prunes, and dates be cut into little dice; and, all these things thus dealt with, except for the meat, should be very well washed in white wine and drained, and then mix them with the aforesaid meat of the fish. And it is also necessary, according to the quantity of the said tarts which you have to make, that you have parsley, marjoram, and sage, and of each herb the quantity according to the strength of each, that is of parsley more and of the others less; and let them be well cleaned, washed, and very well chopped and then mix them with the aforesaid meat. And, this being done, have fair, clear, clean, and well refined oil and then have a fair, large and clean frying pan and let it be set over a fair clear fire and put all this into it, and have a good assistant with a fair, large and clean spoon who stirs very well and strongly in the said frying pan; and arrange that you have your almond milk well thickened and strained through a strainer, and a great deal of amydon according to the quantity of tarts which you have and put all in to thicken it; and then put your spices in with your meat while stirring the contents of the pan continually, that is white ginger, grains of paradise and a little pepper, and saffron which gives it color, and whole cloves and a great deal of sugar pounded into powder, and salt in reason. And arrange that your pastry-cooks have made well and properly the crusts of the said tarts, and, being made, take the aforesaid filling and put in each what should be put. And then arrange that you have a very great quantity of good and fair slices of good and fair eels which should be well and properly cooked in water and, being cooked, put them to fry in fair and clean oil; and, being fried, take them out; and then on each tart put three or four pieces, one here and another there, so that they are not together; and then cover the tarts and put in the oven and, being cooked, put them on your dishes and serve them.
----------

Adamantius
Østgardr, East


Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 14:33:02 -0500
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - Waffres ala Master Huen

>Mordonna22 at aol.com wrote:
>> Master Huen, in your redaction of the Waffres recipe from Thomas
>>Austin's Two
<snip>
 I suppose this is
>> an acceptable substitution, if you assume the original meant the roe of a
>> luce.
<snip>

Hello!  I'm fairly certain the original is calling for the stomach, and not
the roe.  The original says 'wombe', which is usually translated as
stomach, although Pegge translates it as 'belly' in Forme of Cury.  There
are many entrail recipes in Austin's collection that call for 'wombes',
'paunches', etc.

There are 2 recipes (off the top of my head) in Austin's collection,
Iuschelle of Fysshe, and Mortrowes of fissh, which call for fish roe.  In
those instances the word is spelled 'frye', 'ffry', and 'rowys'.  In Forme
of Cury the word is spelled 'rawnes' (Mortrews of fish, p. 60)

Cindy Renfrow
renfrow at skylands.net


Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 17:29:23 -0500
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - Waffres ala Master Huen

<snip>
>I bow to your expertise, M'Lady.
>However, putting the stomach of a luce, or of a pike into such a delicate
>recipe makes no sense.  It would add a strong fishy taste, and very little 
>else.
>Would it be entirely off base to think that perhaps, since this is a fish day
>recipe, in an effort to add the character of fowl eggs, which were forbidden,
>the cook chose to use fish eggs?
>
>Mordonna

Um, the recipe *does* call for hen's eggs, unless luce eggs are big enough
to crack & separate?:

Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez

xxiiij.   Waffres.  Take [th]e Wombe of A luce, & se[th]e here wyl, & do it
on a morter, & tender chese [th]er-to, grynde hem y-fere; [th]an take
flowre an whyte of Eyroun & bete to-gedere, [th]en take Sugre an pouder of
Gyngere, & do al to-gederys, & loke [th]at [th]in Eyroun ben hote, & ley
[th]er-on of [th]in paste, & [th]an make [th]in waffrys, & serue yn.

24.  Wafers.  Take the Stomach of A pike, & seethe her well, & put it in a
mortar, & tender cheese thereto, grind them together; then take flour and
white of Eggs & beat together, then take Sugar and powder of Ginger, & put
all together, & look that thine Eggs are hot, & lay thereon of thine paste,
& then make thine wafers, & serve in.

I find the method somewhat confusing, unless we're being instructed to make
2 mixtures, i.e., a thick one with the fish & cheese, & another mixture
with flour, eggwhite, sugar & ginger.  Le Menagier (Goodman, p. 306) gives
instructions for cheese wafers that don't leak, in which the paste is
spread out, filled with strips of cheese, & then the ends of the paste are
folded into the middle, & the whole thing transferred to the waffle iron &
cooked.  I think that's what is happening here.

(<SHRIEK!>  Pocket sandwiches are period!  ;D <laughing>)

Stirring up trouble,

Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu
renfrow at skylands.net


Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 14:26:43 EST
From: Mordonna22 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - roe

him at gte.net writes:
> Please tell me how to fry roe.  My family always threw it away.  My dad
> is a huge fisherman and it saddens me to think of all we missed not 
> knowing what to do with the roe.

First, carefully remove the roe so that the membrane covering it is intact.
Wash it in fresh water, then salt it and dip in a thin cornmeal or flour
batter.  Then deep fry in hot oil until golden.  Simple and delicious.

Mordonna


Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 19:12:58 EST
From: Mordonna22 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Waffres ala Master Huen

renfrow at skylands.net writes:
>  Um, the recipe *does* call for hen's eggs, unless luce eggs are big enough
>  to crack & separate?:,

uhhh
Not at all.  Each little egg is about the size of a berry.  There is a whole
mass of them enclosed in a membrane called the roe.

Mordonna


Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1999 19:57:57 EST
From: geneviamoas at juno.com
Subject: Re: SC - roe

On Sat, 06 Feb 1999 11:49:22 -0600 Helen <him at gte.net> writes:
>Please tell me how to fry roe.  My family always threw it away.  My
>dad is a huge
>fisherman and it saddens me to think of all we missed not knowing what
>to do with the roe.

You scramble it with eggs, too.
genevia


Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 21:45:52 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Waffres ala Master Huen

jlmatterer at labyrinth.net writes:
<< I have no idea what would be an appropraite substitute for the womb 
of a luce.  >>

You might try substituting fish roe. This product is available in the south
SFAIK and may be available in other areas. My mom used to bring back cans of
this when she visited Virginia each summer. It is nothing like caviar. It is
really good scrambled up in eggs which is how she used to fix it. This product
I would suspect would be closer to 'womb of pike' than any caviar. It tastes
very much like catfish roe.

Ras


Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 09:46:42 EST
From: Kallyr at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: salmon recipe

This is a salmon recipe I am currently considering using for my upcoming feast

Salmon Roasted in Sauce
Redaction by Minna Gantz (mka Sherry Levi)

Ingredients:
12 lb. salmon steak(s), about 3/4- 1" thick

for the sauce:
6 c. red wine
3 Tbsp. cinnamon
24-36 scallions, minced (depending on size)
1/3 c. red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp. ginger, powdered

Serves: 12 tables of 8 (in feast context)

Preparation:

1) Roast salmon on a hot (slightly oiled or non-stick surface) skillet or
griddle.

2) Simmer red wine in a saucepan whisking in cinnamon and stirring in
scallions.

3) When ready to serve, turn off heat and add vinegar and ginger, whisk
together.

4) Ladle sauce over the salmon & serve hot.

Original text
Book II, Harleian 4016. 152. 
Samon roste in Sauce.
Take a Salmond, and cut hem rounde, chyne and all, and roste the peces on a
gredire; And take wyne, and poudre of Canell, and draw it ?orgh a streynour;
And take smale myced onions, and caste ?ere-to, and lete hem boyle; And ?en
take vynegre, or vergeous, and pouder ginger, and cast there-to; And ?en ley
the samon in a dissh, and cast ?e sirop ?eron al hote, & serue it forth.


Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 13:03:03 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Re: salmon recipe

At 9:46 AM -0500 2/28/99, Kallyr at aol.com wrote:
>This is a salmon recipe I am currently considering using for my upcoming
feast
>
>Salmon Roasted in Sauce
>Redaction by Minna Gantz (mka Sherry Levi)
>
>Ingredients:
>12 lb. salmon steak(s), about 3/4- 1" thick
>
>for the sauce:
>6 c. red wine
>3 Tbsp. cinnamon
>24-36 scallions, minced (depending on size)
>1/3 c. red wine vinegar
>2 Tbsp. ginger, powdered
>
>Serves: 12 tables of 8 (in feast context)

I've just posted my version of this recipe under the heading "Salmon (was:
meat and seafood marinades)". My guess is that the "small minced onion"
mentioned in the original recipe actually means "onions minced small", not
scallions; there was at the time a word "chibolles" which actually meant
green onions, scallions, and it isn't used here. We used rather less spice,
proportionately, and a good deal more vinegar.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 12:49:48 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: SC - Salmon (was: meat and seafood marinades)

At 5:58 PM -0600 2/27/99, Helen wrote:
> I am fighting with my family over how best to cook the salmon and lamb
>for my wedding feast.

Here is a 15th-c. English salmon recipe, good and not too complicated:

Salmon roste in Sauce
Two Fifteenth Century p. 102

Take a Salmond, and cut him rounde, chyne and all, and rost the peces on a
gredire; And take wyne, and pouder of Canell, and drawe it thorgh a
streynour; And take smale myced oynons, and caste there-to, and lete hem
boyle; And then take vynegre, or vergeous, and pouder ginger, and cast
there-to; and then ley the samon in a dissh, and cast the sirip theron al
hote, & serue it forth. [end of original; thorns replaced by th]

1 3/4 lb salmon         3/4 t cinnamon          1/4 c red wine vinegar
3/4 c white wine        1 medium onion, 6 oz    1/4 t ginger

Chop onion; put onion, wine, and cinnamon in small pot, cook on medium
about 20 minutes. Add ginger and vinegar. Simmer. Meanwhile, take salmon
steaks, cut into serving sized pieces, place on ungreased baking pan or
cookie sheet. Broil for 10 minutes until lightly browned. Turn salmon,
making certain pieces are separated, cook another 4 minutes or until done.
Serve immediately with sauce over it.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 13:17:21 -0800 (PST)
From: Huette von <ahrenshav at yahoo.com>
Subject: SC - Salmon recipe with beer

Here is a recipe that I have used many times that
covers two requests!

>From Gervase Markham's The English Huswife:

To seeth fresh Salmon.

Take a little water, and as much Beere and Salt,
and put thereto Parsley, Time, and Rosemarie, and
let all thes boyle together; then put in your
Salmon, and make your broth sharpe with some
Vinigar.

My redaction:

2 pounds salmon (either steaks or filets)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can or 2 cups beer
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tbsp thyme
2 tbsp rosemary
1 tbsp vinegar

Put olive oil in heavy skillet and add salmon
(cover both sides of salmon with olive oil).
Add beer, then sprinkle on seasonings.  Simmer
for 10-15 min. (depending on thickness of the
salmon).  Add vinegar and simmer for 1 min. longer.

For a feast, you can eliminate the skillet and
use instead jelly-roll baking sheets (i.e.
cookie sheets with a one inch high side all around).
Place in the oven for 10-15 min. and you will get
just the same effect.

Huette


Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 16:17:05 -0600 (CST)
From: "Michael F. Gunter" <michael.gunter at fnc.fujitsu.com>Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 21:53:22 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - A Recipe for Lent

Here is a recipe for your Lenten pleasure. :-)

Du Fait de Cuisine by Master Chiquart, Chef to the Duke of Savoy, 1420.
Translated by Elizabeth Cook from a manuscript edited by Terence Scully,
'Vallesai' v. 40, pp. 121-231. 1985 (1420) as found in Cariadoc's'Collection
of Medieval and Renaissance Cookbooks', v. II, p. F-15.

Translation (copyright Elizabeth Cook):

35............
Again, marine or fresh water fish which are well and properly fried, and
make a fair sauce piquant on top.

36. And to give understanding to him who will make the sauce piquant take
onions and prepare them very well and cut them into fair slices and mince them
very small; and then let him have his very well refined oil and then saute the
onuions in it well and properly, and then drain off the oil, which should not
remain at all. And then take a fair and clean pot and then take very good wine
and put it in according to the quantity of fish which he is frying and then
take his spices: ginger, grains of paradise, saffron, pepper -- and put in all
these things in measure according to the quantity of fish which is to be
eatenwith the said sauce piquant and let it taste of vinegar well and
gently, and of salt also....................

Redaction:

Marine Fish with Sauce Piquant
(copyright L. J. Spencer, Jr. 1999)

5 T Extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb. Fresh salt water fish fillets (e.g. Scrod)
1 medium onion, sliced and minced finely (about 3/8 cp)
1/2 cup White wine (e.g. Chateau de St. Ondes)
1/2 tsp Ginger, ground
1/2 tsp Grains of Paradise, freshly ground
4 threads of Saffron, crushed
1/2 tsp Black pepper, freshly ground
Salt to taste
2 T White wine vinegar

Heat 3 T olive oil in a frying pan. Fry fish until lightly browned. Turn.
Continue frying until opaque and fish flakes easily. Carefully remove fish
from pan and transfer to a warm platter.

In another small frying pan, heat 2 T olive oil. Add onion. Saute onion until
soft and transparent being careful not to burn. Drain well removing as much
oil as possible..

In a small saucepan, put wine, sauted onions and remaining ingredients. Bring
to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until reduced by half. Taste, adjusting
vinegar and salt if necessary. Pour over fish fillets. Serve.

>From the Kitchens al-Sayyid A'aql ibn Rashid al-Zib, Mar. 5, 1999


Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 07:31:46 EST
From: WOLFMOMSCA at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Cooking over embers -- stove equivalent?

Brighid writes:
<<  The instructions are to cook it in
 the casserole dish with herbs and a small amount of liquid over the
 coals/embers ("brasas").  Other similar recipes for fish in
 casserole, suggest the oven as an alternative, though the recipe for
 sardines discourages the use of the oven, on the grounds that it
 provides heat above and below and may be too hot.  From this I
 conclude that a fairly gentle heat is called for.

 If I have little experience in redacting, I have none in fireplace
 cookery.  Can some more knowledgeable gentle tell me what level
 of heat would simulate cooking over embers?  >>

Sounds suspiciously like poached salmon.  You can do it in the oven, but
stovetop works best.  Bring it to a boil over medium-high heat, reduce heat &
simmer, uncovered, for 3-4 minutes, or until you can loosen the middle bone
(if using salmon steaks) or the flesh is bright orangey-pink and flakes in
big chunks.

Depending on the wood used to create the embers, the heat of the embers will
vary, sometimes considerably.  This dish would be watched constantly, and
the doneness of the fish would tell the cook when to pull it off the coalbed.

Wolfmom


Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 10:43:38 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Cooking over embers -- stove equivalent?

And it came to pass on 12 Mar 99,, that WOLFMOMSCA at aol.com wrote:

> Brighid writes:
> <<  The instructions are to cook it in
>  the casserole dish with herbs and a small amount of liquid over the
>  coals/embers ("brasas"). >>
>
> Sounds suspiciously like poached salmon.  You can do it in the oven, but
> stovetop works best.  Bring it to a boil over medium-high heat, reduce
> heat & simmer, uncovered, for 3-4 minutes, or until you can loosen the
> middle bone (if using salmon steaks) or the flesh is bright orangey-pink
> and flakes in big chunks.

I thought so at first, but I read through the entire fish section of the
_Libro de Guisados_.  There are 6 primary methods listed for
cooking fish: spit-roasted ("asado"), grilled on gratings ("en
parrillas"), fried ("fritos"), in pastry ("en pan"),  in casserole ("en
cazuela"), and boiled ("cocido").

Of these, "cocido" seems to correspond directly to poaching.  The
fish is cooked with water and salt and sometimes oil.  Herbs and
other things may be added for flavoring.  Many of the recipes for
this method specify that the water is to be boiling before the fish is
added.

Fish done "en cazuela", on the other hand, is placed in the
casserole with spices, herbs, and a small amount of liquid: verjuice
or orange juice and/or oil.  It is then cooked on the embers or in the
oven.  Several of the recipes specify that the casserole must be
tightly covered, and if it is not, it should be cooked in the oven.  I
imagine that this is to ensure that the fish is exposed to heat on
top, since it is apparently not covered by the liquid.

> Depending on the wood used to create the embers, the heat of the embers
> will vary, sometimes considerably.  This dish would be watched constantly,
> and the doneness of the fish would tell the cook when to pull it off the
> coalbed.

Hmmm... maybe at a gentle simmer, tightly covered?

> Wolfmom

Thank you for your suggestions.

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 11:38:36 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Cooking over embers -- stove equivalent?

Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> > <<  The instructions are to cook it in
> >  the casserole dish with herbs and a small amount of liquid over the
> >  coals/embers ("brasas"). >>

> I thought so at first, but I read through the entire fish section of the
> _Libro de Guisados_.  There are 6 primary methods listed for
> cooking fish: spit-roasted ("asado"), grilled on gratings ("en
> parrillas"), fried ("fritos"), in pastry ("en pan"),  in casserole ("en
> cazuela"), and boiled ("cocido").
>
> Of these, "cocido" seems to correspond directly to poaching.  The
> fish is cooked with water and salt and sometimes oil.  Herbs and
> other things may be added for flavoring.  Many of the recipes for
> this method specify that the water is to be boiling before the fish is
> added.
>
> Fish done "en cazuela", on the other hand, is placed in the
> casserole with spices, herbs, and a small amount of liquid: verjuice
> or orange juice and/or oil.  It is then cooked on the embers or in the
> oven.  Several of the recipes specify that the casserole must be
> tightly covered, and if it is not, it should be cooked in the oven.  I
> imagine that this is to ensure that the fish is exposed to heat on
> top, since it is apparently not covered by the liquid.

The closest expression used in culinary English would be braising, which
sounds etymologically linked to the term "brasas". There are two types
of braising, a white version in which the ingredients are not browned
before adding liquid, and a brown verison in which they are. The latter
seems to be more common, but certain dishes ranging from Irish Stew to
Blanquette of Veal seem to fall into the former category, and so does
this salmon dish. In theory braised dishes (especially those where you
have large chunks of foods, usually meats, braised whole rather than in
chunks) should only be covered partially covered with liquid, generally
halfway up the side of the meat.

> Hmmm... maybe at a gentle simmer, tightly covered?

Possibly. I think the idea of using the embers is that they have a
relatively gentle a stable heat, and also perhaps because they can be
banked up the sides if the pot. Your best bet might be to cook the dish
in something like a Dutch oven or covered casserole in the oven, or
perhaps with some kind of heat diffuser (possibly one of those asbestos
gizmos) on a low heat on top of the stove.

Does the recipe specify covering the dish? If not, cooking it uncovered
on top of the stove (which would presumably require _very_ gentle heat,
and long cooking) might be the closest to what the original author has
in mind.

Adamantius


Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 00:21:45 -0500
From: Christine A Seelye-King <mermayde at juno.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Cooking over embers -- stove equivalent?

>Fish done "en cazuela", on the other hand, is placed in the
>casserole with spices, herbs, and a small amount of liquid: verjuice
>or orange juice and/or oil.  It is then cooked on the embers or in the
>oven.  Several of the recipes specify that the casserole must be
>tightly covered, and if it is not, it should be cooked in the oven.  I
>imagine that this is to ensure that the fish is exposed to heat on
>top, since it is apparently not covered by the liquid.

>Brighid

What you describe here sounds most like the method known as "braising".
Braising is usually a 'moist roasting' method, and is done with meats or
vegetables in a small amount of liquid in the oven.  The fact that they
are not covered allows the meat to roast, the small amount of liquid
ensures a moistness in the finished product.  It also makes for a
wonderful sauce, using the reduced cooking liquid that has the drippings
in it.  (Kind of like deglazing the pan without that step).  The liquid
can also be used for basting.  In the case of a fish steak, the basting
would serve to cook the top of the meat as well.
Christianna


Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 17:27:10 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Cooking over embers -- stove equivalent?

And it came to pass on 12 Mar 99,, that Philip & Susan Troy wrote:

> Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:

[snip]
> > Fish done "en cazuela", on the other hand, is placed in the
> > casserole with spices, herbs, and a small amount of liquid: verjuice or
> > orange juice and/or oil.  It is then cooked on the embers or in the
> > oven.  Several of the recipes specify that the casserole must be tightly
> > covered, and if it is not, it should be cooked in the oven.  I imagine
> > that this is to ensure that the fish is exposed to heat on top, since it
> > is apparently not covered by the liquid.
>
> The closest expression used in culinary English would be braising, which
> sounds etymologically linked to the term "brasas". There are two types of
> braising, a white version in which the ingredients are not browned before
> adding liquid, and a brown verison in which they are. The latter seems to
> be more common, but certain dishes ranging from Irish Stew to Blanquette
> of Veal seem to fall into the former category, and so does this salmon
> dish.

I agree.  There is definitely no instruction to brown or fry the salmon
before it is braised.

> In theory braised dishes (especially those where you have large
> chunks of foods, usually meats, braised whole rather than in chunks)
> should only be covered partially covered with liquid, generally halfway up
> the side of the meat.

Even less, I think.  The instruction in this particular recipe is to
cook it with a little verjuice or orange juice  ("un poco de agraz or
de zumo de naranjas").  Some of the other fish casserole recipes
call for no liquid other than a little oil.  To me it sounds like just
enough to give the fish some moisture and flavor.

> > Hmmm... maybe at a gentle simmer, tightly covered?
>
> Possibly. I think the idea of using the embers is that they have a
> relatively gentle a stable heat, and also perhaps because they can be
> banked up the sides if the pot. Your best bet might be to cook the dish in
> something like a Dutch oven or covered casserole in the oven, or perhaps
> with some kind of heat diffuser (possibly one of those asbestos gizmos) on
> a low heat on top of the stove.

Of the two, I think I like the oven idea better.  I'm less likely to end
up with salmon crisp.

> Does the recipe specify covering the dish? If not, cooking it uncovered on
> top of the stove (which would presumably require _very_ gentle heat, and
> long cooking) might be the closest to what the original author has in
> mind.

This recipe does not mention a cover (or the lack of a cover).
Some of the other fish recipes say that the casserole should be
covered if it is cooked on the embers, and if it is not, then it should
go into the oven.  Some other recipes, like the salmon, do not
mention a cover.  I do not know if the omission is deliberate or not.
At this point, I think I am inclined to try the salmon -- uncovered --
in the oven, and see how that does.

> Adamantius

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 12:25:48 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Re: seder menu.

> > The term whitefish is also used to describe the beluga
> > sturgeon.
>
> Interesting! By whom, and why?

Beluga sturgeon is a little redundant, but descriptive.  In Russian,
sturgeon is beyluga, as the beluga whale is beylukha.  The root is beylii or
white with an augmentative suffix, thus a rough literal translation of
sturgeon is whitefish, while the beluga whale translates as white whale.  It
would be interesting to see what the Russian call the North American
whitefish.

Having reached the limits of my massive knowledge of Russian liguistics, I'm
now probably the one in trouble.

> Adamantius

Bear


Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 08:50:36 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Tuna Recipe?

THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
> Does anyone out there know of a good, preferably period recipe for fresh tuna?

I believe Chiquart's 15th-century recipe for Parmesan Pies (Tourtes of
Parma, etc.), the fish-day version, recommends tuna as one possible fish
to use. It's a long recipe, although I believe HG Cariadoc has his lady
wife's, Mistress Elizabeth's, translation webbed. Basically it is a
large pie with layers of dried fruit and fish, possibly some custard;
I'd have to check on the details.

Adamantius


Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 14:39:39 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Tuna Recipe?

And it came to pass on 9 Jul 99,, that H B wrote:
> Not period, of course, but when I lived in Portland, OR, we grilled
> 'em.  Tuna steak, halibut steak, salmon steak - all go great on the
> grill (just be careful turning).  Tuna, I think we just marinaded ~20
> minutes in teriaki sauce first.  Yum!

I beg to disagree.  Grilling fish is period.  Taillevent (14th c. French)
recommends grilling sole and salmon, and there are various 16th c.
Spanish recipes for grilling fish, including tuna.  (Recipes to follow in
another post, Ras.  I have to translate 'em first.)

The teriyaki sauce is another matter, of course...

> -- Harriet

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 21:54:00 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Tuna Recipe?

harper at idt.net writes:
<<  I have to translate 'em first.) >>

Well, I looked up one in Cariadoc's already translated version in his
collection. It 's there. :-)

Ras


Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 14:39:39 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Tuna Recipe?

And it came to pass on 10 Jul 99,, that Philip & Susan Troy wrote:
> Personally I'd recommend marinating a couple of hours in salt water, then
> patting dry and switching to a marinade of olive oil, fresh thyme and
> possibly some garlic. Then you can either grill rare or medium rare,
> depending on squeamishness levels, or braise in more (or the same) olive
> oil, white wine, perhaps orange or lemon juice, maybe some tomato dice
> thrown in at the end.

With the exception of the tomato, this closely resembles several of the
cooking suggestions I have seen for tuna in period Spanish recipes.

> Adamantius

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 01:41:29 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Tuna Recipe?

And it came to pass on 9 Jul 99,, that THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
> Does anyone out there know of a good, preferably period recipe for fresh
> tuna?

> Renata
> Barony of Altavia
> Kingdom of Caid
> Los Angeles, CA

Tuna recipes.... tuna recipes... yup.  I have some... all untested, I'm
afraid.

TOÑINA EN PARRILLAS -- Tuna on the Grill
Source: Libro de Guisados (Spanish, 1529)
Translation: mine

Take from the tuna from the forward part of the belly, well cleaned; and
anoint it with oil, and also anoint the grill and set it to roast over a few
coals; and anoint them little by little with oil and afterwards make your
sauce with water and salt and oil, and orange juice and pepper and all
the good herbs shredded or cut fine: and when they want to eat put our
fish on the plate, and cast this sauce on top; and if you want to make
another sauce, such as rocket or another, let it be at your pleasure.

PARA COZER PEDAZOS DE ATUN EN CAZUELA, Y EN PARILLAS --
To Cook Pieces of Tuna in Casserole, and on the Grill
Source: Libro Del Arte De Cozina
Translation: Mine

Take the pieces of tuna cleaned of their skin, and put them in marinade
for two hours, made of vinegar, white wine, boiled wine, ground pepper,
and a crushed clove of garlic, and salt, and put in pieces as thick as
two fingers, no more, and each one of six pounds, in a tart pan or a
casserole, in which there is oil from sweet olives, and cook them like
tarts with fire beneath and on top, and when they are half cooked add a
little of the marinade they were in, and when they are cooked, serve it
with your little flavor (saborcillo?) on top.  The pieces which are roasted
on the grill are of the same size and thickness, and are powdered with
salt, the best of fennel, and pepper, and are put in a vessel, in which
there is oil, and after being in the oil for an hour they are removed, and
roasted on the grill in the same manner as pike, and then serve them
hot with the same sauce as pike.

You can also roast on the grill those pieces which were in marinade,
serving them hot with the same marinade.

PARA HAZER LOS PEDAZOS DE ATUN DE OTRA MANERA -- To
Make the Pieces of Tuna in Another Manner
Source: Libro Del Arte De Cozina
Translation: Mine

Take ten pieces of tuna of six pounds each, scaled, and put them in a
tinned casserole with chopped onion with oil, white wine, verjuice,
pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and as much salt as is necessary, and a
little water tinted with saffron, and make it finish cooking with fire below
and above, in the manner that one cooks tarts, and serve them hot with
the same broth on top.  In all of the above mentioned manners they
prepare slices, stuffed slices, and vazias (?), of the pulp of the tuna.

PULPETONES DE ATUN RELLENOS, Y ASSADOS EN EL ASSADOR
- -- Large Slices of Stuffed Tuna, Roasted on the Spit
Source: Libro Del Arte De Cozina
Translation: Mine

Being that the flesh of the tuna is much more colored than the other
fishes, because of this they are accustomed to make stuffed slices from
it.  Take the leanest part, cut the slices the length of a palm, the
thickness of a finger, give each one four or five blows with the flat of a
knife, and sprinkle it with the best of fennel, and salt, and have a
composition made of the paunch of the fattest part of the tuna, and tuna
of salted flank in a third of the quantity of the paunch, and chop them
togehter, one with the other, like sausage, adding to it odiferous herbs,
and you can put grated cheese in place of the tuna flank, and raw egg
yolks with pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and saffron, and if it
seems [desirable] to you, garlic.  Fill the slices with the said
composition, and cause it to roast on the spit, anointing them from time
to time with garlic, and verjuice, mixed with boiled wine, and being
cooked serve them hot with little flavor (saborcillo?) on top.  Of the pulp
of the tuna they make all these viands and stews that we have said of
the pike, and the same of its innards.

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 21:31:38 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: SC - Grilled tuna redaction

I got around to testing the marinated-and-grilled part of the tuna recipes I
posted recently.  Here is the recipe again, for those who didn't keep it:

PARA COZER PEDAZOS DE ATUN EN CAZUELA, Y EN PARILLAS --
To Cook Pieces of Tuna in Casserole, and on the Grill
Source: Libro Del Arte De Cozina (Spanish, 1599)
Translation: Mine

Take the pieces of tuna cleaned of their skin, and put them in marinade
for two hours, made of vinegar, white wine, boiled wine, ground pepper,
and a crushed clove of garlic, and salt, and put in pieces as thick as two
fingers, no more, and each one of six pounds, in a tart pan or a
casserole, in which there is oil from sweet olives, and cook them like
tarts with fire beneath and on top, and when they are half cooked add a
little of the marinade they were in, and when they are cooked, serve it
with your little flavor (saborcillo?) on top.  The pieces which are
roasted on the grill are of the same size and thickness, and are
powdered with salt, the best of fennel, and pepper, and are put in a
vessel, in which there is oil, and after being in the oil for an hour they are
removed, and roasted on the grill in the same manner as pike, and then
serve them hot with the same sauce as pike.

You can also roast on the grill those pieces which were in marinade,
serving them hot with the same marinade.

- - - -

I went to the liquor store and bought two inexpensive Spanish wines: a
dry white and a not-dry, fruity red.  I boiled the latter in my microwave in
a glass measuring cup, until it was reduced by half.  I then made the
following marinade:

1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup boiled red wine
1 teaspoon of red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic, chopped (more than the recipe calls for, but I like garlic)
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
several vigorous shakes of salt

I marinated a yellowfin tuna steak in this mixture for two hours in the
refrigerator.  I then grilled it until slightly pink in the center.

Comments: the wine and garlic flavors were very subtle.  Since period
cooks undoubtedly marinated their fish at somewhat warmer
temperatures than are found in my fridge, next time I might try a longer
marinating period, to see if that produces a stronger flavor.  I also did
not serve the grilled fish with hot marinade as a sauce, not knowing how
much heating of the marinade might be needed to make the marinade
safe.  Next time I think I will make some extra marinade for sauce and
keep it separate from the the raw fish.


Date: Sat, 07 Aug 1999 07:50:26 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: SC - Harpestreng fish recipe consensus???

In an attempt to stem the tide of rampant Mushy Stuff (tm) from certain
quarters, I will introduce a small conundrum from this week's headliner
topic, the various Harpestreng manuscript cookbooks found across
Northern Europe.

Grewe's translation of recipe 10 in both Codices K and D follows:

"How fish is condimented in a sauce appropriate to them.

"One should take bream and pike or other fish, and fry them well, and
baste them with the oil, which were mentioned earlier*. When they are
well fried, pour off the oil, and pound with vinegar and squeeze through
a cloth. These sauces are called 'Inder iaeght.' They are good for all
kinds of fish."

*Recipes 1 and 2 in both the codices K and D, as well as Q and, in the
second recipe, W, but not Q, are for extracting walnut and almond oil.

It seems as if this is a sauce of pureed, oily fried fish, thinned with
vinegar. Not unlike escabeche served over another fish dish. Pretty
civilized, if you ask me!

Does it sound like I'm missing something here? I've eaten fish fried,
uncoated, until somewhat dry but chewy, and of a concentrated, somewhat
caramelized flavor, and I think this might be the kind of fried fish the
recipe is talking about. That kind of flavor, sitting on top of, say,
grilled tuna steak, might be a Good Thing, a precursor to the various
Tonnato sauces found today in Italy. Comments would be appreciated.

Adamantius


Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 11:21:17 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Can medieval food be heart-smart?

And it came to pass on 26 Sep 99,, that ChannonM at aol.com wrote:
> However, unsauced, non breaded or [non]-deep
> fried fish is not what I have seen as beeing welcomed at feasts and I
> guess that's what I was alluding to. I'll try to be more specific in the
> future

The French, Spanish, and Italian cookbooks all have recipes for grilled
fish.  They are served with sauces that are flavorful, with ingredients like
bread, verjuice or vinegar, herbs and/or garlic, and are often low-fat (and
where oil is added, it would be the heart-healthy olive oil).  I have not yet
had an opportunity to serve fish at a feast, but I think I will give it a try
next time.

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 22:43:40 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: SC - Cominee de poissons

Phillipa asked for this, I believe...

Cuminade of Fish

        “Poultry flavoured with cumin. Cut it into pieces and put it to cook in
a little wine, then fry it in  fat;  then take a little bread dipped in your broth and take first ginger and cumin, moisten them with verjuice, bray and strain and put all together with meat or chicken broth, and then color it either with saffron or with eggs or yolks run through a strainer and dropped slowly
into the pottage, after it is taken off the fire. Item, best it is to make it with milk as aforesaid and then to bray your bread after your spices, but behoveth it to boil the milk first lest it burn, and after the pottage is finished let the milk be put into wine (meseemeth this is not needful)  and fry
it. Many there be that fry it not, nathless it tastes best so.

        “(Bread is the thickening and afterwards he saith eggs, which is
another thickening,  and one should suffice, as is said in the chapter concerning the creton´nee. Verjuice and wine.--If you would make your pottage with milk behoveth not to use wine or verjuice.)

        “Commineé for a fish day. Fry your fish, then peel almonds and bray
them and dilute with pureé or fish broth and make milk of almonds; but cow’s milk is more appetising, though not so healthy for the sick; and for the rest do as above. Item, on a meat day, if you cannot have cow’s milk, you may make the dish of milk of almonds and meat as above.”

   Le Menagier de Paris, trans. Eileen Power; Harcourt, Brace  New York 1928

        I envision this dish as something like fish fillets in a curry flavored
almond-milk sauce, just a bit like a very mild Singapore-type curry. The
dish is intended as a spoon-food, so the fish should be either in chunks
or soft enough to break up easily.

        For eight servings:

        2 pounds white, lean (“non-fishy”) fillets or steaks, such as cod,
bass, monkfish, etc.
        2-3 Tbs olive oil for frying
        Almond milk made from 1/4 pound finely ground blanched almonds (1 cup)
and 1 pint boiling water,                       fish stock, or pea broth, blended and strained
        1-inch chunk ginger root, grated or 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
        ~3 Tbs ground cumin seed
        1 pinch saffron
        salt and pepper

        Season the fish with salt and pepper and either saute or bake at 400° F
in a greased pan. Olive oil is best for this. Cook for about eight
minutes per inch of thickness of your fish, til fish is barely opaque
inside and flaky. Keep the fish warm.

        Meanwhile, cook the ginger over low heat in a saucepan, with a little
more oil. When aromatic, but no longer volatile (you’ll know it when you
see it), add cumin and saffron. Do not brown. Add almond milk and mix
thoroughly. Raise heat a bit and bring it to a boil, stirring frequently
until thickened slightly. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and add
more cumin if you feel like it. You can blenderize and/or strain the
sauce if you want it smoother and/or thinner. Pour it over the fish and
mess it forth.

        Recommended garnish - Durkee French Fried Onion Rings. OK, I’m kidding,
but we happened to have them on hand and people did like them on
top...that was when restaurants were into that Tall Food thing...

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 06:44:34 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Eel?

"Michael F. Gunter" wrote:
> We are looking at
> <snip> fish balls in parsley sauce,

Would this be a Scandinavian fiskboller-type thing? I mention this only
because I've served salmon balls, well, dumpling thingies, anyway, based
on a recipe in, I think, The Forme of Cury, for saumon gentil. It calls
for raw, boned salmon meat to be minced and made more or less
homogeneous in a mortar, then the forcemeat is exruded through a cut off
cow's horn (like a pastry bag, which is what we used) into boiling
water, then cooked and drained, cut into portions, and served with a
dusting of ground cumin. We actually served ours on top of a green sauce
made with lots of parsley, as a matter of fact. Also sage, a little
chervil, a few scallions, etc.

Tricks to be scrupulously observed for future use of this recipe would
be to trim off all the skin (which we did) but to leave the fat (which
we did not) to help keep it all moist. You also want to be aware that
they cook in a flash, in total disregard of the fine calculation work
done by the eminent Canadian fisheries lady, Mrs. Spencer (she of the
eight-minutes-per-inch-of-thickness rule).

Still and all, this is the one time I served a dish that prompted a lady
to leap up on top of her table and proceed to tell the tale of Finn Mac
Cumhal and the Salmon of Knowledge. _I_ thought it was pretty cool...

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 22:50:27 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - Eel?

Adamantius wrote:
>Would this be a Scandinavian fiskboller-type thing?

There is a recipe for fishballs in parsley sauce in the 1616 Danish Koge
Bog - the forcemeat is made of pike, carp or other fish, mixed with
breadcrumbs and chopped parsley roots _and_ leaves, and seasoned with salt,
saffron, ginger and pepper. Made into balls the size of hen´s eggs, boiled,
cut in two and served in a parsley sauce "but if you do not want it green,
then make it yellow".

Nanna


Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 06:31:14 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - quenelles?

Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:
> anyone who can think of an example in a medieval cookbook of minced meat
> mixed with dough to make fritters and boiled in water? I know its too much
> to ask for the sauce mournay...:)

The closest I can think of would be the 14th-century English saumon
gentil, which I have _somewhere_ on disk (and it's from Curye On
Inglysch) but cannot currently access. It calls for saumon to be pounded
in a mortar and, I think, pushed through a sieve, then extruded through
a horn with a wooden plunger (yes, like a pastry bag or one of those
cookie shooters) into boiling water, poached and served with a dusting
of ground cumin.

True, there's no pate a choux element, but as often as not quenelle
don't have that either. Many do have added egg white, though, but
anybody who's ever poached a salmon and seen that nasty white stuff that
adheres to it knows how much albumen is already in salmon. This dish
makes a fairly decent retro-quenelle.

Adamantius


Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 00:20:38 -0500
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - RE: Roe

And it came to pass on 10 Mar 00,, that LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> As a side
> note, bluegill roe is particularly tasty as I bullhead roe. Soak, saute in
> butter and then mix with scrambled eggs for a tasty breakfast or brunch
> dish.

Granado has a recipe for a sturgeon roe omelette.  Take ten hen's eggs, 
and a pound of fresh roe... 

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 10:57:20 EDT
From: Seton1355 at aol.com
Subject: SC - Re: [Rinaslist] TART DE BRYMLENT (A MEDIEVAL LENTEN TART)

<< 
       Title: TART DE BRYMLENT (A MEDIEVAL LENTEN TART)
  Categories: Tarts, Seafood, British, Holiday
       Yield: 6 servings
 
            Dough; for 9 inch pie crust
   1 1/2 lb Salmon; cod, haddock or a mixture
       2 tb Lemon juice
       2 tb Butter
       2 ea Pears;peeled, cored & thinly sliced
       2 ea Apples;peeled,cored & thinly sliced
       1 c  White wine
       2 tb Lemon juice
       2 tb Brown sugar
       5 ea Cubebs:* , thinly crushed
     1/8 ts Cloves, ground
     1/8 ts Nutmeg
     1/4 ts Cinnamon
     1/2 c  Raisins
      10 ea Prunes; pitted & minced
       6 ea Dates; minced
       6 ea Figs, dried; minced
       3 tb Red currant jelly; or Damson
 
   *"The cubeb, an aromatic pepper commonly used in medieval times, can
   still be bought in many spice shops."
     Preheat the oven to 425F and bake the pie crust for 10 minutes. Let
   cool. Cut the fish into 1 1/2" chunks, salt lightly ands sprinkle with 2
   tbsp lemon juice. Set aside. Melt the butter in a large, heavy skillet
   and toss the pear and apple slices in it until they are lightly coated.
   Combine the wine, lemon juice, brown sugar, spices and dried fruits, and
   add to the mixture in the skillet. Cover and simmer about 15 minutes or
   until the fruit is soft but still firm. Check the flavoring, and drain
   off excess liquid. Paint jelly on the pie crust. Combine fish chunks
   with fruit and place the mixture in the crust. Bake at 375F for 15-25
   minutes, or until the fish flakes easily.
 
 SOAR - the Searchable Online Archive of Recipes
 (http://soar.Berkeley.EDU/recipes/)


Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 03:34:43 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - pollack..

Ras wrote:
>I'm not certain but Miriam -Webster says>
>
>pol*lack or pol*lock (noun), plural pollack or pollock
>
>[Middle English poullok, perhaps from ScotGael pollag or Irish pollog]
>
>First appeared 15th Century
>
> 1 : a commercially important north Atlantic food fish (Pollachius virens)
>related to and resembling the cods but darker

Yes, but as I’ve said, pollack and pollock are not the same fish. Pollack
(Pollachius pollachius) is the English name for a fish caught in the North
Atlantic - quite good to eat but not very important commercially - usually
about 40-50 centimetres long. (Atlantic) pollock is the American name for
saithe, somwhat larger and much more abundant; the flesh of an adult fish is
greyish in color, has more fat than cod and rather coarse but younger fish
are whiter and more finely textured. Alaska pollock (walleye pollock) is
another species (Theragra chalcogramma), fairly similar to Atlantic pollock
but I understand it is whiter, especially if it has only been frozen once.
This last one is the type used for imitation "crab meat".

Nanna


Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 07:39:41 -0600
From: Sue Clemenger <mooncat at in-tch.com>
Subject: Re: SC - pollack and pollock

Interestingly enough, my dictionary uses both words to indicate the same fish
(as a spelling variation, I thought!)
I baked some of it for dinner last night (lemon/pepper sauce), and it turned out
to be a very nice, firm white fish.  Not an overly "fishy" taste, and held
together well--wasn't falling apart or anything.  Texture reminded me of cod or
halibut.  Would probably work pretty good in cod-related fish recipes for a
feast.  Did not seem to be affected by probably having been frozen (hard to tell
out here, sometimes, but it's a pretty safe bet that most ocean/coastal fish is
frozen even when they say "fresh.") Hmmm, time to discover this flori-thingy....

- --Maire


Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 11:25:38 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Squary scad enquiry

> "What sort of fish did the Tudors know as a squary scad?"

Dunno about a squary scad, but the word scad is related to the word
"shad", which is a large, herring-like, oily fish which lives in the
ocean and spawns in river estuaries. The word "scad", nowadays, refers
to what used to be known as a saurel, or horse mackerel. I;d bet on one
or the other of those two, which doesn't necessarily answer the question...

Adamantius 


Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 21:01:38 -0000
From: "Nanna Rognvaldardottir" <nanna at idunn.is>
Subject: Re: SC - Weird fish names

Vicente wrote:
>Palamida: the editor of the source text cites it as a transliteration of a
>fish called "pelamide" in Catalan.

Bonito.

>bisol: no idea whatsoever.

"Bisso" and "bis" are Catalan names of the chub mackarel (Scomber japonicus
colias), according to Mediterranean Seafood by Alan Davidson - I wonder if
that could be it.

>saiton: described as a bitter fish, best eaten with the head and entrails
>removed.

Don’t know - will see what I can find.

Nanna


Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 22:13:17 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Weird fish names

And it came to pass on 6 Sep 00,, that Nanna Rognvaldardottir wrote:
> Vicente wrote:
> >bisol: no idea whatsoever.
> 
> "Bisso" and "bis" are Catalan names of the chub mackarel (Scomber
> japonicus colias), according to Mediterranean Seafood by Alan Davidson - I
> wonder if that could be it.

I think so.  Grewe (in the footnotes to _Libre de Sent Sovi_) says that 
bisol is the plural of bis, and he identifies it as Scomber japonicus 
colias.
 
> >saiton: described as a bitter fish, best eaten with the head and entrails
> >removed.
> 
> Don't know - will see what I can find.

This one is more of a stretch, but... Grewe lists "seito" (also spelled 
"xeyto" as a synonym of "aladroc", which is Catalan for anchovy 
(Engraulis encrasicholus).  This is confirmed by the second website 
listed below.  However, I do not know fish well enough to know if the 
anchovy matches Nola's description.

Here are the websites I mentioned, which have some lists of Catalan 
food terminology.  They are modern, but may still be of help:

http://www.uib.es/secc6/slg/gt/noms_peixos.html
http://www.gencat.es/dict/serveis/servling/alimenta.htm

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)


Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 13:46:54 -0500
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: Gefilte fish (was Re: [Sca-cooks] Jewish Haiku)

>I asked the SCA-Judaica list the same question and some people said that
>"jewish" recipes were just kosher versions of country-of-origin recipes,
>which I tend to agree with.
>
>From what I read about gefillte fish along the way all these years, it seems
>that gefillte fish came about for the Jews as a way to have a fish dish on
>the Sabbath when no cooking was allowed and also to "dress up" the taste of
>what was basicly considered trash fish. (although this last idea could be
>mainly 19th C thinking)
>Phillipa

Certainly it would make sense. Not only is it fairly labor-intensive,
so it should be made in advance for holiday use, but it keeps quite
well, also, so it _can_ be made in advance, even in the days before
artificial refrigeration.

As for the trash fish question, that may even be a 20th-century
concept. In general modern people are not only pathologically afraid
of bones, but utterly ignorant of how to deal with them if they end
up on your plate. Carp were being raised in Germany and elsewhere in
vivaria in the Middle Ages, which, assuming they were more than just
ornamental fish, would support the idea that they were actually
preferred, for various reasons. There are a number of classic dishes
in Eastern European cuisines (not to mention China) where it seems to
be sort of assumed that carp is the fish you'll use (note that pike,
another popular gefilte-fish candidate, is another fish with a lot
of, and somewhat oddly-placed, bones -- you get five oddly-shaped
boneless fillets off a pike if you do it right, as opposed to two off
most other fish). This may be because the dishes evolved in places
where carp were prevalent, but what is clear is that the prep and
cooking methods frequently seem to take carp's boniness and gaminess
into account: there's frequently very specific boning, trimming, or
marination instructions, sometimes a long cooking to dissolve bones,
etc. But none of them seem to say, take this kind of fish, or, if you
can't get anything better, use a carp.

Adamantius, who likes gefilte fish made from walleye, a.k.a. yellow
pike, which is actually a perch


Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 10:11:41 +0200
From: Ides Boone <iboone at africamuseum.be>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] fish consumption

I am working as an archaeozoologist in Belgium. I had to study sieved
samples with faunal material from Medieval and Post-Medieval sites from
Namur (Belgium). This material consists mainly of freshwater fish and a
low proportion of marine fish. Some of the fresh water fish that I
identified aren't very popular nowadays.

The species present in the material are: strurgeon, eel, trout,
grayling, pike, carp, perch, catfish = still eaten now in Belgium.
But also a lot of Cyprinids such as: bream, barbel, nose, gudgeon, chub,
ide, dace, minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus), bitterling (Rhodeus sericaeus),
roach, rudd.
Also, I found  (almost in equal qunantity as the Cyprinids)a lot bones
of the stone loach (Noemaceilus barbatulus), Stickelbacks and Miller's
thumb (Cottus gobio).

In general most of the fish are small-sized, usually 10-15 sm for the
cyprinids.
I am very much interested how these species were eaten: fried, in a
soup,... Is there anyone who has some information about it or knows some
old medieval fishrecipees?

Thanks a lot,
Ides (Belgium)


Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 06:36:42 -0400
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
From: "Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kippers and Toad-in-the-hole

Also sprach taffy at netspace.net.au:
> I beleive Kippers are herrings or Mackrel that have been Kippered (A  
> type of cooking)
>
> Kipper fillets that we get here in Lochac are about 8-12 inches long  
> and 3-4 inches wide
>
> Dafydd
> (Lochac)

Kippering is a salting-and-cold-smoking process; the default fish,
when you say, "Kippers," is herring, split (IIRC) up the belly side,
cut past the rib bones along one side of the spine, and the fish
opened up like a book. The fish are tied together in pairs by the
tails, then hung over a stick in the smokehouse. 8-12 inches long is
about right, and I think the width above is the result of that
splitting/opening process.

I'd be very curious, if someone has access to an OED, as to the
origin of the name; it occurs to me that Norwegian klippfisk are also
split that way. Do you get actual fillets in Lochac? That's something
we usually don't see in the U.S.; we get the split, headless fish
(usually from Scotland, I think) in cryovac plastic, and various
canned/tinned products (usually rather inexpertly skinned and
filleted).

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 07:35:00 -0400
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kippers and Toad-in-the-hole

"Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius" wrote: snipped
>I'd be very curious, if someone has access to an OED, as to the
> origin of the name; it occurs to me that Norwegian klippfisk are also
> split that way. Adamantius

OED indicates that kipper comes from:
A name given to the male salmon (or sea trout) during the spawning season. (The
female is then called a shedder.) dates back 1000 AD.
1533-4 Act 25 Hen. VIII, c. 7 That no maner of persone or persones..frome the
feaste of the exaltation of the holy crosse to the feaste of Seynt martyn in
wynter..kyll or distroye any Salmons not in season called kepper Salmons.
1558 Act 1 Eliz. c. 17 1 Any Salmons or Trouts, not being in Season, being
Kepper-Salmons or Kepper-Trouts, Shedder-Salmons or Shedder-Trouts.

Preparing a fish-- goes to the 1300's-- with some doubt being expressed--
A kippered fish (salmon, herring, etc.); now esp. a herring so cured:  
see kipper
v.
(It is doubtful whether the quots. from the Durham Acc. Rolls belong here; they
may relate to the fish in sense 1, without reference to any particular mode of
preparation.)

1326 Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees) 15 In 11 Kypres emp., 3s. 4d.
1340 Durham Acc. Rolls 37 In 6 kypres emp. et 1 salmone salso, 2s. 2d.

Kippered as a verb seems to be 18th.

Johnnae llyn Lewis


From: "Darren Gasser" <kaos at earthlink.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kippers and Toad-in-the-hole
Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 10:04:03 -0700

johnna holloway wrote:
> OED indicates that kipper comes from:
> A name given to the male salmon (or sea trout) during the spawning
> season. (The female is then called a shedder.)

Other sources indicate that the term originated as a color description, 
Not a culinary one.  From The American Heritage, for example:

"Middle English kipre, from Old English cypera, spawning male salmon,
probably from cyperen, of copper, from coper, copper (because of the 
fish's color during the spawning season)."

-Lorenz


Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 14:08:04 -0400
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kippers and Toad-in-the-hole

The new Middle English Dictionary that is being
compiled states:

kipre (n.) Also kiper, kippre.[?OE cypera]
(a) The male salmon or sea trout during the spawning season; ?also the female
during the same season; (b) ?the salmon, sea trout, and possibly other fish
which have been cured by salting and smoking.
selected quotes are
(a)  (1376) RParl.  2.331b:  Qe null Salmon soit pris en Tamise entre
Graveshend & le Pount de Henlee sur Tamise en temps q'il soit kiper: C'est
assavoir, entre les Festes de l'Invention del Crois & le Epiphanie.
(b)  (1326) Acc.R.Dur.in Sur.Soc.99   15:  Month 3, week 3, In 11 Kypres emp.,
3 s. 4 d.  (1333-4) Acc.R.Dur.in Sur.Soc.99   19:  In j salmone, playces, et
lopsters, et iij kyppres salsis, iij s. viij d.

No mention of color---

Copper as a color seems to come from copred (ppl.)[From cper copper.]
?Copper-colored.
a1500 Weights in RHS ser.3.41 (Vsp E.9)   18:  By this weyght ys sold 
copred and grey wax.

What source note is American Heritage giving for their entry?
Were they really copper-colored during spawning or are they 
copper-colored after being prepared by drying and salting?

Johnnae llyn Lewis


From: "Darren Gasser" <kaos at earthlink.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kippers and Toad-in-the-hole
Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 11:31:44 -0700

johnna holloway wrote:
> What source note is American Heritage giving for their entry?
> Were they really copper-colored during spawning or are they
> copper-colored after being prepared by drying and salting?

They don't give a source, unfortunately.  They, Merriam-Webster, and
etymonline.com all connect the use of 'cypera' to 'cyperen' to 'coper,' and attribute this to the fishes' color in spawning season, but don't give a source for this connection.

To confuse it further, Walter Skeat says cypera derives from the Old English 'kippian,' ("to spawn").  I'll have to see if he has a source.

Silly Anglo-Saxons, always with the confused etymology.  Sigh.

-Lorenz


Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 19:49:26 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Tench
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

On Friday, June 27, 2003, at 05:56  PM, Patrick Levesque wrote:
> As I'm not much of a fisherman, and an infrequent eater of fish...
>
> ...Where is tench generally found, and, in terms of taste, what fish
> does it more closely ressemble?

The Larousse Gastronomique says it's a small freshwater fish with small
scales and whiskers or barbels on either side of its mouth. It
apparently has a firm, sweet, white meat, so it is probably comparable
to something like perch, but with a gelatinous quality similar to the
texture of cod-- if that helps.

In medieval English recipes it seems frequently to be partnered with
pike, as in, "take luces and tenches", which supports the idea of a
firm, sweet, white meat, as does its frequent presence in aigredouce
recipes.

You might look at:
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/walton/angler/chapter11.html

which quotes Izaak Walton's chapter on the tench.

Adamantius


Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 23:51:53 -0500
From: Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Tench
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Tench (Tinca tinca) is Euraian, but since the Latin "tinca" is believed to
be of Celtic origin, I'd say it was fairly common in Western Europe.  
IIRC, it is similar to carp in taste and texture, but it is definitely a 
Different species.

Bear

> As I'm not much of a fisherman, ad an infrequent eater of fish...
>
> ...Where is tench generally found, and, in terms of taste, what fish 
> does it more closely ressemble?
>
> Petru


Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 17:34:12 +1100 (EST)
From: tracey sawyer <tfsawyer at yahoo.com.au>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 6, Issue 11
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

Anybody who's actually served fish at a feast care to comment?
Margaret

*** I absolutely LOVE fish and seafood so I always include it at a  
fest if possible -- also some vegetarians will eat fish when they  
won't eat red meat.  I did a cold pickled fish dish at the Benevolence  
crusade which was delicious.  HM King Alaric sent the seneschal out to  
the kitchen on purpose to praise my fish.  t's an easy recipe.

Soused Mackerel
(The Magpie History of Food  [Tertiary Source])
I can get the publishing details if anyone wants me to.

Ingredients:

2 large mackerel, filleted (or other white fish fillets in season ...  
this is what I usually us).

1 large onion
1 medium cooking apple
1 t/spoon pickling spices
1 t/spoon soft brown sugar
2 bay leaves
150 ml water
1/2 t/spoon salt
1 t/spoon ground mixed spice
150 ml vinegar

Method:

Peel and slice onion.

Peel and chop apples into narow wedges.

Roll each fish fillet around an apple slice, with the skin side  
outside, place the rolls close together in a smallish casserole dish so  
that they will not unroll.

Put the remaining apple slices and onion rings into the casserole dish.

Mi together the rest of the ingredients and pour over the fish. Cook  
in a pre-heated, cool oven (150º Celsius, Gas Mark 2) for 1 hour.

I then chilled it overnight and served it cold in it's jelly.

Also, Bowen and Thomasina Freeborn, both chefs, qute often do a salmon  
mousse in a fish shaped mould which is kind of like a soft pink melt in  
your mouth dish which doesnt really taste "fishy".  Quite delicious!.

And living on the Murray River (between NSW & Vic Australia) we have  
trout which the ocal trout farm smokes.  Pick it off the bones and eat  
as is... mmmmm...

These dishes always disappear as soon as they are served....

Lady Lowry ferch Gwynwynwyn ap Llewelyn   mka: Tracey Sawyer


Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 10:44:11 -0500
From: "Jane Massey" <dylansmom at cox.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Fish at feasts
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

I live in an area that has a big seafood industry, so it is surprising  
that we don't often serve the stuff. People on whole generally try to  
steer away from seafood. Seafood is one of those things that if not  
handled properly, can make people sick (namely shrimp).  I love seafood  
but I have gotten food poisoning twice from eating it.  I also don't  
cook it at home because my husband is deathly allergic to shellfish  
because of the iodine. I love the stuff and could eat it everyday.

As for serving seafood at feasts, I have had luck with serving both  
salmon and perch in the past. Hot smoked salmon makes a great appetizer  
dish and people tend to like it better than whole baked fish. I would  
steer clear away from bony fishes, though grilling them tends to make  
the meat fall off the bone easier.

If you want to take some of the "fishy" taste out of your fish. Soak  
your fillets for 2 to 5 hours in milk and tabasco. It helps  
tremendously. I've only done this with whitefish because that's what I  
tend to get.

There is also a recipe in John Murrell's, A Booke of Cookerie (A Little  
OOP), for Stewed Flounder. I've done the recipe twice for feasts and it  
always gets eaten up.

1 1/4 lbs of medium Flounder Fillets (Perch and Sole and good too!)
4 Tablespoons of Butter
1 Cup of very thin sliced onions (I like the Red ones or Vidalia)
1 cup of White Wine Vinegar
1 cup of minced Parsley
salt to taste
1 tsp of mace
1/2 tsp Crushed Rosemary

You can either boil it in a pot. But for feast, we use disposable  
baking pans. Layer the fish and add all ingredients, cover tightly with  
foil. This is easy way to poach a large amount of fish at one time. It  
takes about 30-40 minutes to bake at 400 degrees.

If you are looking for other seafood type dishes that might go over  
well. I know that a member of our cook's guild has found a period  
recipe for crawfish. Basically a cheese and crawfish pie. Very yummy. I  
have to get the recipe from him! He's serving it at a feast in the  
spring, can't wait.

Lady Lavender de Morten
Barony of Tir-y-Don, Atlantia


Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 23:35:51 -0700
From: James Prescott <prescotj at telusplanet.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] period shark, skate etc. recipes?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> Do we have any recipes or other indication that the medieval folks ate 
> shark, skate or other similar fish? Since they show little evidence of 
> shying away from most sources of food I doubt they did here. But they 
> may not have tried to specifically catch these fish, either.

Sure.

Viandier (c. 1395) has two recipes for dogfish (a kind of shark) and
one for ray.

Ouverture (1604) has six recipes for dogfish.

Thorvald


Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 21:14:30 -0400
From: "Mairi Ceilidh" jjterlouw at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Fish equivalents?
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Master Cariadoc asked:
> We are going to be doing a recipe at tomorrow's cooking workshop
> which calls for luce,  tench, or haddock. Neither Elizabeth nor I
> does much fish cooking, and we were wondering, if none of those is
> available, what other sorts of fish are likely to be similar.
> Suggestions?

My preference would be hake or groper filets.  Both are fairly firm white
fish with mild flavors.  Very conducive to most period recipes I've 
tried.

Mairi Ceilidh


Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 21:18:42 EDT
From: KazOSheaaol.com
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Fish equivalents?
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

ddfr at daviddfriedman.com writes:
> luce,  tench, or haddock

Tench is in the carp family, haddock is in the cod family and I cannot 
find a cross for luce.

So if you can find carp or cod you should be good.

Iago


Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 0:34:11 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Fish equivalents?
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

I believe you will find luce is also hake.  Hake and haddock are related to
cod, so cod fillets would probably suffice.  Tench is a member of the family
Cyprinidea and is related to carp.

Bear


Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 22:48:21 -0400
From: "a5foil" <a5foil at ix.netcom.com>
Sbject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Fish equivalents?
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Greetings from Thomas Longshanks,

Luce is pickerel, a freswater predatory game fish related to Pike.  Flaky
white flesh, moderately firm texture, slightly sweet. Most recipes I've seen
suggest whitefish as a substitute. If I had access to freshwater game fish
at the fish monger's, I'd go with freshwater bass of any variety as a
substitute, but whitefish will do.

Tench is allied with the carp. A freshwater bottom feeder. Very bony.  Sweet
flesh. Similar diet and environment to catfish. Carp will be the best
substitute for texture and flavor. In the absence o carp, since Easter is
long past, you might try catfish (well-skinned with no muddy fat) for
similar flavor, if not texture.

Haddock should be available frozen, if not fresh. Cod is the best substitute
for texture. Pollock and Whiting are more watery but in the same family.
All would be acceptable substitutes. I'd go with cod loins, if you can't
find haddock, then pollock, then whiting.


Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 13:38:31 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Batter frying--the origin of fish and chips?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

David Friedman wrote:
> I recently got into an exchange on a newsgroup, growing in part out of
> a webbed piece about the origin of fish and chips. That got me curious
> about how early the technique used for the fish--dip in batter and
> deep fry--appears. Can anyone think of examples, for fish or even for
> other things, in the period corpus? The closest that occurred to me
> was fritters--but it isn't clear to me if they were deep fried, and I
> don't think any of them were fish.
>
> The webbed piece was:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3380151.stm

There's a paper  in the Oxford Symposium on Fish
on Fish and Chips and their development. Nothing therein
mentions Jewish traditions for the fish frying.
Wilson mentions the fried fish in her fish chapter in Food and Drink in Britain
and cites PNB or A Proper Newe Book of Cookery.
The online edition of that which is the Frere version which would be 1557-58
http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~gloning/bookecok.htm
Soles or any other fyshes fryed.
appears in the second course of a fish day menu.

The recipe for A Pyke sauce for a Pyke, Breme, Perche, Roche, Carpe,
Eles, Floykes and almaner of brouke fyshe.

ends with
And also yf you wyll
frye them, you muste take a good quantitie of
persely, after the fyshe is fryed, put in the
persely into the fryinge panne, and let it frye
in the butter and take it up and put it on the
fryed fyshe, and frye place, whyttinge and
suche other fyshe, excepte Eles, freshe Salmon,
Conger, which be never fryed but baken, boyled,
roosted or sodden.

But this seems to indicate pan frying in butter, not deep frying.

Johnnae


Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 14:02:26 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Batter frying--the origin of fish and chips?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Quickly checking Davidson's entry on Fish and Chips
in the Oxford Companion, he mentions that Claudia Roden
in 1996 (The Book of Jewish Food)  ties the Jewish
tradition of frying fish in batter and eating them cold as
a possible source.  I suppose Roden is the next place to look.
It would have been a logical place for Professor Panikos Panayi of
Leicester's De Montfort University as mentioned in the article to have looked.

Johnnae


Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:10:52 -0800
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Fish with Tahini
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

Tonight i cooked
Samak Maqlu bil-Khall wal-Tahiha
Fried Fish with Vinegar and Tahini

from The Book of the Description of Familiar Foods
p. 390 in Medieval Arab Cookery
translated by Charles Perry

Take salted or fresh fish, then wash it well and dry it, and cut it
up medium and fry in sesame oil. Throw a little dry coriander on it.
Then take as much vinegar and tahineh as needed and dissolve it until
mixed; you moisten it with vinegar little by little until it has the
desired consistency. Season it, and if you wish, put in a little
ground mustard and nuts, or [nuts]without mustard. Then take it from
the pan hot, and first put sesame oil in the pan, and coriander and
milled Chinese cinnamon, and it is eaten.

So...
At the marvelous Berkeley Bowl, i bought a flounder fillet. I assume
that originally one took a whole fish and cut it up, but there's just
me to cook for. I would rather have had fish cut in a "steak", but
everything they had was filleted, so what could i do?

Ingredients
fish
sesame oil
ground coriander seed
white wine vinegar
tahini
powdered mustard
salt
fresh cilantro
Chinese cinnamon

Before i started cooking i made the sauce. I first mixed mustard
powder and some salt into the white wine vinegar. Then i mixed the
tahini with the vinegar and some water, because in my experience,
tahini gets thick and hard to manage unless a bit more non-oily
liquid is added. Then I broke in some walnut pieces. The sauce had
the consistency, more or less, of mayonnaise, a bit lighter and
fluffier (ok that sounds weird, but well...).

Then i heated the sesame oil in a cast iron pan. When it was hot, i
put in the fillet, cutting it in half lengthwise, and then crosswise
into several pieces. I sprinkled the up side with ground coriander
seed. When it seemed one side was cooked, i turned over the fish, and
sprinkled the now cooked side with ground coriander.

While the fish was cooking, I put some of the tahini sauce in my dish.

I don't know how well cooked they liked their fish. Steaks could have
been browned a bit on the outside and still have been moist on the
inside. I like my fish still a bit moist, so i took it out of the pan
before it got too dry. It certainly wasn't the least bit browned.

I put the fish on sauce, then topped it with a bit more sauce. I
sprinkled it with shredded cilantro. I am embarrassed to say i
couldn't find my jar of ground cinnamon. Sigh. I know i'll find it in
the morning.

It was ok. First, I put a bit too much sauce in my dish. Second, the
sauce could have been more highly spiced, although i had just the
right amount of vinegar. It was not exciting, but it was ok.

Now I will look at some modern "Middle Eastern" recipes for fish with
tahini sauce and see how they differ.

Tomorrow, i cook the layered vegetable dish, Maghmuma...
-- 
Urtatim, formerly Anahita


Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 18:36:38 EDT
From: Devra at aol.com
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re Daniel's Fish Story
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

         From Pleyn Delit, first edition, redacted from Forme of Curye...
Take Makerels and smyte hem on pecys; cast hem on water and verious; seep hem
with myntes and with oother erbes; color it greene or yelow, and mess it
forth.

      2-3 mackerel, amounting to at least 2 lb fish
      1 C water, Salted
      1/4 C vinegar (white has least dis-coloring effect - but I like cider)
      4 large sprigs parsley and 3 or so of fresh mint (if dried mint, ca 1T)
      3-4 scallions or green onions

Mackerel should be cleaned and the head removed (if desired).  Either leave
fish whole or cut into pieces (ca 2 in long).  Put into cooking pot with
scallions, mint and 3 parsley sprigs; pour salted water and vinegar over and bring to a simmer. Cook gently for 15-20 minutes (depending on size.) Remove  
fish to a serving dish, sprinkle with remaining parsley, finely minced, and  
pour some of the cooking liquid, strained, over it. (Or use sorrell, minced, or  
ground with salt, in place of parsley, for the sauce - this is specifically  
prescribed in the slightly later version.)

However, I like to serve it with the cooked greens, which I really like. (You
can cut them into 2 inch lengths.)

Interesting - I hadn't reread the original version in a long time; didn't
realise that it called for verjuice rather than vinegar. So maybe using the cider vinegar isn't all that far off.

Anyway, it's very tasty.
      Devra

Devra Langsam
www.poisonpenpress.com


Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 20:37:48 -0400
From: Robin Carroll-Mann <rcmann4 at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Spanish Mackerel
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Daniel Phelps wrote:
>  I'm thinking about stuffing smaller ones per Beard in the future.
>  Anyone have any alternative period suggestions.

Well... how about a Spanish recipe?

217.    CHUB MACKEREL
BISOLES EN CAZUELA

"Open the mackerel, and having well-cleaned and washed them, take all
common spices, and all the herbs except
marjoram.  Then take raisins, and almonds, and pine nuts, and toasted
hazelnuts, and all this together with the herbs; and
with the other things, put it in the casserole with a little oil; and
when the mackerel are half cooked, take a few
hazelnuts and new raisins cleaned of their seeds, and grind it all
together, and let it go into the casserole; and if you wish
to cook them in another manner, such as roasted, you must cook them in
the same manner as the sardines; and doing it
in that manner, you cannot err."

The instructions for roasting sardines are:

"...and if you want to eat them roasted, they should be eaten with
orange juice, and oil, and salt, and a little water, and pepper, and all
the herbs except moraduj which is marjoram, which is also called  
malgilana."

Ruperto de Nola, Libro de Cozina (Spanish, 1529)
Translation by Brighid ni Chiarain (Robin Carroll-Mann)
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MANUSCRIPTS/Guisados2-art.text
-- 
Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom


Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 05:34:47 -0800 (PST)
From: Sandra Jakl <kieralady2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Dutch paintings  to rays to fish types in Rumpolt
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

>>>
Likewise one painting
had what looked like ray-type fishes displayed. Were
rays eaten and has anyone seen a recipe?

Renata ::Dusting off my Art History degree::
<<<

I was working on a listing of the types of fish that
Rumpolt has recipes for. I'm at work at the moment,
without the book, so I don't know remember there was a
woodcut image or not, but something either looked like
or translated to a type of ray.

Rochen -skate / stingray?

Best Regards,
Clara von Ulm

Here is my in-progress list for those interested.
Please note I haven't error checked it yet.

Aal - eel
Austern - shellfish (mussel/clam types)
barben
Bersig
Biscorn
Bu:cking
Cabellaw
Capelungen
Capoditzen / Meerspinnen - sea spiders
Cerdeli
Dieck
Esch
Foren / Forellen
Fro:schen - frogs
Grundel
Hausen
Hecht - pike
Hering - herring
Huechen
Iunnen Hechten - ?? pike
Ka:rpelein
Karauschten
Karpffen - carp
Koppen
Krebssen Lobster/crabs
Kressen
Lampreten
Lauben
MeerGrillen / Gambarn - sea crickets
Meerzungen - sea tongues
Muscheln - shellfish of some type
Nasen
Nerffling
Neunaugen - NIne-eyes?
Pfrillen
Plateissen
Polch
Puttes
Rencken
Rheinfisch
Rochen -skate / stingray?
Rot Euglein
Rutten
Sa:lmling
Salmen
Sangel
Schaiden
Schied
Schildtro:ten - tortoise
Schleyen
Schnecken - snails
Schretzel
schwartzen Muscheln - black shells
Steinbeisser
Sto:ren
Stockfisch
Unbiess
Weiss Foren
Zindel
Zwilling


Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 07:53:12 -0800 (PST)
From: "Cat ." <tgrcat2001 at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Rumpolt fishes
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

>>>
I was working on a listing of the types of fish that
Rumpolt has recipes for. I'm at work at the moment,
without the book, so I don't know remember there was a
woodcut image or not, but something either looked like
or translated to a type of ray.
<<<

Here is a quick and dirty translation of the listing
you gave.  Please note it is QUICK, DIRTY and if there
is any doubt assume Im erring toward modern (they may
well have been soemthing else in period, but at the
moment Im too swamped to hunt, so feel free to take
Thomas or someone elses opinon.)

I put the Gwen Cat translation (if I had one) in
front.

In Service and hoping NOT to be steppign on any toes
or repeating what has already been done (am on digest)

Gwen Cat

Rochen is a ray in general though it may be a stech
rochen which is the modern for stingray

eel  - Aal - eel
oyster  - Austern - shellfish (mussel/clam types)
barben
Bersig
Biscorn
kipper  - Bu:cking
cod (codfish)  - Cabellaw
Capelungen
Capoditzen / Meerspinnen - sea spiders
Cerdeli
Dieck
Esch
trout  - Foren / Forellen
frogs  - Fro:schen - frogs
common gudgeon (Gobio gobio)  - Grundel
sturgeon  - Hausen
pike   - Hecht - pike
herring  - Hering - herring
Huechen
pickerell aka young pike?) - Iunnen Hechten - ?? pike
possibley little carp  - Ka:rpelein
Karauschten
carp  - Karpffen - carp
Koppen
crabs (also lobsters) Krebssen Lobster/crabs
Kressen
possibly lamprey-eel  - Lampreten
Lauben
shrimp  - MeerGrillen / Gambarn - sea crickets
sea toungue  - Meerzungen - sea tongues
shellfish (including scallops)  - Muscheln - shellfish
of some type
noses???  - Nasen
Nerffling
nine eyes (lamprey)  - Neunaugen - NIne-eyes?
Pfrillen
flat iron (another flat fish no clue) Plateissen
Polch
Puttes
Rencken
perhaps fish from the Rhine?)  - Rheinfisch
ray (in general)  - Rochen -skate / stingray?
red little eye (no clue) Rot Euglein
Rutten
salmon  - Sa:lmling
(not sure salmon plural?) -  salmen
Sangel
Schaiden
Schied
tortoise/turtle  - Schildtro:ten - tortoise
tink  (Tinca tinca )  - Schleyen
snails  - Schnecken - snails
Schretzel
black shells  - schwartzen Muscheln - black shells
turbot  - Steinbeisser
Sto:ren
stockfish (so it says)  - Stockfisch
Unbiess
white trout  - Weiss Foren
Zindel
literally twin  - Zwilling


Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 22:22:08 -0400
From: Elaine Koogler <ekoogler1 at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Introduction and a Request
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Irene leNoir wrote:
> * A couple of people have mentioned fish dishes.  I appreciate you
> thinking of them, but I think I'm going to have to pass on all fish.
> (First, much as I love seafood, I'm just not sure how well it will fly
> with my household of mostly fighter types.  Second, being from
> practically the coast of Massachusetts, I'm not too keen on the idea
> of what the quality of fish in oh-so-very landlocked Pennsylvania will
> be like.)

Actually, Pennsylvania isn't that land-locked...and in this day of
modern refrigeration, etc., you should be able to get quite a good
assortment of fresh fish there.  Just find a store that specializes in
seafood...a real fishmonger...and you should be fine if you want to try
something with fish.  And there are fish that are reasonably priced that
a lot of people like.  I served tuna with a simple orange sauce at a
Mediterranean event a couple of years ago, and it was a howling success.
This is the recipe I used...It's actually Spanish, but again, it's
simple enough that something similar may have been done in southern
France as well:

Libro de Cozina/ of Master Ruperto de Nola*, translated by Vincent F.
Cuenca

Grilled Tuna

Take a piece of tuna from the part near the belly and clean it; and
baste it with oil, and brush also the grill and set it to roast over a
few coals; and baste them from time to time with oil and then prepare
its light sauce with water and salt and oil, and bitter orange juice and
pepper and all the good herbs torn up or chopped fine:  and when they
wish to eat place our fish on the plate and pour the sauce over it; and
if you wish to make another sauce, like for arugula or another it should
be as you wish.
10 # Tuna
Olive Oil
Salt
Bitter orange juice (thin oj with white wine vinegar or I managed to
find a bitter orange marinade in the Spanish section of a local grocery
store...)
Pepper
Tarragon, chopped fine
Cilantro, chopped fine

Brush tuna steaks with olive oil, then grill, basting from time to time
with oil.

Sauce:
Mix oil, water, salt, orange juice, white wine vinegar, pepper, tarragon
and cilantro.  Serve on the side with tuna steaks.

Kiri


Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:16:03 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"
	<adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] A pleasant Italian Fish recipe
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

>   Duriel

>   This is the way Italians love fresh fish—simply poached and
> served warm with a little good olive oil and fresh lemon. The
> secret is in careful attention to the quality of each element.
> Poach the freshest fish, drizzle each piece with olive oil you want
> to eat from a spoon. Squeeze fresh lemon over the fish and dust
> with salt and pepper.

Sounds lovely. A reasonably similar poached fish recipe from Harleian
MS 4016:

> Perche boiled. ¶ Take a perche, and drawe him in þe throte, and
> make to him sauce of water and salt; And whan hit bigynnet to
> boile, skeme hit and caste þe perche there-in, and set him; and
> take him vppe, and pul him, and serue him fort colde, and cast
> vppon him foiles of parcelly. and þe sauce is vinegre or vergeous.
> (Note: Douce MS. vert sauce.)

I'll bet some of that white balsamic vinegar would make a lovely
dipping sauce for a firm chunk of sweet white fish...

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 16:50:52 -0800
From: "Ian Kusz" <sprucebranch at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Shrimp sauce
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

How about this from another apocryphal source?  It's from the site Gode
Cookery (godecookery.com)....and the source author didn't provide any
documentation, either....the source author being the guy who wrote  
the book they got the recipe from....

*This is a fresh fish soup, which is improved by having as many different
varieties of fish as possible. You can make it with salt or fresh water
fish, but you will need at least 3 or 4 varieties for the best results.*

    - *1 cup scallions or leeks, sliced*
    - *1/2 cup olive oil*
    - *1/2 stalk fennel, sliced*
    - *3 sprigs of parsley*
    - *1 bay leaf*
    - *1 tsp thyme*
    - *2 cup dry white wine*
    - *4 cups water*
    - *4 pounds of fish (3 or 4 different types)*
    - *1 pound shrimp*
    - *1 pound mussels or scallops in the shell (well scrubbed)*
    - *thick slices of home made bread*

*Saute onions in oil until soft. Add fennel, herbs, wine and water and bring
to a boil. Season with salt and simmer for 45 minutes. Pour stock through a
sieve and squeeze out the juice from the vegetables and discard the fibers.
Return to the pot and bring to a boil. (For a richer stock, ask the
fishseller for the heads and bones from your fish and add them to the water
for the initial boiling. Remove when you strain out the vegetables. Or you
could add a bottle of clam juice instead of some of the water).  Lightly salt
the fish and let stand for 10 minutes, then rinse and lower into the boiling
liquid. Lower heat and simmer 10 minutes. Add shrimp and scallops or mussels
and simmer an additional 10 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings.  Toast
the bread slices and place them in large soup plates or bowls. Place a
variety of fish and some of the broth in each dish. You may also serve
the Avgolemono Sauce <http://www.godecookery.com/byznrec/byznrec.htm#Avgo> with this.*


Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 15:20:32 -0500 (EST)
From: Christiane <christianetrue at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Scapece, samak musakbaj ... just something I came
	across
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org

Awhile ago, the food writer Charles Perry had told me that the samak  
musakbaj in the Baghdad Cookery Book and scapece alla Vastese, a  
preserved fish dish from Abruzzo, were virtually identical. I had  
wondered how this dish got to Abruzzo; after reading a book about the  
Muslim colony of Lucera, it became apparent. When the colony was  
destroyed in 1300, a large chunk of the enslaved inhabitants were  
sent to Abruzzo. Some of the inhabitants of Lucera also beat feet to  
Abruzzo before the going got bad.

Frederick II also liked scapece; while at the Colloquium of Foggia in  
March 1240, he ordered the cook there to make him "askipeciam et  
gelatinum." So, pickled fish in jelly? And early form of gefilte,  
maybe? ;-)

In an Italian review of Anna Martelloti's "I ricettari di Federico  
II" I found mention of another form of scapece from Puglia, which  
some recipes called "scapece alla Gallipoli." In this case, instead  
of large pieces of whitefish or hake, fried, and preserved in vinegar  
and saffron, the fish is small, whole "pupiddi" (any ideas on what  
these fish are most akin to, let me know), fried, and layered in  
grated bread soaked in vinegar and saffron, all packed into wooden  
tubs. The town of Gallipoli was conquered in 900 by the Muslims, but  
I don't think they held onto it very long.

I found some photos of scapece di Gallipoli:

http://www.mensamagazine.it/articolo.asp?id=854

http://www.laterradipuglia.it/italiano/secondipesce/ 
scapecedigallipoli.htm

I can't say that it looks attractive ... and I don't recall any  
recipes from the Baghdad Cookery Book where the fish is layered in  
grated bread soaked with vinegar and saffron. I'll have to look at  
the fish recipes in there again. If anyone knows of anything similar  
to this, please speak up!

Gianotta


Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:49:50 -0500
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Scapece, samak musakbaj ... just something I
	came across
To: Christiane <christianetrue at earthlink.net>,	Cooks within the SCA
	<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Jan 3, 2008, at 3:20 PM, Christiane wrote:
> Awhile ago, the food writer Charles Perry had told me that the samak
> musakbaj in the Baghdad Cookery Book and scapece alla Vastese, a
> preserved fish dish from Abruzzo, were virtually identical.

They seem pretty similar, and both similar to the many late-period,
early-post-period, and modern dishes known as escabeche, except those
tend to include onions fried in the oil used to fry the fish, also
submerged in the final pickle.

> I had wondered how this dish got to Abruzzo; after reading a book
> about the Muslim colony of Lucera, it became apparent. When the
> coloby was destroyed in 1300, a large chunk of the enslaved
> inhabitants were sent to Abruzzo. Some of the inhabitants of Lucera
> also beat feet to Abruzzo before the going got bad.
>
> Frederick II also liked scapece; while at the Colloquium of Foggia
> in March 1240, he ordered the cook there to make him "askipeciam et
> gelatinum." So, pickled fish in jelly? And early form of gefilte,
> maybe? ;-)

There's this interesting transposition of consonants we sometimes run
across in foods when translated between different languages, or
sometimes perhaps by scribal error, but for example, you've got cloves
gilofre, cloves girofle, and cloves gillyflower, which sometimes are,
and sometimes are not, the same thing (but they're generally either
the spice clove or the clove pink flower, and usually the former). I
believe I've seen a similar transposition between ascipium and aspic,
although at the moment I couldn't swear to it.

I guess it's conceivable that the modern term for a savory jelly of
meat, fish, or wine could be derived from askipeciam, it might also
simply sound similar and "askipeciam et gelitanum" could simply be an
unrelated jelly dish.

> In an Italian review of Anna Martelloti's "I ricettari di Federico
> II" I found mention of another form of scapece from Puglia, which
> some recipes called "scapece alla Gallipoli." In this case, instead
> of large pieces of whitefish or hake, fried, and preserved in
> vinegar and saffron, the fish is small, whole "pupiddi" (any ideas
> on what these fish are most akin to, let me know), fried, and
> layered in grated bread soaked in vinegar and saffron, all packed
> into wooden tubs. The town of Gallipoli was conquered in 900 by the
> Muslims, but I don't think they held onto it very long.

What we call whitefish in the US is a somewhat fatty, slightly
gelatinous lake fish with, as the name implies, a white flesh. Hake
are generally related to cod and whiting, somewhere between the two in
size. They show up in period sources as "codling", "ling", and "ling
cod". If you've eaten "scrod" in the Eastern US it was probably hake.
(If in the western US it was probably pollack.)

> I found some photos of scapece di Gallipoli:
>
> http://www.mensamagazine.it/articolo.asp?id=854
>
> http://www.laterradipuglia.it/italiano/secondipesce/ 
> scapecedigallipoli.htm
>
> I can't say that it looks attractive ... and I don't recall any
> recipes from the Baghdad Cookery Book where the fish is layered in
> grated bread soaked with vinegar and saffron.

The recipe in Al Baghdadi doesn't include bread, I believe. It's just
fish fried in sesame oil, spiced, and submerged in vinegar with celery
leaves, IIRC.

> I'll have to look at the fish recipes in there again. If anyone
> knows of anything similar to this, please speak up!

Nowadays you can find a lot of recipes for escabeche (and its
relative, ceviche) which are generally assumed to be Spanish in origin
(although this is looking to be incorrect). Very common in late-period
and early-post-period sources, and very popular because it could
travel well where fresh fish could not. You even find it in some
English sources with the name mangled in endearing fashion.

Adamantius


Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 18:46:35 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
From: Christiane <christianetrue at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Scapece,	samak musakbaj ... just something I
	came across
To: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>,
	Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Adamantius had said:
> There's this interesting transposition of consonants we sometimes run
> across in foods when translated between different languages, or
> sometimes perhaps by scribal error, but for example, you've got cloves
> gilofre, cloves girofle, and cloves gillyflower, which sometimes are,
> and sometimes are not, the same thing (but they're generally either
> the spice clove or the clove pink flower, and usually the former). I
> believe I've seen a similar transposition between ascipium and aspic,
> although at the moment I couldn't swear to it.

Actually, there was free-flowing transposition of words in Norman and  
Hohenstaufen Sicily in Southern Italy between Arabic, Greek, and  
Latin. The diwan documents analyzed by Jeremy Johns shows this. For  
example, there was a special tax imposed by the Muslim conquerors on  
non-Muslims (dhmimmi) called the jizya. In Norman Sicily, it was the  
Muslims who became the dhimmi, so to speak, and they had to pay the  
jizya ? which was transformed into "gesia" in Latin.

Another small example: one document refers to a Greek and his vendor  
wife Setelchousoun (at least that's how the Latin translated her  
name). In Arabic, it was, "Sitt al Husn," (Mistress of Beauty). She  
must have been a looker. Other names got transliterated too:  
Abderrachmen instead of Abd' al Achmen, for example.

The scribes did the best that they could do. Frederick's  
administrators mostly used Latin, but there were some documents still  
coming out in Arabic.

Gianotta


Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:24:30 +1300
From: Adele de Maisieres <ladyadele at paradise.net.nz>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Possibly the best thing I ever cooked
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Well, according to people who attended the feast, anyway.  The source is
Platina's _On Right Pleasure and Good Health_.

"Season fresh tuna with ground pepper, cinnamon, and coriander, onion
cooked and cut up, vinegar, honey, and oil. "(X.2)

For a sauce, I toasted coriander seeds in a pan and then crushed them
coarsely.  I combined roughly equal quantities of honey, olive oil, and
red wine vinegar and then stirred in the coriander.  I sprinkled tuna
steaks well with cinnamon and pepper and seared them with a little oil
in a fairly hot pan, leaving them somewhat pink in the centre.  To
serve, I sliced the steaks into strips and topped them with some sauteed
white onion and poured a little of the sauce over it.

Extra delicious with fennel salad.
-- 
Adele de Maisieres


Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:53:06 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Salt fish recipes?-- I.E. SALTED (preserved)
	fish
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

As Master A has already suggested there is also this one--
Searching under COD in medievalcookery.com

This is an excerpt from *Enseignements qui enseingnent a apareillier
toutes manieres de viandes*
(France, ca. 1300 - D. Myers, trans.)
The original source can be found at MedievalCookery.com
<http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/lessons.shtm>

Fresh cod should be cooked in well salted water and if you want to eat
with white aillie of garlic and almonds, temper with vinegar and fry in
oil. Salted with mustard.

The other versions listed are these:

COD (morue) is not spoken of in Tournay unless it is salt
<http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?lmdp:389> (Le
Menagier de Paris)

Codling and haddock
<http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?via:123> (Le Viandier
de Taillevent)

Codling or kelyng
<http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?nob:155> (A Noble
Boke off Cookry)

Fresh cod <http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?via:122>
(Le Viandier de Taillevent)

FRESH COD is prepared and cooked like gurnet with white wine in the
cooking <http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?lmdp:391> (Le
Menagier de Paris)

And also under COD  this one turns up:

This is an excerpt from *Le Menagier de Paris*
(France, 1393 - Janet Hinson, trans.)
The original source can be found at David Friedman's website
<http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/ 
Menagier.html>

STOCKFISH must be cut into square pieces like a chequerboard, then soak
for only one night, then take it out of the water, and put it to dry on
a cloth; then put your oil on to boil, then fry your pieces of fish in a
little oil, and eat with mustard or garlic sauce. Stockfish is made,
apparently, from cod.

Johnnae


Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:27:18 -0400
From: Daniel Myers <edoard at medievalcookery.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Salt fish recipes?-- I.E. SALTED (preserved)
	fish
To: dragon at crimson-dragon.com,	Cooks within the SCA
	<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Apr 30, 2008, at 8:10 PM, Dragon wrote:
> Just to clarify... (I know some of you know the difference but some
> may not).
>
> Both stockfish and salt cod are made from the same type of fish (usually
> Atlantic cod) that has been filleted and preserved but there is a big
> distinction between them in how they are processed and how you must
> treat them.
>
> Stockfish is cod that has been simply dried, sometimes it is done by
> hanging it under the sun and in the wind and sometimes it is done on racks
> over a very low wood fire. The fire is mainly to provide hot air but not
> to cook it or smoke it (though it will be a tad smokey if done this
> way).
>
> Salt cod is dried by salting. I know that sounds obvious but it is
> something quite significant.

I stand corrected.

A search on "salt fish" didn't turn up much that was useful (I've
fixed the search engine to cope with two search terms).  I took a
look though at Enseignements as Master A suggested and there are a
large number of recipes that follow the formula "Fresh {whatever} is
to be served {specified way} and salted with mustard."

-=-=-

From: "Enseignements qui enseingnent a apareillier toutes manieres de
viandes"
http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/lessons.shtm

The start of the of saltwater and freshwater fish -- Sturgeon is a
royal fish and should be cut into pieces, and then the pieces put
onto a spit and all the others likewise. And cook it in water if you
want to eat with hot pepper or with parsley, and with fennel and wine
sour. The salted with mustard.

Eels in pies. Item, salted eels, cooked in water, with mustard. All
freshwater fish which are cooked in water, are good with green sauce.
Salted with mustard.

Ray, dogfish, pike, brotele with white garlic. Salted with mustard.

Fresh mackerel is good in pies, sprinkled with a little pepper and a
little ground spices and salt. Item, roasted fresh mackerel is good
with cameline sauce, without garlic, with cinnamon and ginger,
tempered with sour wine. That which is cooked in water, eat with a
sauce made of pepper and cinnamon and ginger. Salted with mustard or
a wine sauce.

Fresh cod should be cooked in well salted water and if you want to
eat with white aillie of garlic and almonds, temper with vinegar and
fry in oil. Salted with mustard.

Fresh whiting with garlic, bread and mixed with verjuice of grain.
Salted with mustard.

Herring fresh and powdered with ail [ale? garlic sauce?]. Herring of
Gernemus with verjuice or with mustard. Fresh herring cooked in water
with hot pepper.

- Doc


Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 15:31:02 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks]  Best types of dried fish
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Have you seen Fish, Food from the Waters?
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/lane/kal69/shop/pages/isbn890.htm

Otherwise how about Harold McGee's on Food and Cooking?

Johnnae

Sharon Gordon wrote:
<<< Which types of dried fish do you think are the tastiest and the most 
useful?
Also, I'm trying to figure out the fresh fish to dried fish weight ratio.
So if I have an ounce of dried fish, how much fresh fish did that used to
be?  Or if I have a pound of fresh fish, how much dried fish will I have
when it's properly dried?  I have found once reference that says that 
70% of the water needs to be removed to dry the fish to preserve it,  but 
that just gives info on one of the variables.

Sharon >>>


Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:44:16 -0700
From: Susan Fox <selene at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] tilapia
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Tirloch wrote:
<<< What do people feel about using tilapia for an event fish?

I know it was around in biblical days and in the Roman and early Middle Ages
in some countries. >>>

I'm good with it.  It's called St. Peter's Fish and features in the 
Bible story of St. Peter catching this fish.  It may have been only 
introduced to the USA within most of our lifetimes but that's 
irrelevant, it's been in the Middle East all the time before that.

Selene


Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:47:09 -0600
From: "Kathleen A Roberts" <karobert at unm.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] tilapia
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Susan Fox <selene at earthlink.net> wrote:
<<< It may have been only introduced to the USA within
most of our lifetimes but that's irrelevant, it's been in 
the Middle East all the time before that. >>>

My experience with the whole fish is that it is very 
boney/stickery.  I can hear old mom intoning 'you'll choke 
on that thing!'

I would hazard the advice to use filets if possible for 
mass feedings.

cailte
lover of any fish


Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:05:22 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] tilapia
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Aug 1, 2008, at 4:44 PM, Susan Fox wrote:
<<<
Tirloch wrote:
> What do people feel about using tilapia for an event fish?

> I know it was around in biblical days and in the Roman and early  
> Middle Ages in some countries.

I'm good with it.  It's called St. Peter's Fish and features in the  
Bible story of St. Peter catching this fish.  It may have been only  
introduced to the USA within most of our lifetimes but that's  
irrelevant, it's been in the Middle East all the time before that. >>>

I've heard that story told of the John D'ory/Dory, too (or are they  
supposed to be the same thing?), but how can a fish in the Bible  
possibly be identified specifically by species with any degree of  
accuracy, with species coming and going either through extinction or  
migration, several layers of text translation, etc.?

Well, regardless, tilapia is easily analagous to a number of firm,  
white fish accessible to medieval Europeans; perch comes to mind; my  
argument for serving it at an SCA feast would be more about the fact  
that a cooked fillet of tilapia on a plate would not likely be seen as  
out-of-place to a medieval European, rather than the question of  
whether the tilapia was actually known, specifically, to them.

Hey, serve it to King John. Is he gonna say, "Away with this impostor  
and bring me a surfeit of lampreys and/or peaches," or is he gonna  
say, "Hey, cool, galantine of fyssche! My fave!" My guess is the latter.

Adamantius


Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 23:20:34 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] tilapia
To: <gmt53 at ravenstreet.org>,	"Cooks within the SCA"
	<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Tilapia are freshwater fish of east African origin that have spread 
apparently by themselves into the Middle East.  For our purposes, the 
natural range would be from the Nile to Syria.  In modern times, they have 
been widely imported as a staple animal for aquaculture.  The question to my 
mind is, where and when were they spread in period?

Bear


Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:28:42 -0400
From: "Elaine Koogler" <kiridono at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] fish, was kitchen tips
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

I got a really great price on tuna for a feast one time...oh, it was such
gorgeous tuna!!!  Couldn't bear to do too much to it, so we cut it up into
steaks, grilled it over charcoal and served it with a bitter orange sauce.
The recipe came from Martino, as translated by Vincent Cuenca (not sure if
he's still on this list but he used to be... Folks LOVED it...many said that
they didn't normally eat fish, but that this was totally different from
anything they had ever had.

The recipe as I used it follows:

*Libro de Cozina of Master Ruperto de Nola*, translated by Vincent F. Cuenca
Grilled Tuna

Take a piece of tuna from the part near the belly and clean it; and baste it
with oil, and brush also the grill and set it to roast over a few coals; and
baste them from time to time with oil and then prepare its light sauce with
water and salt and oil, and bitter orange juice and pepper and all the good
herbs torn up or chopped fine:  and when they wish to eat place our fish on
the plate and pour the sauce over it; and if you wish to make another sauce,
like for arugula or another it should be as you wish.

10 # Tuna
Olive Oil
Salt
Bitter orange juice (thin oj with white wine vinegar)
Pepper
Tarragon, chopped fine
Cilantro, chopped fine

Brush tuna steaks with olive oil, then grill, basting from time to time with
oil.

Sauce:

Mix oil, water, salt, orange juice, white wine vinegar, pepper, tarragon and
cilantro.  Serve on the side with tuna steaks.

Kiri


Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:41:38 -0500
From: "Kerri Martinsen" <kerrimart at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Fish at feasts
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

The sea bass I did back in April had figs, apples, ginger & pepper...

Stuffing for Fish (Neopolitan #79)  (pg 189)
Get ginger, saffron, figs and peeled apples and grind up everything
together; then get good pinenuts and crush them finely; then slice the
fish through its [ ] stuff the fish through its mouth ? first
carefully cleaning the mouth and pouring a drop of oil down it; then
set it on the grill with rosemary, and make a basting sauce for it of
vinegar, spices & saffron.

3/4 lb fish fillet (sea bass used)

1/2 t Ginger, fresh
4 threads saffron
4 mission figs
1/2 apple, grated
Salt & pepper
2 T pinenuts

2 T red wine vinegar
4 threads saffron
1/2 tsp powdered forte

1 sprig rosemary

Mix first column of ingredients together. Set aside. Mix vinegar &
remainder ingredients and warm slightly to steep saffron. Slice fillet
in half from the top. Put stuffing in the middle of filet. Baste with
more vinegar sauce. Lay Rosemary sprig on top of fish. Fold up
parchment to make an envelope.

Bake at 350F for 20 min, or until internal temp reaches 135F.

It was really, really good.

Vitha


Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:41:03 -0500
From: "Kingstaste" <kingstaste at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Raw Fish
To: "'Solveig Throndarottir'" <nostrand at acm.org>,	"'Cooks within the
	SCA'" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

That is equally true for many deep water oceanic fish.  State laws vary, but
one method for sashimi quality fish is to super-freeze it (quick freezers)
for a minimum of 15 hours before thawing and serving.  This serves to kill
parasites.  I have heard about restaurateurs taking melon ballers to scoop
out parasites after the freezing step.  Ick. 

Christianna

-----Original Message-----
Greetings from Solveig! As a rule of thumb, you should cook fresh  
water fish and not serve it truly raw. The problem with certain  
freshwater fish is that they can be infested with parasites which can  
infest humans.

Solveig Throndardottir


Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:07:29 -0500
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Deboning Fish
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Nov 25, 2008, at 2:37 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:
<<< Folks might also be interested in this article:

fish-cleaning-art (10K)  4/29/06    "Amra's Capsule of Cleaning, For  
Freshwater Fish, Intended for Beginners" by Amra.

I'm not sure how cleaning saltwater fish varies from this. This file  
is in the ANIMALS section of the Florilegium. >>>

In general, there's no difference between fresh and saltwater fish, a  
least no difference imparted by the salinity of habitat, and I think  
that's a good article.

There are, however, two or three, or maybe more, basic skeletal  
structures you're going to run across when dealing with fish. Luckily,  
most of what you're likely to see nowadays is a pretty basic cross- 
shaped cross-section, giving the diner two or four sections of  
boneless filet, depending on how it's done. A flatfish is generally  
the same as a round fish (I mean in cross-section, Stefan ;-) ), just  
with that roundish cross-section stretched into an ellipse or oblong  
diamond shape.

Then you've got some weird bone structures in fish like shad and pike;  
they don't follow that basic cross-shaped skeletal cross-section: both  
have those side pinbones that were mentioned in connection with salmon  
cleaning, but for some fish   like the two mentioned above those bones  
are shaped like the letter "Y", and in some cases there are two rows  
instead of one. In pike and their close relatives like muskellunge  
there's also an odd boneless section behind the head [spine and ribs,  
yes, but no vertical dorsal bones, so you cut horizontally along the  
spine for the length of the rib cage, until you get to the dorsal fin,  
and remove a rectangular flap like a hat from above the rib cage, then  
proceed to remove the rib meat as you normally would]. Behind the rib  
cage things are more "normal", but overall a pike is unusual in that  
it gives you five pieces of filleted meat.

For those that may be saying, well, I don't need to know this since  
I'm serving the fish whole, I can only say that the servers or people  
at the table might need to know how to dismantle the fish without  
giving each diner a mouthful of bones. In general it's unlikely that  
anybody's going to choke on a bone that's small enough and flexible  
enough not to be noticed while chewing, but it can make the experience  
of eating the fish less enjoyable.

Adamantius 



Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:37:36 -0400
From: "Euriol of Lothian" <euriol at ptd.net>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Grilled Tuna - recipe for my upcoming feast
To: "'Cooks within the SCA'" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

I?m currently in the process of planning a feast for the end of May that is
based on Spanish Recipes and testing recipes out of Ruperto de Nola's "Libre
del Coch"  and flipping through the pages of the book I saw a recipe for
Grilled Swordfish and Grilled Tuna. I thought to myself, I would like to
make one of these for my feast. So at the store yesterday I found some
frozen tuna steaks and thought I?d give the tunae recipe a go. Mind you, I
had only glanced at the recipes about two weeks ago and could not remember
any of the details. With tuna in hand and whatever was in my cabinet I
decided to cook it for dinner tonight. Rereading the recipes I saw that the
treatment of the sauce was very similar.

These translations are by Lady Brighid ni Chiarain as posted in Stefan's
Florilegium

189. Swordfish on the grill

EMPERADOR EN PARRILLAS

Cut the swordfish as if you were going to roast it, and remove everything
that is inside; and set it to roast on the grill, greasing it with oil,
little by little. Then make your light sauce which is orange juice, and
pepper, and oil, and salt, and a little water; and you will put all this in
a small pot, and when they want to eat, put it on a plate; and cast on the
said sauce with the other herbs: parsley, and mint, and marjoram.

209. Tunny on the grill

TO?INA EN PARRILLAS

Take from the tunny the part near the belly, well-cleaned, and grease it
with oil; and also grease the grill, and set [the tuna] to roast over a few
coals, and grease them from time to time with oil; and then make your thin
sauce with water, and salt, and oil, and orange juice, and pepper, and all
the good herbs shredded or cut small; and when they want to eat, put your
fish on the plate and cast that sauce on top; and if you wish to make
another sauce, such as arugula or another, let it be according to your
pleasure.

This is what I did:

1 lb. Tuna Steaks
Olive oil to baste
Salt and pepper to taste

(For the Sauce)

? cup orange juice (made from concentrate)
1 tbsp. lime juice
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. orange zest
? tsp. kosher salt
? tsp. grains of paradise (I have run out of black pepper in my house!)
1 tsp. Italian Herbs
1 tsp. dried parsley

First I put the ingredients for the sauce together in a small sauce pan and
let it reduce over a low heat while I prepared the tuna steaks. I lightly
oiled the tuna steaks with the olive oil and simply seasoned them on both
sides with salt and the little bit of pepper remaining in my pepper mill. I
cooked these in my George Foreman grill (which I also lightly coated with
olive oil) for about 5 minutes, until they were about a little more than
medium rare. I served this on top a bed of saffron rice made with chicken
stock drizzling the sauce over the tuna steaks.

I was really pleased with how this came out. and even though my son had a
cavity filled this afternoon, he ate his whole ? pound tuna steak. I was so
giddy cooking this dish and so excited after dining on it, I just had to
share.

I do want to try adding in some mint to the sauce the next time, because I
think it would be a nice contrast to the orange. We shall see.

Euriol

Euriol of Lothian, OP
Clerk, Order of the Pelican, Kingdom of ?thelmearc
Chronicler, Barony of Endless Hills


Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:19:11 +1300
From: Antonia Calvo <ladyadele at paradise.net.nz>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Grilled Tuna - recipe for my upcoming feast
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Elaine Koogler wrote:
<<< I did the same recipe some years back for a Mediterranean feast and it was
very well received.  I have a fish monger that sells me really great fish
for very good prices...got a wonderful piece of sushi-grade tuna from him.
We sliced the loin and grilled it, then served it with the sauce.  Some
folks who normally hate fish...won't eat fish...no, wouldn't touch it with a
10 foot pole (or even an 8 foot Czech)....thought it was steak or some other
meat!!  I managed to find an orange marinade made with Seville oranges at a
local store that caters to Latino cuisine.  It had relatively few additives
to it and worked out very well. >>>

I've done a somewhat similar one from Platina-- tuna steaks dressed with 
oil and honey.  It was possibly the single best-received dish I ever 
cooked.  Well, that and al-Andalus cheesy poufs...
-- 
Antonia di Benedetto Calvo


Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:31:21 -0400
From: Elaine Koogler <kiridono at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Camp cooking challenge
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Depending on your budget, you might try grilling fish.  I did it some years
back with a tuna loin that I purchased from our local fish monger.  We used
the tuna recipe from de Nola as follows:

*Libro de Cozina of Master Ruperto de Nola*, translated by Vincent F. Cuenca

Grilled Tuna

Take a piece of tuna from the part near the belly and clean it; and baste it
with oil, and brush also the grill and set it to roast over a few coals; and
baste them from time to time with oil and then prepare its light sauce with
water and salt and oil, and bitter orange juice and pepper and all the good
herbs torn up or chopped fine:  and when they wish to eat place our fish on
the plate and pour the sauce over it; and if you wish to make another sauce,
like for arugula or another it should be as you wish.

10 # Tuna
Olive Oil
Salt
Bitter orange juice (thin oj with white wine vinegar or use one of the Goya
bitter orange marinades)
Pepper
Tarragon, chopped fine
Cilantro, chopped fine

Brush tuna steaks with olive oil, then grill, basting from time to time with
oil.

Sauce:

Mix oil, water, salt, orange juice, white wine vinegar, pepper, tarragon and
cilantro.  Serve on the side with tuna steaks.

This was very successful and unbelievably easy!  You might be able to use a
different fish but be careful that it's solid enough to take grilling.
Folks at the feast who usually do NOT eat fish didn't even realize it was
fish!  Not that I'm into masking flavors or anything...I think it was just
that it was a presentation they'd never seen before and didn't associate it
with fish.

Kiri


Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:38:49 -0400
From: devra at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] another tasty fish dish - with no breading or
	frying
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org

From the first edition of PLEYN DELIT, by Constance Hieatt & Sharon Butler:

(Take makerels and smyte hem on pecys; cast hem on water and verious; seeth hem with myntes and iwth other erbes; color it grene or yelow, and mess it forth.--Forme of Curye)

2 -3 mackerels, amounting to at least 2 lb of fish
1 C water, salted (use about .5 t salt)
.25 C vinegar (they recommend white vinegar, but I like to use cider vinegar)
4 large sprigs parsley and 3 or so of fresh mint (if you use dried mint, ca 1 Tbsp) - (parsley is separated...)
3-4 scallions or green onions

Mackerel should be cleaned and the head removed (though it may be left on if you wish to cook it whole.
?Either leave fish whole or cut into pieces about two inches long. Put it in a cooking pot with the scallions, mint, and 3 of the parsley sprigs; pour salted water and vinegar over it and bring to a simmer. Cook gently for 15-20 minutes (depending on whether fish is whole or cut up.) Remove fish to a serving dish. Sprinkle with remaining parsley, finely minced, and pour some of the cooking liquid, strained, over it. (Or use some sorrell, minced or gound with salt, in place of minced parsley for the sauce.)? {But I like to just eat the cooked greens with the fish.)

If you have verjuice, you might try substituting it for the vinegar....

The vinegar and herbs help to cut the slightly oily nature of the fish.

Devra the Baker


Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:42:19 -0800 (PST)
From: Donna Green <donnaegreen at yahoo.com>
To: "sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Memorable Medieval Special Christmas Menu

<<< Juanna Isabella (Gracious Duchess and Food Godess) served me her homemade cured anchovies. 
I am sure they were from fresh anchovies. 
They were DELICIOUS! 
She is AMAZING! 
She might share the recipe and the source of the fish. 
Eduardo >>>

Thanks for the kind words Eduardo, but actually they were sardines, not anchovies :-) ... but I suppose you could do the same thing with anchovies. Anyway, the curing process I uses is as follows:

Get fresh sardines from the local fish monger.
Cut the heads off the fish.
Slit them down the belly and remove the guts ... no more gross than a messy sneeze :-)
Clean the fish under gently running water to remove all bits of blood, etc.
Put the fish in a glass dish and salt with kosher or other large crystal salt. 
Turn the fish and salt the other side ... not coated in salt, but a good heavy dose.
Wrap the pan in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for two days.
Carefully pull the spine out of the fish ... most of the rib bones should come with the spine.
Use your thumb to separate the fish meat from the skin.
You should end up with two fillets, but if you aren't expert yet, it is OK if you end up with smaller shreds of meat.
But the fish bits in a sealable container and cover in olive oil. You can add herbs to the oil to flavor the fish ... a bay leaf, some peppercorns, a juniper berry or two, etc.
Keep in the fridge. This will solidify the oil. Just make sure the fish is completely submerged. 
Remove the fish bits as needed.

As for "white anchovies" are these boquerones??http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquerones_en_vinagre
These can be found in many shops (at least here in San Francisco) and they are quite tasty.

Juana Isabella


Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:24:01 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Salt Crust

Anecdotal version found here: 
http://www.silkroadgourmet.com/culinary-history-mysteries-1-salt-baked-fish/

Lilia Zaouali in Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World has a recipe for shad cooked in salt on page 101.
She credits it to the Fadalat by Ibn Razin,

Johnnae

On Nov 26, 2012, at 1:30 AM, steve montgomery wrote:
<<< Does anybody have any actual references on salt crust cooking on fish? I
have looked through the salt and fish files in the Florilegium,
godecookery.com and a couple other places. One blog mentioned Apicius but I
haven't found my copy yet in unpacking.

Lots of blather about it being an ancient thing but no real sources.

Aeduin >>>


Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:48:29 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Use of Yeast

First, yeast in this context is not derived from the dregs of anything.  The 
recipes are English and from the late 16th Century so the yeast in question 
will be ale barm, the scum found on the top of an active ale pot.  The 
particular yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae AKA baker's or brewer's yeast, 
so you can fake this with some bread yeast, malt extract and water or 
dissolve a little baker's yeast in water then add a bottle of unhopped ale 
(I like Dundee's).  I haven't tried faking it with powdered barley malt, but 
I will one of these days.

In Elizabethan England, ale barm would be be provided from a family's ale 
pot, a manor's ale house or purchased from a brewster.  Neither recipe 
specifies whether this is "cleaned" yeast, where the barm is washed to 
remove impurities.

Bear

-----Original Message----- 

When digging up recipes for rock fish, I found some that called for yeast.
Here are two examples:

To seeth Roches, Flounders, or Eeles.
MAke ye good broth with newe Yeast, put therein Uergious, Salt, Parsley, a
litle Time, and not so much Rosemarie and pepper. So set it on the fyre and
boyle it, & when it is wel boyled, put in Roches, Flounders, Eles, and a
quantitie of sweet Butter.
- The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin

A Pyke sauce for a Pyke, Breme, Perche, Roche, Carpe, Eles, Floykes and al
maner of brouke fyshe.
Take a posye of Rosemary and time and bynde them together, and put in also
a quantitye of perselye not bounde, and put into the caudron of water,
salte and yeste, and the herbes, and lette them boyle a pretye whyle, then
putte in the fysshe and a good quantitye of butter, and let them boyle a
good season, and you shall have good Pyke sauce....
- A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye

What are we talking about here? Is this dregs from a wine or ale barrel or
is it bread yeast in sugar water? Any ideas?

Guillaume


Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:07:00 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Use of Yeast

<<< And no matter whether the yeast source is from wine or ale or bread, Why 
would you want to do this? There?s no dough or batter to use the yeast for a 
rising agent, as far as I can see. Is this to simply add a taste?

Stefan >>>

The yeast acts as a thickener and flavor enhancer rather than a leaven. 
This is an early version of what is now known as "nutrional yeast."

Bear


Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 09:24:29 -0400
From: Sam Wallace <guillaumedep at gmail.com>
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Rockfish

A while back, I asked for help with the following recipe concerning the use
of yeast in it. A friend of mine had caught some rockfish and I had given
the recipe to her to try. It turns out the these fish can be farm raised
and are reasonably priced. I bought a couple and gave it a try.

The fish were a bit bony, but tasted pleasant. The sauce was a bit tart
from the verjuice, but that goes well with fish. It was not as tart as
lemon juice, though. As I didn't have herbs on the branch, I used dried
herbs and strained the mix after removing the fish.

Overall, it was pretty good, but I will tweak it a bit the next time,
perhaps adding some more verjuice just before serving and using fresh herbs.

Guillaume
------------------

To seeth Roches, Flounders, or Eeles.
MAke ye good broth with newe Yeast, put therein Uergious, Salt, Parsley, a
litle Time, and not so much Rosemarie and pepper. So set it on the fyre and
boyle it, & when it is wel boyled, put in Roches, Flounders, Eles, and a
quantitie of sweet Butter.
- The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin


Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 16:30:40 -0300
From: Susan Lord <lordhunt at gmail.com>
To: "sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Rockfish

(Sam Wallace  wrote:
<<< To seeth Roches, Flounders, or Eeles.
MAke ye good broth with newe Yeast, put therein Uergious, Salt, Parsley, a
litle Time, and not so much Rosemarie and pepper. So set it on the fyre and
boyle it, & when it is wel boyled, put in Roches, Flounders, Eles, and a
quantitie of sweet Butter.
- The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchen >>>

The family name for scorpion is rockfish of which there are two types. Nola gives recipes two for them. No other Spanish medieval manuscripts have any recipes for them to my knowledge. The following recipe is a copy of part of my blog ?escorpino? published April 16, 2014.

SCORPION FISH CASSEROLE ADAPTED FROM NOLA?S lxiiii-1 ESCORFENO EN CAZUELA

Ingredients

1 c chestnuts
? c almonds peeled and fried
3-4 lbs large scale scorpion fish [1] <https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5686476114745785266#_ftn1>
4 c fresh parsley
4 c mix herbs (basil, oregano and celery leaves were used)
? c chopped onion
1 garlic clove mashed
? tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
? c olive oil

Covering:
? c raisins with the chestnuts and almonds
juice from1lemon

Preparation

PREHEAT OVEN TO 400?F/200?C

Make slits like a cross in each chestnut. Roast them in the oven for about ? hour until the skins open and the insides are tender. Remove from oven. Let cool long enough to skin. Coarsely chop leaving 2 whole chestnuts for garnish.

Peel, fry the almonds and coarsely chop except for a half dozen almonds set aside for garnish.
Nola states that this fish is not good except in casserole or boiled. To roast it, clean and wash it. If thick or large, cut it into pieces.

Remove stems from herbs. Put the leaves in a food processor and chop them. Mix them with the onion, garlic, salt, pepper and the olive oil. Smear the bottom of a casserole with half the olive oil. Put the herb mixture in the casserole like a bed. Add the fish. Pour the remaining olive oil over it. Roast uncovered for ? hr hour until almost done. Cover the fish with almonds, chestnuts and raisins. Sprinkle with juice from one lemon. Return to oven for 5 or 10 minutes until fish is tender.

It was thought to be a daily dish to set before the king.
[1] <https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5686476114745785266#_ftnref1> Sea bass was used, as scorpion fish was not available at this time.


Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:38:59 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Salt Crust

I've taken a quick look in a couple volumes of Apicius and I don't find any reference to salt encrusted fish.  There is a meat recipe that has been interpreted to be salt encrusted, but I have my doubts.

Such a dish requires the availability of salt and fresh fish (anyone think salt encrusted salt cod is a good idea), so if it appears, I would expect to find it in the Mediterranean corpus.  I haven't found a reference yet.  It appears to be a "traditional" dish in Tunisia and some other parts of North Africa and to have been adopted in other places, but that does not necessarily make it of medieval origin.  Neither have I found trout baked in terra cota.  What does appear is fish baked in pastry, which within SCA period would have been more available and less expensive than salt.  And you can cook salt cod in pastry.

This is an interesting question and I'll keep looking, but I think salt 
encrusted fish is probably more modern than medieval and that someone made an oft-repeated but very tenuous historical link with no real evidence.

Bear

<the end>
Edited by Mark S. Harris	fish-msg	Page 3 of 85