caldron-cookg-msg - 2/22/08 Cauldron cooking. How to cook foods in a cauldron over an open fire. NOTE: See also these files: Camp-Cooking-art, drying-foods-msg, puddings-msg, broths-msg, thickening-msg, roast-meats-msg, stews-bruets-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 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 ************************************************************************ To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org, SCA-Cooks maillist Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Cauldron cooking From: Kirrily Robert Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:56:46 -0400 Stefan wrote: >Maeve asked: >> I have been cooking over a fire for several tourney seasons, I want to >> expand the repertoire from roasting on the meat fork, wrapping meat in hard >> pastry (or foil on occasion) and stews cooked in the cauldron. Has anyone >> worked with the type of cauldron cooking where you cook things in pudding >> bags or in crock in the cauldron? > >I have not personally tried the puddings in a bag technique. However, >maybe the comments in these files in the Florilegium might be of use I missed the original post, so I'll reply to Stefan's instead. Peter Brears' "All the King's Cooks" talks a bit about the process of cooking in these ways in a large cauldron. Take a look at the English Huswife for recipes: http://infotrope.net/sca/texts/english-housewife/ There are sections on boiled meats and on puddings. From what I've gathered from these and other sources (oops, almost mis-typed as "sauces") here are a few tips: - the cauldron liquid will rapidly become broth. Take advantage of this. You can probably safely keep using the same liquid from day to day if you boil it *thoroughly* each time and keep it covered in between. I kept a soup going one Rowany festival for five days with no problems, and it just kept getting better. - Don't worry about mixing different kinds of meat in the broth; they didn't seem to distinguish too much in most of the stuff I've read. That is, they just say "boil it in fair broth" and don't mention whether it's chicken broth, mutton broth, or whatever. - Boil your meats *large*. Whole chickens. Whole legs of mutton. Stuff like that. Carve them when you serve and not before. This makes it easy to get the meat out of the pot -- you won't be fishing around for lots of little bits, just for one big chunk. And you can boil different kinds of meat together without them getting mixed up, apart from the fact that the broth will be mixed. - You'll need pipkins or other small pots for making sauces and so forth. The common sauce-making method is to take some of the broth, put it in a separate saucepan, add flavourings and thickenings, then serve the meat (whole) on a dish of sippets with the sauce poured over. - Most recipes refer to "skumming" the broth (i.e. skimming off the crud that floats to the top). Probably a good idea :) But don't skim off all the fat -- the fattest part of the broth is especially good for making sauces. Note that most of what I've been reading is 16C English cookery. Others who specialise in other areas may have totally different advice :) Katherine -- Lady Katherine Robillard (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert) katherine at infotrope.net http://infotrope.net/sca/ Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 11:48:25 -0500 From: Michael Gunter Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Food/recipe ideas To: Cooks within the SCA If you have a large pot you may even try what I once read as a typical method of cauldron preperation in which a few seperate dishes were prepared in the same pot. Make a soup with vegetables, herbs, water or stock, add a joint of meat. Then take your boil-in-bag in lieu of a bladder or stomach with grains, fruits, suet, batter or whatever. Boil the lot together, fry up griddlebread, remove the meat and bag. Serve soup as first course, meat and bread second and the pudding as third. Although it is doubtful that dishes were served as "courses" that we are used to now it would be a full meal of different dishes all from one pot. Gunthar Edited by Mark S. Harris caldron-cookg-msg Page 3 of 3