Stefan's Florilegium

p-marinating-msg

p-marinating-msg - 10/31/01

Period marinating of meats.

NOTE: See also the files: pickled-meats-msg, roast-meats-msg, cheap-meats-msg,
sauces-msg, Braised-Beef-art, cooking-oils-msg, broths-msg, roast-pork-msg,
beer-in-food-msg.

************************************************************************
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
seperate 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 orignator(s).

Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
mark.s.harris@motorola.com stefan@florilegium.org
************************************************************************

Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:58:06 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy@asan.com>
To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] marinating meat

Debra Hense wrote:
> How common is it in medieval recipes to specify
> that the meat be marinated in oils or sauces
> before cooking?
>
> I thought that most of the adjustments for the
> humors came from the cooking methods and
> the sauces added or stewed in, rather than
> marinated and grilled or baked.
>
> I ran into this because a fellow judge told an
> entrant that to improve their entry they should
> have marinated the meat in the sauce before
> cooking it. Not that it appeared in the recipe
> instructions... But she said she had seen one
> recipe where it was done, but couldn't tell
> what the source was.

Wasn't there a cormarye recipe posted, like, yesterday or the day
before? This is a pork loin dish marinated for several hours in things
like red wine, crushed garlic, carway seed, and coriander seed prior to
roasting. I forget what else is involved (pepper?), but it's an
excellent dish. IIRC, it is from The Forme of Cury. That may well be the
source that the judge was referring to. However, there doesn't seem to
be huge scads of evidence to suggest that this was widespread practice
in other dishes. It occurs to me that middle-class people living in
towns, for example, frequently bought their sauces ready-made, and I
expect it would call for a much greater volume of sauce to use it as a
marinade (what with there being no plastic bags and such).

You might also make a claim for Tarpeian Lamb, which is an Apician dish
for which a paste is made from pounded onion and spices (kinda like a
curry paste, actually, except uncooked before using) which is spread on
the meat, then roasted. The meat is then finished in liquid, IIRC, and
the onion-y crust presumably dissolves back into the sauce. But there's
no extensive period of marination.

Overall, though, apart from a simple lack of too many recipes calling
for marination, at least as far as I know, it would seem to have been
preferred practice in most of period Europe to parboil certain meats
before larding them for roasting, or else boiling, then frying.

Adamantius

<the end>