utensils-msg – 3/20/08
Period cooking gear. Utensils, trenchers, cast iron pots, wafer irons, salamanders.
NOTE: See also these files: p-tableware-msg, feastgear-msg, trenchers-msg, iron-pot-care-msg, lea-bottles-msg, forks-msg, spoons-msg, horn-utn-care-msg, ovens-msg, spits-msg, wood-utn-care-msg, mortar-pestle-msg, nefs-msg.
KEYWORDS: pots cast-iron pottery clay grills trivets gratings wafer irons.
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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
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Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Date: 22 Oct 91 03:47:28 GMT
Organization: University of Chicago
Everyone knows that the fork was introduced at the end of our period.
In fact, the earliest known picture of people eating with forks is
about 12th or 13th century (I can check--it is shown in a V&A
pamphlet on cutlery that I have). There are two Anglo-Saxon forks in
the British museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art has a Byzantine
fork that is quite early (10th century? I don't remember). The fork
does not seem to become a standard utensil until c. 1600, but it
exists much earlier.
Everyone knows that coffee has always been an important element in
Islamic social life. In fact coffee does not spread out of its
original home, probably Abyssinia, until about the middle of the
fifteenth century; Cariadoc (c. 1100) has never heard of it.
William de Corbie asks about the Swedish prejudice against eating
horse meat. I believe the same prejudice shows up in the Norse Sagas.
If I remember correctly, there is passage in one of them where
someone insults someone else by accusing him of eating mare's meat.
Does anyone remember where?
Cariadoc
From: tip at lead.aichem.arizona.edu (Tom Perigrin)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: iron pots
Date: 13 May 1994 20:36:18 GMT
Organization: Department of Chemistry
locksley at indirect.com (Joe Bethancourt) wrote:
> ALBAN at delphi.COM wrote:
>> [synopsis] bought a used pot, unknown past, how to clean, safety?
>
> So what's the problem? We cook in iron pots and pans around here all the
> time. You scour it with steel wool, oil it with olive oil, and use the
> silly thing. Just keep it oiled and don't let it rust.
errr, yes, but... there can be a few problems... it could have been used
as a solder pot, or coated with stove blacking to look nice. Some stove
blackings are made of black lead.
When I get a new pot or whatever, I test it for lead using a lead test
strip. You can buy these at various ceramic supply places. You get the
strip wet, and place it on the object... after a while a color change
indicates the presence of lead.
If there is no lead, I strip paints and blacking with paint stripper, followed
by a bath with Muriatic acid. The acid eats a lot of paints and iron oxide
but attacks cast iron very slowly. I then test it for lead again, just
to make sure nothing had been sealed below the surface. Then I season,
etc.
Thomas Ignatius Perigrinus
From: charlesn at sunrise.srl.rmit.EDU.AU (charles nevile)
Newsgroups: rec.food.historic,rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Request:medieval feast
Date: 27 Sep 1994 06:12:25 GMT
Organization: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
[....]
Plates were certainly around - it is correct that trenchers were given
either to servants, or more commonly to 'the poor'. We use them quite
frequently, and we just use a heavy loaf, round and about a handspan or
more across, and thick enough to slice donwe the middle (more or less).
They work remarkably well, but people tend to eat them as they go, so
that they are both too full to enjoy the later and nicest parts of the
feast, and in any case have nothing left to put it on...
have fun
charles
ragnar hraldsson, new varangian guard, vlachernai garrison
From: hrjones at uclink.berkeley.edu (Heather Rose Jones)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period Pot Use
Date: 5 Jan 1995 03:28:10 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Thomas S. Arnold (tarnold at hamp.hampshire.edu) wrote:
: Does anybody know how they cooked over an open fire in-Period? I've
: tried cooking without an iron grate, but find it annoying...
I believe one solution was to use a trivet -- an iron ring with three
longish legs.
Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn
From: corun at access1.digex.net (Corun MacAnndra)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period Pot Use
Date: 5 Jan 1995 06:36:36 -0500
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Heather Rose Jones <hrjones at uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>Thomas S. Arnold (tarnold at hamp.hampshire.edu) wrote:
>
>: Does anybody know how they cooked over an open fire in-Period? I've
>: tried cooking without an iron grate, but find it annoying...
>
>I believe one solution was to use a trivet -- an iron ring with three
>longish legs.
One year at Pennsic, as I was on an early morning walkabout taking some
photos of the various camps, I camp upon the Septentrians, and my friend,
Lady Tamarra, was making scones on an iron contraption that I thought was
rather unique. Not having the photograph with me, let me see if I can
conjure the image in my mind's eye for you. It was the basic three long
legs, bound at the top by a ring, and hanging from chains was a flat iron
disk suspended at a comfortable level above the fire. The scones, btw,
were delicious.
Septentria is known (at least to me personally) for their period cooking
accoutrements. One year they built a daub and wattle (if that's the right
terminology for mud and straw) oven. They baked breads and even a turkey
at Pennsic. If I remember aright, the oven was built up of firebrick,
and a large wok was inverted over the top of it. The whole was then covered
with mud and straw and left to harden.
Corun
===============================================================================
Corun MacAnndra | "Have Mr. Labreay mount the 50 cals, and tell him
Dark Horde by birth | to watch out for icebergs and take no prisoners."
Moritu by choice | An anonymous Coast Guard Captain in NY Harbour
From: greg at bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Greg Rose)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Period (Cooking) Pot Use
Date: 5 Jan 1995 14:05:48 -0500
Organization: Guest of MIT AI and LCS labs
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
Thomas the Tent-Peg of Bergental, amidst a fair quantity of
jokery, asked a real question that no one else has taken up,
so I thought I'd give it a try.
>Does anybody know how they cooked over an open fire in-Period? I've
>tried cooking without an iron grate, but find it annoying...
This isn't an area in which I've done a whole lot of research,
so this answer is rather rough-and-ready.
It rather depends on who you mean by "they". If you mean people
preparing food for the middle and upper classes, there's little
evidence I've ever seen that they did. Pilgrims ate their
hot meals at way stations (inns, etc.). Other travellors, one
presumes, did much the same. There is some evidence that some
hunting parties would have elaborate meals at midday, but none
whatsoever I have seen (I haven't gone digging for it, you
understand -- but I have had an active eye out for some years,
and have seen nothing amid the other stuff I've found) that
they were prepared over open fires (as opposed to prepared in
the kitchen, and brought out and maybe reheated (or maybe not)
under very controlled circumstances.
Armies certainly ate in the field. But armies travelled with
huge trains of wagons that carried their food (and other gear);
the sensible solution, if you have those, is a portable kitchen.
My impression is that hot food preparation for armies was
semicentralized; if that is true, it suggests that they brought
lots of stuff with them, and what they were doing cannot
reasonably be called "cooking over an open fire".
That being said, there are a number of "cook over the kitchen
fire" techniques that can be adapted to a more rustic setting.
One is a good solid tripod (or good solid spit) from which
hangs chains with hooks at multiple levels, and a long-handled
instrument (usually iron) for catching the bail of a pot and
transferring it from one hook to another, to bring it closer
to and further from the pot. Another is the use of a trivet
(iron stool, with a reasonable sized flat top, not solid --
in fact, mostly open) with long enough legs to keep the flat
surface out of the coals and flame. Use it as you would a
stove-top burner, to set pots and pans on. Adapt the heating
level by increasing/decreasing the amount of coals underneath.
(This is essentially a refinement of the pot-with-legs
approach.)
In either case, you want cooking implements (spoons, forks,
etc.) with _far_ longer handles than you are probably used
to working with.
I have such a trivet, made by Brock the Smith (Magic Badger
Iron Works). He also sells tripods (and spits), and some of
the relevant implements, and would doubtless make others to
order. I've used the tripod through several wars. I'm not
as handy with fine temperature control of fires as I might
be, so I admit to finding a gas stove simpler, but it works
fine, except that it really only takes one good-sized pot
at a time. Three or four of them would make a reasonable
start at a decent kitchen for real meals; one works okay for
one-pot meals.
One word of advice: if you want a spit to roast meat on, you
want more than just a piece of iron to go through the meat and
across to supports. You want it to have a system of little
knife-like stickers around one end, to hold the meat in place.
Otherwise, you will turn the spit inside the meat, while the
same (heaviest) side remains stubbornly toward the flame,
giving you a roast that is burned on one side and raw on the
other.
-- Angharad/Terry
From: andrew at bransle.ucs.mun.ca (Andrew Draskoy)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period (Cooking) Pot Use
Date: 5 Jan 1995 21:30:35 GMT
Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland
I missed the original question, but I did research this once, and
tried out some of the results. A warning, though - I don't have
my references handy. This will give you something to look for,
though. I had a friend who's a potter investigate this as well,
and she custom-made some clay "pot-with-legs" after a 12th century
German design. I used these at Pennsic one year and was greatly
pleased by them. To cook, you put the pot directly over the coals
once the flames have died down. The heat seems to stay concentrated
near the coals, and the pot can be lifted by hand using the two
"rings" of clay set into the rim. The pot can also be lifted out
of the fire and set on the ground nearby, and will retain the heat
on the bottom long enough to do more cooking with nice gentle, even,
heat. Some things become quite trivial to cook this way. My first
attempt was a period Spinach recipe. With added instructions for some
of the the cooking implements, it became:
Clean spinach and remove stems. Heat water to boiling in pot over coals,
boil the spinach leaves for a few minutes. Remove pot from coals and
drain the water, pressing the spinach with a wooden spoon to help drain it.
Remove and chop up the boiled spinach. By then the water has evaporated
from the pot. Put some olive oil in the pot and let it heat. Add spinach
and some ground nutmeg, and sautee, using the wooden spoon as a spatula,
for a minute or two.
Ten minutes to cook, only one pot, and not much fuss except for the
initial cleaning and de-stemming of the spinach.
: In either case, you want cooking implements (spoons, forks,
: etc.) with _far_ longer handles than you are probably used
: to working with.
Watch out of heat transmission through the handles of metal implements
of all sorts. Wooden-ended handles are a good thing.
Miklos Sandorfia
andrew at bransle.ucs.mun.ca
From: Suze.Hammond at f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Suze Hammond)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period (Cooking) Pot Use
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 1995 02:37:00 -0800
On the subject of metal handles: some period utensils had split and
re-woven handles. For some reason, this keeps the handles cool. (This is
why those old-timey wood stoves have the spring-like handles. Same
principle. Ask your local smith!)
... Moreach
From: greg at bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Greg Rose)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period (Cooking) Pot Use
Date: 9 Jan 1995 18:00:11 -0500
Organization: Guest of MIT AI and LCS labs
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
Eyrny responds to Moreach:
>>On the subject of metal handles: some period utensils had split and
>>re-woven handles. For some reason, this keeps the handles cool. (This is
>>why those old-timey wood stoves have the spring-like handles. Same
>>principle. Ask your local smith!)
>
>But they do get hot. It may take longer but it happens.
Well, sure they get hot if you leave them on the heat. So do wooden
ones.
The trick with any implement over _any_ heat source, is not to leave
it sitting exposed to the heat. Use it. Set it aside. Use it.
Set it aside again. Few handles heat intollerably while being used,
say, to stir something, faster than the hand and arm do on their
own.
But yes, the best metal implement handles are not solid -- and are
long enough to keep both the handle and the hand well out of the
fire.
-- Angharad
From: millsbn at mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca (Bruce Mills)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: cooking for fifty
Date: 19 Apr 1995 15:18:05 -0400
Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Teach Mr T <teachmrt at aol.com> wrote:
]>Feeding the masses makes for happy masses.
]>
]>Actually, we'll have a fire pit, plus big pots and all the usual
]>accoutrements.
]>
]>Liam O'Donnabhan
Something that I have devised that I have found handy: Make a frame of
angle iron, drilled at the corners so you can bolt it together (and take
it apart), sized to fit grills from ovens. The grills actually stand up
to the heat of a fire pretty well, although you could probably make a
heavy duty grill out of welded rod if you wanted. The one I have devised
will fit three oven grills; you can cook stuff right on the grill, or it
will hold reasonably sized pots and pans. What I am looking for now is a
flat iron griddle, about the size of one of the grills, that will fit
right into the frame, and fry on that, instead of having to use pans (I
find the eggs don't stay on the grill very well). Steam trays would be
nice, too.
Akimoya(-dono)
From: gheston at nyx.cs.du.edu (Gary Heston)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: cooking for fifty
Date: 23 Apr 1995 20:10:33 -0600
Diana Parker <parkerd at mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>I'd just like another set of ideas for using my forged iron tripod.
>I can't afford the $300-600 for a cauldron, and I'm not sure what else to
>use it for. So far I've cooked a whole ham. It worked great, and the
>ham turned out fine.
What size cauldron are you looking at? I've found one of about
2 gallon size at an auction for $10. Bean/wash pots are also
common for about the same price/size (these have straight sides
instead of the indentation at the top).
>What's next???
I suppose you could attach a grate to the legs, and cook
on that.
Gary
From: jtn at cse.uconn.EDU (J. Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Cooking for fifty
Date: 23 Apr 1995 16:37:08 -0400
Greetings, all, Angharad ver' Rhuawn here.
Tabitha asks,
> I'd just like another set of ideas for using my forged iron tripod.
> I can't afford the $300-600 for a cauldron, and I'm not sure what else to
> use it for. So far I've cooked a whole ham. It worked great, and the
> ham turned out fine.
>
> What's next???
Any pot or dutch oven with a bail (that is, a hoop, usually wire or
iron, to hold it by, like pails have) can be hung from a tripod. I
have a number of these that I picked up cheap (in the $5 to $15 range),
mostly at flea markets or Good Wills or the like; some are cast iron,
some aluminum. I don't use that many of them, because I also have a
trivet, roughly stool-high, that I use as a camp stove, but they
certainly work. Get a length of chain that will hang from the tripod
to not much above fire height, and some S-hooks. Put the S-hooks into
the chain at different heights; you can now suspend your pot high up
to stay warm, slightly lower to simmer, or quite low to boil.
-- Angharad/Terry
From: STDDLY at TINY_TIM.SHSU.EDU (7/11/95)
To: Mark Harris
> Reply to: Cauldrons
>
> What did you cook in your cauldron? How big of a cauldron was
> it? Was it made of iron or something else? Did you season it