pasta-msg - 2/22/02 Period pasta. Period referances. Recipes. Noodles, Manicotti. NOTE: See also the files fd-Italy-msg, flour-msg, dumplings-msg, cheese-msg, cheesemaking-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: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 15:02:21 -0800 (PST) From: gswitzer@loop.com To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: [SCA-CAID:10641] Something on pasta The Folklore column in today's LA Times Food Section had a short bit of interest to the ongoing "is pasta period" debate... FOLKLORE: Charles Perry OLD NON-PASTA Some people like to think the ancient Romans made pasta. The Museo degli Spaghetti in Campodassio, Liguria, promotes the idea that macaroni was already known 2,500 years ago, when Rome was under Etruscan rule. The evidence is a rolling pin and a thick wire, supposedly for rolling the macaroni around, which were found in an Etruscan kitchen. A rolling pin and a knitting needle. Hmm, not quite smoking-gun evidence, particularly when Renaissance Italian cookbooks make it clear that macaroni was originally a flat noodle and that the hollow kind developed later. Sometimes people mention "tracta" as a candidate for Roman noodlehood. This Latin word basically meant a sheet of rolled-out dough (it was called for in the making of a sort of cheese pie), but "De Re Coquinaria," the cookbook ascribed to the 2nd century gourmet Apicius, has a dozen recipes for which "tracta" is crumbled into boiling liquid. Unfortunately, none of these recipes says to cook the "tracta" until done. On the contrary, the "tracta" was added as a thickener. You were supposed to "bind" the sauce with it ("obligas"-the sane word when a sauce is thickened with cornstarch or eggs) and the resulting texture was described as "smooth" ("levis"). Try binding a sauce with crumbled dry noodles some time and see what you get. For crumbling into sauce, "tracta" was probably not raw dough but a sort of round cracker-a rather chewy, long keeping cracker like ship's biscuit. But cheer up. Though "tracta" wasn't pasta, it might have been the origin of the medieval practice of thickening sauces with bread crumbs. Wednesday, March 5, 1997 Ishido Matsukage (who's noodles are plenty period, thanks.) jstaplet@adm.law.du.edu University of Denver College of Law Ext. 6288 From: "S.Thomas" Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 15:23:34 -0600 Subject: Re: SC - (Fwd) [SCA-CAID:10641] Something on pasta Jeanne Stapleton wrote: > The Folklore column in today's LA Times Food Section had a short bit of > interest to the ongoing "is pasta period" debate... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > (snip) I have a book called "Tacuinum Sanitatis", and in that book is an illusration of some ladies hanging noodles out to dry on a rack. They sure look like long versions of the flat noodles you buy in the groceery store. Morgan of Hawksreach From: Dottie Elliott Date: Mon, 28 Apr 97 16:49:17 -0500 Subject: Re: SC - (Fwd) [SCA-CAID:10641] Something on pasta Flat pasta is period. There are several recipes that I know of that talk about how to make flat noodles. I haven't seen anything about round noodles (spaghetti), hollow noodles (macaroni, manacoti, etc) though. Clarissa From: Uduido@aol.com Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 09:56:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SC - Manicotti << Flat pasta is period. There are several recipes that I know of that talk about how to make flat noodles. I haven't seen anything about round noodles (spaghetti), hollow noodles (macaroni, manacoti, etc) though. >> I agree with your observations about flat pasta. However, since manicotti is a type of crepe that is wrapped around a filling, I don't quite follow your reason for listing it as a "noodle". I certainly hope you were not referring to the giant macaroni abominations that are available in supermarkets and say "manicotti" on the box! If you were making a reference to that particular yuck-stuff, I would like to point out that whoever named it manicotti had never eaten the real thing. And it's resemblance to real manicotti is at best illusory. It doesn't even begin to find a common ground in the flavor category and , thankfully, you are correct that that particular product is NOT period. However, since crepes and fillings are period, I would venture to put forth the opinion that "real crepe-type manicotti" probably is period. Has anyone done research in this area? Lord Ras From: "Philip W. Troy" Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 10:44:59 -0400 Subject: Re: SC - Manicotti Uduido@aol.com wrote: > << Flat pasta is period. There are several recipes that I know of that talk > about how to make flat noodles. I haven't seen anything about round > noodles (spaghetti), hollow noodles (macaroni, manacoti, etc) though. >> > > I agree with your observations about flat pasta. However, since manicotti is > a type of crepe that is wrapped around a filling, I don't quite follow your > reason for listing it as a "noodle". One line of reasoning considers manicotti to be a large tube of pasta. As such it is made by extrusion and is therefore almost certainly not used in Europe in period. I'm willing to at least acknowledge the existence of dry manicotti pasta because I consider the fresh crepe with stuffing to be canneloni, which I prefer. > If you were making a reference to that particular yuck-stuff, I would like to > point out that whoever named it manicotti had never eaten the real thing. And > it's resemblance to real manicotti is at best illusory. It doesn't even begin > to find a common ground in the flavor category and , thankfully, you are > correct that that particular product is NOT period. However, since crepes and > fillings are period, I would venture to put forth the opinion that "real > crepe-type manicotti" probably is period. Has anyone done research in this > area? Let me preface all this with the statement that I am in no way an authority on period Italian pasta dishes. I do know a bit about period non-Italian pastas, and you can judge the value of what I say by considering my rather narrow focus. One interesting thing I've found about the period pasta dishes I've encountered is the apparent fact that the common modern Italian practice of some kind of second cooking seems to be entirely absent. so, things like loseyns aren't baked after assembly, in spite of otherwise resembling lasgna in many respects. My hunch (and it is no more than that) is that while crepes were often eaten in period, the idea of rolling them around a stuffing is rare, at least as far as official recognition by a recipe goes. Spooning some of your stew into one and folding/rolling it up might have occurred on a case-by-case basis, but I haven't seen recipes that include this process. I get the impression that serving a stuffed crepe with a sauce is pretty modern too. I think a dish like this would be eaten with the fingers if at all, so the idea of the whole gratineed crepe in sauce thing seems unlikely. So, the best I can really say is that I don't know. Normally I don't bother posting an "I don't know", but in this case I have deep suspicions. This may well be one of those things that existed but for which we have no surviving recipe from period (as is the case with the Scots-Highland version of haggis, for instance). I actually love this sort of thing and would be deeply pleased to be proven wrong. Wish I had a copy of Platina right now... Adamantius > Lord Ras From: david friedman Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 11:45:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: SC - (Fwd) [SCA-CAID:10641] Something on pasta Jeanne Stapleton wrote: > The Folklore column in today's LA Times Food Section had a short bit of > interest to the ongoing "is pasta period" debate... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I don't think anyone is arguing that pasta isn't period, given how often it appears in the period cookbooks (losyns in 14th c. England, macaroni in Platina, Rishta et. al. in the Islamic). The point of the Charles Perry article is that there is no good evidence that it existed in classical antiquity. David/Cariadoc http://www.best.com/~ddfr/ From: david friedman Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 10:40:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: SC - Manicotti >> << Flat pasta is period. There are several recipes that I know of that talk >> about how to make flat noodles. I haven't seen anything about round >> noodles (spaghetti), hollow noodles (macaroni, manacoti, etc) though. >> Platina refers to a hollow noodle; I believe he says you use a needle to hollow it out, but it's late and our copies are downstairs. There are also period ravioli like things. I'm pretty sure that some of the Islamic pasta are round, or at least described as threads. David/Cariadoc David Friedman Professor of Law Santa Clara University ddfr@best.com http://www.best.com/~ddfr/ From: gfrose@cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter) Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 18:08:02 -0500 Subject: Re: SC - Italian Torte Hi, Katerine here. Christina of Riesling asks about a torta: >The torta is completely encased in a crust and inside are layers of >cheese (mozzarella, Parmesan, feta), vegetables (spinach, roasted >peppers, and thinly sliced ham. I'm no expert of Italian, but here's my first-pass take. There are cheese tortas, and spinach ones. I believe that there's a spinach torta that calls for cheese. I know of no layered Italian tortas, nor do I know of ones with a top crust. The peppers are new world. I know of none that call for ham. If you lose the peppers, it's better than a a lot of stuff that gets served at feasts. If you lose the top crust and the ham, better yet. Cheers, - -- Katerine/Terry Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 11:33:41 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - The siege cook challenge. Michael Macchione wrote: > Uhm, I think I should describe the pasta maker. It doesn't really > extrude the pasta like a meat grinder extrudes ground beef. It cannot be > used to make macaroni, or any other hollow pasta. It can be used to > "roll" the pasta dough to the desired thickness, and can then be fed > through some "cutters" to slice the pasta to the desired width (either > fettucine or spaghetti widths). It doesn't appear that hard to use. It > definitely could be used to make the pasta for ravioli which you could > then fill and fold by hand. > > Kael Another thing such machines are good for (that I don't think the instructions mention to any great extent) is kneading the dough. Developing a decent amount of gluten is essential for most pastas, and the more gluten there is, the harder it is to knead effectively. So, you can pat your firm dough by hand into a flat rectangle the right size to fit through your rollers at the thickest setting, run it through several times, each time taking your sheet, folding it into three like a letter, and rotating it 90 degrees. In some respects not unlike making puff pastry or Damascus steel. You keep doing this until your dough is smooth, elastic, slightly shiny, and not sticky. Then you roll it and cut it whatever way you want. I have a pasta machine of the Mia Cucina brand (which means, more or less, that it is of an unspecified brand imported from Italy by Macy's) which has a ravioli-stuffing widget. Trouble is, it comes with a couple of filling recipes, and the gadget only seems to work with those fillings. You need to have just the right texture for your filling or the whole project ends up in the trash. As regards the period pasta recipe issue, there are numerous variations on the pasta/butter/cheese theme (real fettucine Alfredo being the direct linear descendant), and the various filled pastas. Several people have gone into this subject already, and I don't really have anything to add. However, in the Wild Undocumentable Rumor Department, I recall reading (In the New York Times, so it MUST be true ; ) ) about a Southern Italian Renaissance pasta dish, consisting of pasta of an unspecified shape, sauced with sauteed orange segments, butter, caramelized sugar and toasted almonds. Can't say whether this bears any relation to reality, though. Adamantius Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 11:37:33 -0500 From: gfrose@cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter) Subject: Re: SC - The siege cook challenge. Hi, Katerine here. Kael writes: >Uhm, I think I should describe the pasta maker. It doesn't really >extrude the pasta like a meat grinder extrudes ground beef. It cannot be >used to make macaroni, or any other hollow pasta. It can be used to >"roll" the pasta dough to the desired thickness, and can then be fed >through some "cutters" to slice the pasta to the desired width (either >fettucine or spaghetti widths). It doesn't appear that hard to use. It >definitely could be used to make the pasta for ravioli which you could >then fill and fold by hand. Ah. No personal experience with pasta makers. Well, in that case, she'd probably get three different sorts of ravieles, losens, and macrows, with the latter made differently enough (i.e. sufficiently different preparations and sauces) not to look just like two different shapes of noodles. I might also include, among the ravieles, at least one recipe that fries after boiling. Cheers, - -- Katerine/Terry Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 10:44:48 -0700 (PDT) From: rousseau@scn.org (Anne-Marie Rousseau) Subject: Re: SC - The siege cook challenge. Katerine suggests pasta recipes that are fried... mmm....like kuskenoles/rissoles? These are scattered through the French and English corpus. Dried fruit (figs, dates, raisens), some fresh fruit (apples, grapes, pears), nuts (almonds, pine nuts, etc) and spices. Big ones are baked as pies, little ones are fried like little MacDOnald Apple Pies. Yum!! - --Anne-Marie, who ate some a few nights ago at Culinary Guild. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Anne-Marie Rousseau rousseau@scn.org Seattle, Washington Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 16:19:07 -0500 From: skunkkiller@juno.com (Donna J. White) Subject: Re: SC - The siege cook challenge. The ":Pampered Chef" company sells a crimper that works well with my pasta machine. It allows you to make several sized of ravioli. I actually figured out it could be used for more than that when my well-meaning mother bought me a set. She uses hers to make tarts. I decided it would be neat to try it on chinese dumplings -- folding the dough hurts my hands (arthritis). This little contraption really did the trick. They sell their wares like Tupperware -- through home parties. They are all over the country and hopefully should not be hard to find. I will see if I have the company information and send it to you if you like. They have some really neat stuff for meat tarts too and bread (tube molds and the like). Genevieve. Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 03:55:30 -0500 From: gfrose@cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter) Subject: Re: SC - The siege cook challenge. Hi, Katerine here. Carla asks whether Platina gives directions for making hollow pasta. From the Elizabeth Bauermann Andrews translation: White flour, moistened with the white of an egg and rosewater, should be well ground. Roll this into slender bits like a straw, stretched to the length of half a foot. With a very thin iron stylus, scrape out the middle. Then, as you remove the iron, you leave them hollow. Then, spread out just so and dried in the sun, they will last for two or three years. Indeed especially if they are made in the month of the August moon. They should be cooked in rich juice and poured into dishes and sprinkled with grated cheese, fresh butter, and mild herbs. This dish needs to be cooked for two hours. Macaroni and cheese, fifteenth century Italian style! Cheers, - -- Katerine/Terry Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:55:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Bloch Subject: Re: SC - semolina and mixed herbs Clare St. John writes: > Does anyone know how long semolina has been in use or if there is a > period reference for it? Semolina appears in 13th-century Andalusian cooking, at least if Huici Miranda, the 20th-century editor and translator (into Spanish) is to be believed. Some of the recipes in the _manuscrito anonimo_ (Cariadoc's collection, volume 2) specifically call for it. mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib Stephen Bloch sbloch@panther.adelphi.edu Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 19:57:48 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - The siege cook challenge. Terry Nutter wrote: > Carla asks whether Platina gives directions for making > hollow pasta. From the Elizabeth Bauermann Andrews translation: > > White flour, moistened with the white of an egg and > rosewater, should be well ground. Roll this into > slender bits like a straw, stretched to the length > of half a foot. With a very thin iron stylus, scrape > out the middle. Then, as you remove the iron, you > leave them hollow. Then, spread out just so and dried > in the sun, they will last for two or three years. > Indeed especially if they are made in the month of the > August moon. They should be cooked in rich juice and > poured into dishes and sprinkled with grated cheese, > fresh butter, and mild herbs. This dish needs to be > cooked for two hours. > > -- Katerine/Terry This is some pretty fascinating stuff! I suspect that the hole is there mostly so that it will cook in two hours or less. Not unlike perciatelli, which is unlike most tubular pasta in that the hole doesn't provide much increase in sauce-bearing surface area. The two-hour cooking time also suggests that this pasta is quite thick by modern standards, and there would be a noticeable difference in the texture of this pasta over what most of us are used to. Not a problem, of course. A long cooking time, often in pretty minimal liquid, is perfectly consistent with several pasta recipes up until the nineteenth century. I do have a question about the translation, though. What's the original for the translated term, "rich juice" ? Are we talking about stock? I wonder if this is another example of the mysterious liquamen, which has a different meaning for Platina than for Apicius. Any info avilable on this? Adamantius From: zarlor@acm.org (Lenny Zimmermann) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Pasta in 16th Century Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 21:45:01 GMT On 8 Sep 1997 13:20:50 -0400, Charles Olszewski wrote: >To what extent, if at all, was pasta in use in cooking in the early 16th Century in northern Italy? If used, what kind(s) were prevalent? Areas such as Venice and Milan, and Trent (in the Holy Roman Empire) are of concern. I cannot say what the prevalence might have been, in toto, but it most certainly was known and used. Duke Cariadoc mentioned Platina, which was published in 1475 in Venice. Platina lists macaroni, as was mentioned, as well as Noodles. In the entry on Noodles he mentions that they last, when dried, for "two years and even longer." He also states in some further discussion of cooking noddles and what to put on them, "And the same thing is true of cooking all dishes made from paste:" Which implies that pasta noodles and macaroni were not the only pasta styles used in dishes of the time. By 1610 Bartolomeo Scappi, again published in Venice, shows pictures of items used in the kitchen to include more than a few utensils used in making pasta. I am looking into translating Cristoforo di Messisbugo (Venice, 1549) so I am unsure as to his use of pasta. My readings suggests it certainly was available and used, if not commonly so. If you want more details on Platina's recipes, let me know in e-mail and I'll jot them off to you. Honos Servio, Lionardo Acquistapace, Barony of Bjornsborg, Ansteorra (mka Lenny Zimmermann, San Antonio, TX) zarlor@acm.org Date: 19 Sep 1997 14:38:26 -0700 From: "Marisa Herzog" Subject: SC - noodles I have a noodle question. I haven't seen any references to noodles with herbs worked into the dough. I was thinking of doing a sage flavored noodle as a side dish for both chicken and pork. Any ideas? I have somewhere in one of my women's history books a recipe for flavored noodles that are flavored with -carrot-. One of the sections in the book is health and has great little snippets like "if your wife has the urge to eat chalk or dirt, feed her more beans" (vitamin/mineral deficiency?). The noodle recipe is from something by a period medical somebody (name starts with T?) - -brid Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 12:32:47 -0500 From: mfgunter@tddeng00.fnts.com (Michael F. Gunter) Subject: SC - Field Expedient Noodles On the subject of noodles I would like to mention one of my favorite substitutes for good homemade noodles. Slice flour tortillas into long thin strips and add them to broth. I can make a pretty good chicken noodle soup using canned chicken broth, store bought roasted chicken, and tortillas. Boil up some veggies in the broth if desired, add the boned chicken and tortillas and Serve It Forth. Total time: Less than 30 minutes. Gunthar Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 16:51:52 -0500 From: Maddie Teller-Kook Subject: Re: SC - Field Expedient Noodles Michael F. Gunter wrote: > On the subject of noodles I would like to mention one of my favorite substitutes > for good homemade noodles. Slice flour tortillas into long thin strips and > add them to broth. I can make a pretty good chicken noodle soup using canned > chicken broth, store bought roasted chicken, and tortillas. Boil up some > veggies in the broth if desired, add the boned chicken and tortillas and > Serve It Forth. Total time: Less than 30 minutes. > > Gunthar The one major difference here Gunthar.... I would use fresh noodles (very available at most grocery stores). Tortillas have a different texture and taste than noodles will. Granted your soup sounds good, BUT, I would stick with pasta. meadhbh Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 01:28:21 -0800 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - Cassoulet > much like the noodles that Marco Polo brought back from China, >> Meaning that the common use of new world beans in 16th century Europe is as mythical as the attribution of noodles to Marco Polo? The earliest post-Roman European cookbooks we have are roughly contemporary with Marco Polo, and contain pasta. So do Islamic cookbooks from pre-Marco Polo. I don't know what the origin of this particular belief is, but it seems very unlikely that it is true. David/Cariadoc Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 12:38:56 SAST-2 From: "Ian van Tets" Subject: SC - Comfits, recipe diagrams and foiles Hi, Cairistiona here. 2. In _Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections..._ (Hieatt and Jones, Speculum 61/4, 1986), there is another recipe with a diagram. I think someone was asking about this kind of this recently? There are no dots, unfortunately, but an 8x4 grid is drawn for the recipe for Cressee, in the first collection (p. 863). The authors feel (p. 869), that the 'noodles are apparently to be served with one colour crossed over the other: hence the name of the dish. To prepare the cressee, the noodles are cut to the appropriate size, then stretched to form the characteristic crisscross'. The recipe: 'E une autre viaunde, ke ada a noun cressee. Pernez flur demeyne e des oefs e festes past, e metez dedenz le past bon gingivre trie [sorry, can't give you e acute] e sucre e saffran; e pernez la moyte [acute] de cel past colore [acute] de saffran e la myte [ac.] blaunc, e festes rouler sur une table a la graundur de vostre dei; e puys festes goboner a la graundur de une piere de late; e puys festes trere sur une table en meimes la manere cum est ceste forme: [hand-drawn 8x4 grid, not at all even]; e puys festes boiller en ewe; e puys pernez une quiller perce [ac.] parmy, si pernez hors cel cressez de l'ewe; e puys pernez formage mye [ac.] desus e desuz, e metez bure ou oile, e puys dressez. B.L. Add. 32085, which contains nothing later than early documents from the early part of the reign of Edward 1 (1272-1307), according to the authors. Recipe translated: Here is another dish, which is called cressee. Take best white four and eggs, and make pasta dough; and in the pasta dough put fine, choice ginger and sugar. Take half of the pastry, which is coloured with saffron, and half white, and roll it out on a table to the thickness of you finger, then cut into strips the size of a piece of lath; stretch it out on a table as illustrated, then boil in water; then take a slotted spoon abd remove the cressees from the water; then arrange them on, and cover them with, grated cheese, add butter or oil, and serve. 3. Does Maggie Black have any precedent for directing foiles to be rolled up like a spring roll or strudel? All I can find is that foile meant very thin pastry. Other translations (for other recipes) that I have found have not recommended this, but suggested folding over, like pasties, before frying or boiling. Black says, at least twice, to put a small piece of the filling on the end of a strip of pastry, then to roll the whole piece up (which mught be 8 inches long) and seal. Where does she get this definition? Thanks Cairistiona Date: Mon, 08 Dec 1997 11:02:45 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Pasta shells Decker, Terry D. wrote: > I can place place flat noodles and ravioli (or equivalent) in period. I > have a source that places extruded pasta like vermicelli about 1400. I > have absolutely nothing on shell pasta. Anyone have any references or > ideas? Well, there is a type of gnocchi called, I think, cavatelli (unless this is the name of another type of pasta and I'm getting them confused...are cavatelli the ones shaped like pea pods?). In any case, the pasta in question is traditionally hand made today by placing a little ball of dough against the floured handle of a wooden spoon, and pressing against it with the concave side of a fork, giving it a smooth, concave inside, and a convex, ridged outside. Much like a cockle or conch shell. The fact that it can be made without extrusion does not, of course, prove it is period, but it is a method that could easily have been employed. The fact that forks with more than two or three tines, even in civilised Italy, would have been rare, is a bit of a logical obstacle, too. Adamantius Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 10:10:46 EST From: LrdRas Subject: SC - Stroganoff acrouss@gte.net writes: << Beef Stroganoff has no out of period ingredients in it, but its not even close to medieval in concept >> I must take exception to this observation. There are extant examples of recipes from the Middle East that incorporate the "stroganoff" concept. Granted, they use "Persian milk" (e.g. yogurt) in place of sour cream and do not have a noodle base. Only this past Friday I served a "sroganoff"-like dish at supper from al- Bahgdadi which consisted of lamb, onions, mint and other seasoning mixed with yogurt. To all intent and purposes it looked like and tasted very similar to it's stroganoff counterparts and was period (10th century, IIRC). Ras Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 18:21:24 -0500 (EST) From: Michael Macchione Subject: Re: SC - Stroganoff I got this recipe from Cariadoc's miscellany, and cooked it at an event last June, It is a wonderful dish, that cooks a lot like a stroganoff. kael - ---------------- [This is an article from Cariadoc's Miscellany. The Miscellany is Copyright (c) by David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook, 1988, 1990, 1992. For copying details, see the Miscellany Introduction.] Salma Ibn al-Mabrad p. 20/D4 Dough is taken and twisted and cut in small pieces and struck like a coin with a finger, and it is cooked in water until done. Then yoghurt is put with it and meat is fried with onion for it and mint and garlic are put with it. 1 c flour about 1/4 c water 1/2 c plain yogurt 5 ounces meat (lamb) 1/2 oz tail (lamb fat) 1 small to medium onion = 1/4 lb 1 T mint 2-4 cloves crushed garlic [1/2 t salt] Knead flour and water to a smooth dough. Divide it in about 8 equal portions. Take each one, roll it between your palms into a string about 1/2 inch in diameter, twist it a little, then cut it in about 1/4" slices. Dump slices in a little flour to keep them from sticking. Take each slice and squeeze it between your fingers into a flat, roughly round, coin shaped piece. Boil in 1 quart slightly salted water about 10 minutes. About the same time you put the pasta on to boil, fry the onions and lamb, both cut small, in the tail (i.e. lamb fat) or other oil. Drain the pasta, combine all ingredients, and serve. From: Argente To: sca-east@world.std.com Subject: [EK] Dessert Lasagna [14th century] Date: Thu, 22 Jan 98 14:17:25 +0000 This is the first time I have seen yr request. Found one recipe in my collection of many, many books. Source Horizon History of Cooking, mid 1960's, p 716 1 lb lasagne noodles, broken into bite sized pieces 2 cups ricotta or cottage cheese, well drained 1 cup heavy cream 3 egg yolks 2 tbl sugar 1/4 cup currants [optional] pinch salt crumb topping cook broken lasagne noodles in lightly salted water until tender. drain well. mix cheese with cream, egg yolks, sugar currants, and salt. butter an 8 cup couffle dish. turn noodles into dish and mix thoroughly with cheese. sprinkle crumb topping over noodles. bake 425F for 40 min or until cheese is set and top is golden. serves 8 This recipe from Francesco di Marco Datini, a fourteenth centru fabric merchant and Renaissance Prato's leading citizen. topping 1/4 c butter 1/4 c sugar 1 tsp powdered cinnamon 1/2 c coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans [optional] 1/2 to 3/4 cup flour cream butter with sugar and cinnamon. add nuts. add flour gradually, stirring until mixture is crumbly. use as topping. make about 1.5 cups. Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 13:02:10 -0800 From: "Decker, Terry D." Subject: RE: SC - [fwd] Medieval pasta Since I'm taking a break, reading Trager's The Food Chronology, let's see what he has to say about the history of pasta. 1279 CE - The inventory of the estate of a Genoese soldier lists a basket of macaronis. Marco Polo refers to paste a lasagne. 1400 CE - Extruded pasta (vermicelli) is being made in Naples. 1475 CE - Platina gives a recipe for pasta in Concerning Honest Pleasure and Physical Wellbeing. 1607 CE - Hugh Plat describes pasta as hollow pipes of wafer, called macarone by the Italians, in his Certain Philosophical Preparations of Food and Beverage for Sea-men. Information about the Platina recipe and a recipe for ravioli from the 1553 Das Kochbuch der Sabrina Welserin can be found in the food section of Stefan's Florilegium at: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/rialto/rialto.html Bon Chance Bear Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 22:46:14 +0000 From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" Subject: Re: SC - [fwd] Medieval pasta The "Libro de Guisados" has a recipe for "Potaje de Fideos" which is soup with pasta. I do not know what medieval fideos were like; modern Spanish dictionaries and cookbooks suggest vermicelli as the closest match. The recipe, BTW, calls for the fideos to be cooked in well-salted chicken or mutton broth, along with a piece of sugar. Milk is added to the broth (goat, sheep or almond), and the omnipresent cinnamon-and-sugar are sprinkled on top before serving. Lady Brighid ni Chiarain of Tethba Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom mka Robin Carroll-Mann *** harper @ idt.net Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 22:04:45 -0800 From: david friedman Subject: RE: SC - [fwd] Medieval pasta You might want to add c. 1224, Rishta (at least) appears in _al-Baghdadi_. I think there are pasta recipes in the 10th c. collection as well, but I'm not sure. David Friedman Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 23:36:17 +0000 From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" Subject: SC - Recipe: Potaje de Fideos -- Noodle Soup (was: Medieval Pasta) I was asked to post the recipe for Potaje de Fideos. This is from the 1529 edition of the Spanish "Libro de Guisados" by Ruperto de Nola. The translation is mine. POTAJE DE FIDEOS* (Pottage of Noodles) Clean the fideos of the dirt which they have** and when they are well cleaned put them on the fire in a very clean pot with good fatty broth of chicken or mutton which is well salted and when the broth begins to boil, cast the fideos in the pot with a piece of sugar, and when they are more than half cooked, cast into the pot with the chicken or mutton broth, milk of goats or sheep, or in place of those, almond milk, for that can never be lacking, and cook it all well together, and when the fideos are cooked remove the pot from the fire and let it rest a bit and prepare dishes, casting sugar and cinnamon upon them; but as I have said in the chapter on rice, there are many who say concerning pottages of this kind which are cooked with meat broth that one should cast in neither sugar nor milk, but this is according to each one's appetite, and in truth, with fideos or rice cooked with meat broth, it is better to cast grated cheese on the dishes, which is very good. * My modern Spanish dictionary translate "fideos" as "vermicelli"; I do not know what medieval fideos were like. **I suspect this phrase is a scribal error. An almost identical phrase is at the beginning of the previous recipe, which is for baked rice. *There* it makes sense; even today, packages of rice have instructions to check it for small pebbles and other impurities. I cannot see why pasta would need cleaning. Lady Brighid ni Chiarain of Tethba Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom mka Robin Carroll-Mann *** harper @ idt.net Subject: period noodles Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 11:48:10 -0500 From: Stephen Dale Newsgroups: rec.org.sca While others debate if noodles and macaroni are period for Italians, Russia started using noodles after the Mongols invaded in 1240. According to Lesley Chamberlain, author of _The_Food_and_Cooking_of_Russia_, Russian noodles were made with white wheat flour or buckwheat and wheat mixed together. Soba noodles would probably be a good modern equivalent. Chamberlain states that noodles are eaten in mushroom or chicken broth (similar to ramen?) or in spiced milk. Another Russian cookbook I have mixes hot noodles with cottage cheese and butter. Aislinn Columba of Carlisle aka Nadya Petrovna Stoianova Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 21:15:55 -0800From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - [fwd] Medieval pastaA query about pasta was forwarded from the Drachenwald mailing list:>I am trying to locate any medieval pasta recipes. I'm mainly interested in>any kind of sauce that they used. Also, what kind of pasta is period? I know>that spagetti is not!>>Valeria delle StelleOur _Miscellany_ (next-to-last edition is webbed--search for Cariadoc) hasseveral pasta recipes. From memory:Rishta (13th c. Islamic), which is long thin noodles, has a sauce of meat,lentils, chickpeas and cinnamon. Salma (coin-shaped pasta) and Shushbarak(ravioli) both have a sauce of yogurt, mint and garlic (15th c. Islamic).Macrows ("Take and make a thin foil of dough, and carve it on pieces..."),Ravioles (cheese ravioli) and Losyns (also flat noodles) are served withcheese and butter with poudre douce; also, there is a fast-day Losengesserved with an almond-milk sauce (all of these are 14th-15th c English).Platina (15th c. Italian) has recipes for both noodles and macaroni, servedwith cheese.Elizabeth of Dendermonde/Betty Cook Date: Wed, 04 Feb 1998 10:55:04 -0500 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: SC - Period Pasta recipes... To add to the fun, don't forget the 14th-century English recipe for Hares in Papdele, found in The Forme of Cury. It is essentially a boneless hare stew, cooked in broth, and stacked up with either wafers _or_ loseyns, apparently. I'd be vastly surprised to find that Papdele isn't a cognate of the Italian wide noodle, pappardelle. What I find especially intriguing is that a strikingly similar dish of duck stew (with additions like tomato and red wine added to the basic reduced broth sauce) is served over pappardelle in the well-known New York restaurant Felidia. Chef/owner Lydia Bastianich claims the dish is a traditional import from Trieste... . Adamantius Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 18:57:02 -0600 From: vjarmstrong@aristotle.net (Valoise Armstrong) Subject: Re: SC - Raviolis, tortellini and fritters Christi Redeker asked about fried and filled pasta. I don't know in depth about other cultures, but there is at least one late-period fried German pasta example. From Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin is a cheese-filling wrapped inside an egg dough and fried. Sabina's ravioli are, however, boiled in broth, not fried. 173 How Shrove-Tuesday doughnuts are made in Nuremberg Grate Parmesan cheese or any other cheese which is quite dry. Beat eggs into it and also mix a little good wheat flour with it so that the doughnuts do not become too crisp from the cheese. Make the dough firm enough that it does not run. After that make an egg dough as for a tart, make long narrow flat cakes and with a spoon lay a small lump of cheese dough, as large as you would like to have it, in the middle of the flat cake and wrap it over. And with both thumbs press each heap well into the flat cake forming a small bun, then cut it off with a small metal blade. When you would fry them, you should not let the fat become too hot, instead just after it has melted, lay quite a few of them in the pan, fry them slowly. Shake the pan, then they will become like marbles. Valoise Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 11:46:18 -0500 From: Christi Redeker Subject: SC - Ravioli, Tortelli, and Fritters (Long) I have the book at work now. I am posting (in this order) the original, the translation and the explanation about the words being interchangeable. >From The Original Mediterranean Cuisine, by Barbara Santich DE' CRISPELLE DI CARNE, O VERO TORTELLI E RAVIOLI (LIBRO DELLA COCINA) Prendi ventresca di porco scorticata, lessala, e triala forte col coltello: togli erbe odorifere in bona quantitý, e pestale forte nel mortaio: mettivi su del cascio fresco con esse et un poco di farina, e distempera con albume d'ova, sÏ che sia duro. E preso del grasso del porco fresco in bona quantitý, metti ne la padella, sÌ che bolla, e fane crispelli; e cotti, e cavati, mettivi su del zuccaro. The Translation: MEAT FRITTERS, ALSO KNOWN AS TORTELLI AND RAVIOLI Take streaky pancetta, boil it, and chop finely with a knife: take a good quantity of aromatic herbs, and grind them in a mortar: add some fresh cheese and a little flour , and add egg whies to make a firm mixture. Then take a good quantity of fresh pork fat, put it in the frying pan, and when it boils, make fritters; and when they are cooked, take them out and sprinkle with sugar. The explanation: "The names tortelli and ravioli were applied indiscriminately in the fifteenth century, both to the filled pasta shapes that we know today, which were always cooked in broth and served with grated parmesan, and to fritters like these, which were fried and served with sugar or honey. Admittedly the basic mixtures were often similar - purÈes or pastes of cheese, eggs, cooked vegetables or meat or fish - but the cooking processes were quite different. It's not so much that people were careless in their use of language, but there was general confusion until filled pasta became widespread and appropriated the names. As their name suggests, these medieval totally derived from the larger torte, and had very similar fillings." We have already discussed how there are recipes for fillings wrapped in pasta and then boiled. Does anyone else have a recipe for fritters where they were called tortelli or ravioli? Murkial Christi Redeker Digital Equipment Corporation Colorado Springs, Colorado 719/592-4504 christi.redeker@digital.com Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 00:37:13 -0700 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - autumn feast report (long) At 5:55 AM +0000 5/4/98, Kornelis Sietsma wrote: >The next dish was fresh Pasta with Cheese. I had some foolish volunteers >who offered to make pasta, so they spent several hours during the day >mixing dough and drying strips of pasta on clothes-horses. One of the virtues of dried pasta is that you can make it and dry it days in advance--which is what we have done for Pennsic. David/Cariadoc http://www.best.com/~ddfr/ Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 09:13:31 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Seeking wheat illumination - OOP Christina Nevin wrote: > I've never made pasta before so thought I may as well do it right the first > time and use durum wheat. Problem is, I can't find any. Now I know semolina > is made of durum wheat, so my question (which is probably a stupid one, but > never mind) is this: is there a difference? That is to say, can I make pasta > out of the semolina, or should I keep looking for durum wheat? It looks a > bit granular to make dough from. Any suggestions appreciated! > > Lucretzia If you're talking about the granular semolina _flour_, and not couscous or something, you can indeed make pasta from it, but you need to be sure to knead the bejeezus out of it. Many new pasta makers miss this essential [read that to mean, I did]. Use the rollers on your machine to knead your dough until it is smooth, elastic, and almost shiny, like satin. If the outside surface looks granular, you may need to add a tiny bit more water, but the trick is to roll out the dough flat, with your machine, then fold it like puff pastry or something similar, to evenly distribute the gluten and any dryish outer surface throughout the dough. Roll, fold, roll again, fold, etc., until you get a satiny smooth laminated dough. It may take a while to get the hang of it. Only then do you begin to worry about rolling it thinly. Adamantius Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 08:36:27 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." Subject: RE: SC - Seeking wheat illumination - OOP Semolina is the coarse residue from boulting. The name derives from the Latin, semola, meaning bran. The primary usage is in making pasta. Adamantius' advice for working with semolina is on target. Bear Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:15:47 -0500 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - Anthro and cooking At 9:55 PM -0400 8/29/99, Philip & Susan Troy wrote: >IIRC, the earliest known Chinese pasta references I've seen are from >roughly the 9th century C.E., albeit from secondary sources because I'm >illiterate. I'm pretty sure there are recipes for various boiled dough >sheet dishes (tracta) in Cato's De Re Agricultura. Possibly a bit coarse >and heavy by today's standards, but then most of the medieval Italian >pasta was too, and no one disqualifies that as pasta. I believe Charles Perry had an old PPC article in which he concluded that the evidence for pasta in classical antiquity was ambiguous. On the other hand, there are lots of Islamic pasta recipes that predate Marco Polo, so it seems hard to believe that, if the Europeans wanted to borrow pasta from somewhere, they would have had to go all the way to China to find it. David/Cariadoc http://www.best.com/~ddfr/ Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 07:04:47 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Italian Cuisine Mordonna22@aol.com wrote: > So, if there is a Roman recipe for pasta, how could there be Italian recipes > pre-dating Pasta?? Well, technically, there could have been pasta before Rome, and probably was, but I get your drift. I believe Cato's De Re Agricultura contains recipes for stacked structures along the lines of lasagna under the basic heading of tracta (or some similar term; it's too early in the morning: actually a great gig, I don't have to be responsible for anything I say before I'm awake). I remember there being an article on this in one of the fairly recent Petits Propos Culinaires. One reason, perhaps, for the confusion on Roman and medieval pasta is that modern milling techniques aren't that old, perhaps 18th century, and the kind of fine pasta now made industrially from hard wheats (not to mention extruded spaghetti) wouldn't have been possible in period. Whether that means the Italian pasta of earlier ages was coarse and granular, and somewhat gnocchi-like, or whether it was similar to the kind of noodles we can easily make at home with AP flour (plain flour to British-speakers) is uncertain. My suspicion is the former, because some medieval recipes tend to talk about boiling pasta in good broth for an hour (eeeeeee-ewwwww!) which would create a sort of brothy, soplike pudding-ey mass. Adamantius Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 03:25:56 EDT From: Mordonna22@aol.com Subject: SC - Check out The History of Pasta in Rome Click here: News The author gives a compelling argument that lasagne type noodles were peasant fare from early Roman days. Mordonna Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 01:16:20 +0100 From: Thomas Gloning Subject: SC - ancient pasta Thanks, Hauviette, for pointing to the paper of Stefano Milioni. << is the author of a paper on Pasta in existence in ancient Rome. Visit the link available through this Roman food page at: http://www.ancientsites.com/~Caius_Livius/ >> I read the text with great interest. On the other hand I found several claims poorly documented or even doubtful. Let me mention two. E.g., he quotes the Marco Polo-text: "(he saw and tested) lasagne similar to those that we prepare with wheat flour", indicating that lasagne were already in use in Italy when he saw them in China. Now, if I am not mistaken, the original text of Marco Polo's travelogue is written in French, and I would like to know the word translated here as "lasagne". Then: one of his main claims, that ancient "lagana" are the same as later italian "lasagne", seems to be doubtful. According to the Latin dictionary of Georges, "laganum" has two uses: 1) 'd¸nner ÷lkuchen, ÷lplatz, in ÷l gebackene Plinse, als leichte Speise f¸r Kranke (Celsus); als Speise f¸r Ÿrmere (Horaz). 2) 'das Blatt, die Lage eines aus mehreren Schichten (Lagen) bestehenden Kuchens (Apicius). (roughly: 'thin cake, baked in oil' (Celsus, Horaz), 'sheet of dough' (Apicius)). AndrÈ, in his edition of Apicius, says _laganum_ 'feuille de p’te' ('sheet of dough'). The etymological dictionary of Italian of Cortelazzo/ Zolli does not mention a connection between lat. _laganum_ and it. _lasagne_. Then, there is the use of pictorial representations: he says that the tools necessary to prepare pasta are to be seen in some 4th-century-B.C. tomb; after the experience with the "Spaetzle-tool" in a medieval "Sachsenspiegel", I think one has to be very careful to draw inferences from what one sees to the function of tools. After all, the tomb is a RICH man's tomb, and pasta are said to be food of the poor. Now, I am not saying that there were not ancient pasta. I just don't know about that. Did anybody look at AndrÈ, L¥alimentation et la cuisine ý Rome yet? All I am saying is that the points made in the paper of Stefano Milioni paper ('The history of pasta in Italy') deserve caution and further checking. Thomas Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 08:58:51 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - ancient pasta Mordonna22@aol.com wrote: > Thomas.Gloning@germanistik.uni-giessen.de writes: > (roughly: > 'thin cake, baked in oil' (Celsus, Horaz), 'sheet of dough' (Apicius)). > AndrÈ, in his edition of Apicius, says _laganum_ 'feuille de p’te' > ('sheet of dough'). The etymological dictionary of Italian of > Cortelazzo/ Zolli does not mention a connection between lat. _laganum_ > and it. _lasagne_. >> > > Hmmm, of course, my homemade lasagne noodles are made from a "sheet of > dough"...........but of course, that means nothing.........I'm sure your > source is impeccably accurate........can't really tell, must depend on your > translation.............. > > Mordonna Approaching this from another angle, if not any more impeccable, I refer you to the English recipes for loseyns, which appear as though they might be named for the pasta cut into a certain size and shape. The modern term would be lozenges, which has both culinary and heraldic connotations in period, with a mostly medicinal definition today, still based on shape. This is a sort of common-sense guess, and I don't have supporting info from a dictionary or anything. Similiarly, though, pappardelle (a wide-noodle pasta similar to lasagne, although not generally served in layers today) appear as though they might be named for their shape ("pieces of paper", or something close to that) and exist in period English recipes which suggest they're culinarily interchangable with loseyns. Possibly an Italian heraldry book might tell us if lozenge-shaped fields for ladies' devices were used in period, and if so, what they were called? Adamantius Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 12:12:15 -0500 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - ancient pasta At 8:58 AM -0400 10/3/99, Philip & Susan Troy wrote: >Approaching this from another angle, if not any more impeccable, I refer >you to the English recipes for loseyns, which appear as though they >might be named for the pasta cut into a certain size and shape. I'm pretty sure I remember a PPC article, possibly by Charles Perry, that was arguing that the causation ran the opposite direction. The recipe name was supposed to be derived from the Arabic name of a similar Islamic recipe, and the name of the shape from the recipe name. David/Cariadoc http://www.best.com/~ddfr/ Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 14:42:53 -0500 (EST) From: Robin Carrollmann Subject: Re: SC - medieval graters? On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Jeff Gedney wrote: > > I think at least some of them must have been. The recipe from de Nola > > that calls for a grater is for a kind of cheese dumpling. The dough is to > > be forced through the holes on the reverse side of grater, and allowed to > > fall into boiling water. You can't really do that with a box grater. > > Sort of like Spaetzle? I am not that familiar with the composition of spaetzle, but yes, AFAIK these dumplings are made in the same way. I belive that there is also a recipe or two in Granado that uses a grater in the same way. One is for fideos (noodles) which can be made in a spaetzle-like manner, or mixed to a thicker consistency and rolled out and cut. There's also -- I think mortruelo (sp?), which is some kind of liver pate dumpling. I'm posting from work and don't have my sources at hand. > brandu Brighid Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 23:10:42 EST From: LrdRas@aol.com Subject: Re: SC - cooking times Bronwynmgn@aol.com writes: << And other than cooking time, is fresh pasta much different than dried pasta (serious question; to my knowledge, I have never had fresh pasta)? Brangwayna Morgan >> Fresh pasta cooks very quickly, approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the thickness of the pasta. Ras Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 19:16:37 -0600 From: Magdalena Subject: Re: SC - cooking times Bronwynmgn@aol.com wrote: > And other than cooking time, is fresh pasta much different than dried > pasta (serious question; to my knowledge, I have never had fresh pasta)? In a word, yes. Oh yes. Yes indeed. Actually, it depends somewhat on what you call fresh pasta. Fresh pasta in the plastic seal box at the grocery store tastes better than dried, and is softer. Fresh "I made it at home pasta" is much tastier and much, much softer. Almost 'melt in your mouth' softer. (At least mine is.) The taste and mouthfeel difference isn't high enough that I typically use fresh, but it is worth the time or money to occasionally indulge. Hmmm... I feel an urge for spaghetti for dinner coming on. - -Magdalena Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 08:48:20 +0100 (MET) From: Par Leijonhufvud Subject: Re: SC - cooking times On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 Bronwynmgn@aol.com wrote: > And other than cooking time, is fresh pasta much different than dried > pasta (serious question; to my knowledge, I have never had fresh pasta)? Fresh pasta has cooking times of 2-3 minutes vs. dried (real) pasta at 7-13 minutes. /UlfR Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 22:56:17 -0500 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Macrows vs the computer Seton1355@aol.com wrote: > Oh and PPS: Do you have a recipe for _macrows_? I'd love to have a recipe > for it. :-) Well, I can easily tell you how they tend to be made, although I'm a little too fried for small-print recipe transcribing right now. All they are is a noodle made of flour and water mixed to make a firm dough which is kneaded until smooth and non-sticky, then rolled out thinly and cut into strips. Some recipes call for them to be hung up and dried a bit, some don't. They get boiled in stock or water, drained, and served in a bowl with butter and grated cheese "ruayne", a not-very-old, rich white cheese, something like new brie without the rind, named, apparently, for the town of Rouen in Normandy. Some versions of the basic recipe call for a sprinkling of spice powder on top. I've found lovely eggless noodles, both dry and fresh ones, in some of the Asian markets in my area, that are a nice substitute for making your own, both because they are eggless, and they tend to be made from a relatively soft wheat. I don't think these are supposed to end up al dente. Adamantius Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 06:27:55 -0700 From: Ronda Del Boccio Subject: Re: SC - Macrows vs the computer Stefan li Rous wrote: > Newbie Cook question: I've seen this term before, "al dente" and it > is probably in some of my modern cookbooks, but what does it mean? > > Was this the way pasta was cooked in period? "al dente" means literally "to the teeth." it describes pasta cooked so that it slightly resistant to the bite without being hard or crunchy. (In other words, not mushy, not crunchy) Having a fairly long history of family lore passed down to me, I can say it's been a practice for awhile, but I don't know just how long. Serian Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 07:53:32 -0600 From: "RANDALL DIAMOND" Subject: SC - Re: SC- Macrows vs the computer My earliest recipe for macrows is one in in Elisabeth Aryton's ENGLISH PROVENTIAL COOKING which she states is from a feast of Richard II in 1390. I don't see eating it with the fingers though as it had cheese too. MACARONI CHEESE! Jesse! "Macrows. Take and make a thin foil of dough, and carve it into pieces, and cast them on boiling water, and seeth it well. Take cheese and grate it and butter cast beneath and above.... and serve it forth." She references C. Anne Wilson on the pasta, but is not clear whether or not the recipe on preparation is also from Wilson's references. She mentions two more instances of "maccharoni" in English cooking prior to the eighteenth century. Does anyone have any idea where she pulled the above recipe from? Also, grating infers a rather hard cheese. What kind of cheese would likely have been used? Cheddar is definitely not right as cheddaring is not period. Akim Yaroslavich Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 10:49:47 -0800 From: "Laura C. Minnick" Subject: Re: SC - Re: SC- Macrows vs the computer This looks alot lot the version in _Curye on Inglysche_ which would certainly be the right time. I've used Jack and Parmesan (fresh grated, not the stuff in the can) and they both worked fine. Don't use mozzarella- it just maes a mess. 'Lainie RANDALL DIAMOND wrote: > My earliest recipe for macrows is one in in > Elisabeth Aryton's ENGLISH PROVENTIAL > COOKING which she states is from a feast > of Richard II in 1390. I don't see eating it > with the fingers though as it had cheese too. > MACARONI CHEESE! Jesse! > > "Macrows. Take and make a thin foil of dough, and carve > it into pieces, and cast them on boiling water, and seeth > it well. Take cheese and grate it and butter cast beneath > and above.... and serve it forth." > Akim Yaroslavich Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 00:40:12 EDT From: CBlackwill@aol.com Subject: Re: SC - Dumplings LrdRas@aol.com writes: > Could you share the original recipe (preferably also the English translation) > for those on the list who may not have access to this important recourse? > I have it but many do not. > > Ras Sure. Here it is, as it appears in the Redon text "The Medieval Kitchen": WHITE RAVIOLI Take some good provatura and pound it well, then, while continuing to pound, add a little butter, some ginger, and some cinnamon. For one provatura add three well-beaten egg whites and an appropriate amount of sugar. Mix all these things together. Then make ravioli the length and thickness of a finger. Then roll them in good flour. Note that these ravioli should be made without a dough. Boil them gently so that they do not break. Remove them when they have boiled, and place them in a bowl with sugar and cinnamon. You can color them with saffron. Redon's Redaction (ingredients only, since the procedure is fairly well explained above) 1 1/4 # soft white cheese 1 1/2 Tblspoons butter, at room temperature 2 egg whites, lightly beaten (I beat them rather firm, personally, as it forms a better dumpling) 4 Tblspns sugar Flour for dredging 1/2 tsp ground ginger 1 tsp ground cinnamon salt a few threads saffron, crumbled (optional) I have found that if you substitute the sweet spices for dill and parsley or tarragon, and increase the salt a little, these make great savory dumplings. Balthazar of Blackmoor Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 13:36:11 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." Subject: SC - Beginners Redaction Challenge - Lasagne I'm in the mood to play and while I will probably take up Phlip's challenge, I noticed that the herb pie might be a little scary for a real novice, so I thought I would toss out a very simple, inexpensive recipe to play with, but with a lot of room for creativity. Here is a recipe for lasagne from Liber de coquina. A transcript of the original recipe follows the English translation. Bear ***************************************************** Of lasagne To make lasagne take fermented dough and make into as thin a shape as possible. Then divide it into squares of three fingerbreadths per side. Then take salted boiling water and cook those lasagne in it. And when they are fully cooked, add grated cheese. And if you like, you can also add good powdered spices and powder them on them, when they are on the trencher. Then put a layer of lasagne and powder {spices} again; and on top another layer and powder, and continue until the trencher or bowl is full. Then eat them by taking them up with a pointed wooden stick. ***************************************************** De Lasanis Ad lasanas, accipe pastam fermentatam et fac tortellum ita tenuem sicut poteris. Deinde, divide eum per partes quadratas ad quantitatem trium digitorum. Postea, habeas aquam bullietem salsatam, et pone ibi ad coquendum predictas lasanas. Et quando erunt fortiter decocte, accipe caseum grattatum. Et si volueris, potes simil ponere bonas species pulverizatas, et pulveriza cum istis super cissorium. Postea, fac desuper unum lectum de lasanis et iterum pulveriza; et desuper, alium lectum, et pulveriza: et sic fac usque cissorium uel scutella sit plena. Postea, comede cum uno punctorio ligneo accipiendo. Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 01:15:41 EDT From: CBlackwill@aol.com Subject: SC - Lasagne Challenge Allright. Game On!! Here is Balthazar's First On-Line Redaction: Please bear in mind that I still have a little trouble preparing food for small amounts of people, so my redaction may be quite large. Also, any comments from "those in the know" would be greatly appreciated. The Original: "To make lasagne take fermented dough and make into as thin a shape as possible. Then divide it into squares of three fingerbreadths per side. Then take salted boiling water and cook those lasagne in it. And when they are fully cooked, add grated cheese. And if you like, you can also add good powdered spices and powder them on them, when they are on the trencher. Then put a layer of lasagne and powder {spices} again; and on top another layer and powder, and continue until the trencher or bowl is full. Then eat them by taking them up with a pointed wooden stick." Balthazar's Version 3 lbs Semolina Flour 2 lbs AP Flour 6 cups warm water (110 deg F) 3 oz compressed yeast 1 oz salt 1 lb parmesan cheese, grated 3 Tb caraway seed, ground 1 Tbsp Ginger, ground 2 Tb anise, ground 3 Tb mace, ground Method: 1) Place water and yeast in mixer bowl and sprinkle in 1/2 the AP flour and the salt. Let sit until bubbly (about 15 minutes at warm room temp). 2) Add remaining flours and mix with dough hook at low speed for 10 minutes, or until dough is smooth and elastic. Remove from mixer and knead an additional 10 minutes by hand. Form into a smooth ball, wrap in a damp cloth and place in a warm spot until doubled in bulk. 3) Meanwhile, combine spices and set aside. Bring 3 gallons water to a boil and add a little salt. 4) When dough is ready, punch it down and divide the dough in half. Work one half of the dough at a time, keeping the other covered until ready to use. Roll out each half of dough using a rolling pin or broom handle to 1/16 of an inch, or as thin as possible (you may have to further divide the dough to get it as thin as necessary). Using a sharp knife or pastry wheel, cut the dough into 2x2 inch squares, wrap in film or waxed paper, and refrigerate (or freeze) until ready to cook. Repeat with second half of dough. 5) When ready to prepare the dish, drop the dough by small batches into the boiling water and cook briefly, or until the dough rises to the surface. Remove and keep warm until all dough has been cooked. 6) Butter or oil a serving dish, and place a layer of cooked dough on the bottom. Sprinkle with grated cheese, and then with a little of the spice mix. You may wish omit mixing the spices in the initial recipe, and instead sprinkle each layer with a seperate spice. Continue the layering until the dough is used up (this may have to be done in seperate serving dishes). Sprinkle the top layer with a mixture of the cheese and spices, and serve hot. Note: As an alternative (though not documented) you may wish to include the spices in the actual dough. This dish would probably be very good for serving at a feast where advanced preparation is required, as the dough could be cooked ahead of time, frozen in a single layer, and then simply reheated in boiling water at service time. Again, please do not be hesitant to comment on this redaction. For instance, suggestions for another Italian period cheese would be appreciated. Balthazar of Blackmoor (who, by the way, considers a modern fork to be nothing more than a good, pointed stick) Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 00:30:23 -0400 From: "Bethany Public Library" Subject: SC - Lasagne Challenge Bal wrote: <<< The Original: "To make lasagne take fermented dough and make into as thin a shape as possible. Then divide it into squares of three fingerbreadths per side. Then take salted boiling water and cook those lasagne in it. And when they are fully cooked, add grated cheese. And if you like, you can also add good powdered spices and powder them on them, when they are on the trencher. Then put a layer of lasagne and powder {spices} again; and on top another layer and powder, and continue until the trencher or bowl is full. Then eat them by taking them up with a pointed wooden stick.">>> <> Having made this recipe en masse, we once chose to interpret it as not layered, but "stacked". We made our noodles in the shape of diapers (that's diamonds or kites to you). Presentation: arrange 8 diapers in a star pattern with one point facing inwards. Strew with the cheese and spices. Re-layer exactly on the top of the former diapers. Stacked in this fashion they hold their shape fairly well. We froze them like this for the event, and then simply re-heated and served. What you get is a thick moravian star shape dusted with the spices on top. It's also easier to get to it with the skewers or pointed sticks. Aoife Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 07:30:26 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Lasagne Challenge CBlackwill@aol.com wrote: > stefan@texas.net writes: > > Balthazar, where is this original recipe from? > > Stefan, I am not certain, but I think it may be from Kiber de coquina, or > Martino's Libro de arte coquinaria. It was posted as a redaction challenge, > and so I gave it a shot. I can't remember who the original poster was (I > think it may have been Bear or Suleyman), or the subject line of the original > post. IIRC, Bear posted it. It's from the Morgan Library's MS Buhler 19, recently published in an edition by Scully entitled "The Neapolitan Recipe Collection" Adamantius Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 09:05:26 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." Subject: RE: SC - Lasagne Challenge the lasagne recipe is from Liber de coquina. Bear Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 13:34:03 EDT From: "Catherine Hartley" Subject: Re: SC - Lasagne Challenge You can find it (the original, a translation, plus a redaction) in "The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Itlay" By Odile Redon, et al. Caitlin of Enniskillen Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 21:26:43 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Re: Kuskenole, a question RuddR@aol.com wrote: > What is the cressee recipe? What medieval recipe collection is it in? Is > there really an illustration that goes with it? Where can I find this > source? I'd be interested in seeing this material. Constance Hieatt and Robin Jones, "Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii", Speculum v. 61, October 1986, pp 859-882. The original recipes are in 13th-century French, with an English translation by Hieatt and Jones. Here's what it sez for cressee, translated from Add. 32085 : "5. Cressee [crisscross of noodles]. Here is another dish, which is called cresee.Take best white flour and eggs, and make pasta dough, and in the pasta dough put fine, choice ginger and sugar. Take half of the pastry, (which is or should be) colored with saffron, and half (which is or should be) white, and roll it out on a table to the thickness of your finger; then cut it into strips, then cut it into strips the size of a piece of lath; stretch it out on a table as illustrated [see diagram, one color is presumably to be crossed over the other]; then boil in water; then take a slotted spoon and remove the cressees from the water; then arrange them on, and cover them with, grated cheese, add butter or oil, and serve." The diagram is a rectangular grid 4 squares high by eight wide. > Rudd Rayfield Adamantius Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2000 23:39:45 -0500 From: david friedman Subject: SC - Cressee webbed We had a small cooking workshop today, and one of the things I did was cressee--the other Anglo-Norman recipe with a picture. I thought it was interesting, so took some pictures with my new digital camera. You can find the result at http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/cressee/cressee_recipe.htm My thanks to Adamantius for pointing out cressee and its picture in a recent post. The instructions say to roll out the pasta dough to the thickness of a finger, which I take to be about 3/8". I'm not assuming that this is the same "finger" unit as in the Cuskynoles, which would be somewhat more. But even at 3/8, it is pretty thick. It works reasonably well that way, but it occurred to me that one interesting variant to try would be to roll the whole thing thin after it was assembled but before it was boiled. One problem with the recipe is getting enough contrast in color between the plain and the yellow strips. One way is by using a lot of saffron--but the result looks better than it tastes, unless you really like saffron. Another possibility that Elizabeth suggested but that I have not yet tried is to use the egg yolks in what will be the yellow dough and the whites in what will be the plain dough. David/Cariadoc http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 13:13:39 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Cressee webbed david friedman wrote: > The instructions say to roll out the pasta dough to the thickness of > a finger, which I take to be about 3/8". I'm not assuming that this > is the same "finger" unit as in the Cuskynoles, which would be > somewhat more. But even at 3/8, it is pretty thick. It works > reasonably well that way, but it occurred to me that one interesting > variant to try would be to roll the whole thing thin after it was > assembled but before it was boiled. This was the point of my question regarding the workability of the recipe. 3/8" seems rather thick, but we don't know for sure how tough or glutenous this dough is, since that would depend largely on the flour used and how long it's kneaded. Also, if it _is_ that thick, can it be compensated for by a longer boiling? It occurs to me that thicker pastas seem to tend to be dropped into boiling water, and then simmered, rather than cooked at a full rolling boil, for a longer time. This also adds a bit of credibility to the 17th century English vermicelli recipes that speak of boiling them for an hour. An added issue is the question of whether a good amount of sugar has any significant effect on the texture: it is considered by bakers to be a dough tenderizer. Regarding your variant, in which you roll the woven strips again, did you roll them to finger thickness after weaving, or thinner? Oh, I've just gone back and reread. Sorry. Now, another possibility, which the recipe itself seems to suggest, is that the woven structure is grasped by the ends (which would also help pinch the ends together) and stretched to some unspecified additional length, which would also tend to put some strengthening tension (I think) on the entire thing, while thining it at the same time. > One problem with the recipe is getting enough contrast in color > between the plain and the yellow strips. One way is by using a lot of > saffron--but the result looks better than it tastes, unless you > really like saffron. Another possibility that Elizabeth suggested but > that I have not yet tried is to use the egg yolks in what will be the > yellow dough and the whites in what will be the plain dough. Maybe. I had gotten the impression, from sources like Scully, that a number of recipes calling for eggs may be calling for the yolks only, in any case. On the other hand, a lot of pasta is made from a relatively yellowish durum flour in any case, sometimes artificially colored. On occasions when I've made pasta with AP or "plain" flour, it often seems to cook to a fairly pale color, and if I add saffron to the dough, especially if in the form of whole threads, I'd think the change in appearance would be reasonably noticable. I wonder if it's possible that the flavor of saffron that is less than fresh is lost before its capabilities as a colorant. Or maybe these people just like it. Adamantius Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 00:02:34 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Double cream Sue Clemenger wrote: > Don't know why it wouldn't work, although you might want to experiment > first. The recipe sounds very similar to some Alfredo sauces I've seen > recipes for. > --Maire > > deborah minyard wrote: > > Now that I'm more informed (Thanks to all), here'es my quandary > > I've found double cream 5.95 for 6 oz. > > The recipe is a pasta with a sauce of double cream, parmesan cheese,and > > nutmeg. Would it work just as well with reduced whipping cream or added > > butter? The fease it for about 80-90 people. It ought to work if you time it right. You could probably do this with about two gallons of heavy cream, a pound or so of unsalted butter, maybe 8-10 pounds of dry pasta, or about 12 pounds fresh pasta. Basically what you do is heat about 3/4 of the cream in a wide, heavy-bottomed pan like a brazier, until it begins to reduce and thicken. Stir frequently to avoid burning, and watch for any tendency to boil over. Keep the butter cold, and cut it into small pieces, maybe 1/2 Tbs. chunks or smaller. When the cream has thickened enough to coat the back of your spoon, remove from the heat and start adding the butter a few pieces at a time, stirring constantly until the butter is fully melted and incorporated into the cream before adding the next batch, another few pieces. As you progress you can add more butter at each interval. When your butter is all whipped into the sauce, you can add your hot boiled noodles and toss in 2-3 pounds of grated Parmaggiano. Toss until the cheese is incorporated (you can figure out your own nutmeg input, I don't do that newfangled stuff), and adjust the moistness with the remaining cream. Consider adding some salt to taste, but _after_ the cheese is included. Yes, this does resemble some Fettucine Alfredo recipes, although the cream is not in the original from Alfredo's Restaurant in Rome. It uses only a particularly white local butter similar to that French stuff from the Loire Valley that is used to make real beurre blanc, Parmaggiano, a bit of the water from boiling tha pasta, salt and pepper. Does this come from a period source? Adamantius Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 12:37:18 -0600 From: "Robbin Long" Subject: Re: SC - Homemade period noodles/pasta From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I'm playing around with a Lenten recipe from Granado: noodles (made from flour, bread crumbs, oil, water, and saffron), and served with a garlic-walnut sauce. (Yes, I will post the recipe when I have translated and redacted it.) I've never made pasta before, nor cooked with fresh pasta. I've rolled out some of the dough (to about 1/16", which is as thin as I can get it with a rolling pin). I cut it into thin strips, and have them set aside and drying. The rest of the dough is in the fridge, awaiting its turn. The recipe says to cut it into squares, or as desired, so I figure I'll do a couple of small batches in different sizes/shapes. I know that fresh pasta requires less cooking time. How else does it differ from the dried boxed stuff? How long can I store it, and in what way? (Keep in mind this recipe has no eggs.) And what are the other questions I should be asking, if I knew enough to ask them? Lady Brighid ni Chiarain Settmour Swamp, East (NJ) <<<<<<<<<<<<<< I have been lurking for a bit, but I think I can help with this. I haven't tried my hand with period recipes, yet, but I make my own pasta for mundane cooking. If you are cooking pasta right after making it, allow only a 30 sec to 2 min cook time, depending, of course on the thickness and shape of the noodle. Experiment a little with this until you find a time that gives a good consistency. Try to stick with durum or semolina flour in your noodles (the two terms are not necessarily interchangeable, but both will work), as it gives a noodle that will stand up to the boil without falling apart. Be absolutely sure to get the liquid to boiling before adding the noodles and monitor them closely. As for storage - in the short term, they keep very well fresh in the fridge for up to a week, but longer than that and they get mushy and may mold. Use a tupperware container that allows a little air space, rather than a plastic bag. For slightly longer term, dry the noodles in a dry place - those in humid climes may wish to do this in a very low oven - for one to two hours (dry and somewhat stiff, but still pliable), then bag them and freeze them. They will keep up to two months. You can also completely dry the pasta (@24 hours) and store it in a sealed brown paper bag in the pantry for several weeks, but I notice a big drop in taste by this method. If the pasta is dried thoroughly, even egg-based mixtures can be stored this way. If you want to be period, then I would continue to roll and cut the pasta as you are doing. Alternatively, if you can find it, there is a ridged board that is used to cut Japanese soba and udon noodles in a traditional style that dates back into our period. However, if you want to abandon technique for ease, I really think there is absolutely no substitute for a Mercato Atlas 150 hand- crank pasta machine. Extruded noodles are simply not the same as the rolled and cut. The texture becomes firmer and more substantial from the rolling process. Expect to pay anywhere from $29-$65 depending where you shop. How are they different - taste mainly. There really is no comparison. I especially prefer them in baked pasta dishes, as it is not necessary to pre-boil them, and they absorb flavor more readily. Broinnfhionn Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 10:03:34 -0800 From: Susan Fox-Davis Subject: SC - Macaroni and Cheese NOT OT NOR OOP! OK, I don't use the sweets in it. But how is this NOT macaroni and cheese? Another translation I've seen has the cook poke a hole in the paste 'fillet' which makes a long, holed noodle, very like the classic Blue Box. " Roman Noodles. Blend meal which has been separated from chaff with water in the best way. When it has been blended, spread it out on a board and roll it with a rounded and oblong piece of wood such as bakers are accustomed to use in such a trade. Then when it has been drawn out to the width of a finger, cut it. It is so long you would call it a fillet. It ought to be cooked in rich and continually boiling broth, but if, at the time, it must be cooked in water, put in butter and salt. When it is cooked, it ought to be put in a pan with cheese, butter, sugar, and sweet spices." - Platina's De honesta voluptate (On Right Pleasure), the M. E. Milham 1998 translation, p. 329 Selene Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 18:20:36 -0600 From: "RANDALL DIAMOND" Subject: SC - Macaroni and Cheese NOT OT NOR OOP! Susan Fox-Davis wrote: >>>>OK, I don't use the sweets in it. But how is this NOT macaroni and cheese? Another translation I've seen has the cook poke a hole in the paste 'fillet' which makes a long, holed noodle, very like the classic Blue Box.<<<< This one can't be anything else: "Macrows. Take and make a thin foil of dough, and carve it in pieces, and cast them on boiling water, and seeth it well. Take cheese and grate it and butter cast beneath and above..... and serve forth." c. 1390 at a feast for Richard II. This is listed in Platina I think. Recipe from Provencial English Cooking by Elisabeth Ayrton, Harper & Row 1980. Akim Yaroslavich Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 01:19:44 +0100 From: tgl@mailer.uni-marburg.de Subject: SC - Pasta << Any more I can make? >> Strangolapreti? (Manoscritto Lucano #53, ca. 1524) Th. Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 22:14:00 -0800 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - In a pasta making mood >How about period dishes? I'm thinking of homemade >pasta for my "Grande Feast". My favorite period pasta is rishta; you can find the recipe in the _Miscellany_. I've never done it with a pasta machine, but I suppose you could. Does anyone know if extruded pasta is period? As best I recall, none of the period descriptions I know imply that that is how it is being made. - -- David Friedman ddfr@best.com http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 14:19:53 -0500 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - In a pasta making mood david friedman wrote: > >How about period dishes? I'm thinking of homemade > >pasta for my "Grande Feast". > > My favorite period pasta is rishta; you can find the recipe in the > _Miscellany_. I've never done it with a pasta machine, but I suppose > you could. I assume you could. I prepared rishta in quantity for an event a while back, using dried Chinese eggless noodles (the pasta in rishta is a simple wheat-flour-and water dough, IIRC), and it was good, but I think I'd prefer a somewhat more saucy dish; the final stages of cooking involve letting the dish rest over low heat for an hour or so. I get the impression that in that hour, the eggless noodles will absorb almost all liquid in the dish, almost without the actual liquid quantity mattering. You get a sort of moist kugel, unless you keep the pasta quantities controlled. For that matter, does rishta, which has so many other ingredients, really count as a pasta dish? Adamantius Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 11:02:56 -0400 From: "Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy" To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Noodles/Pasta Gwynydd Of Culloden wrote: > I was having a discussion with a friend and he happened to mention that > "Marco Polo brought noodles back from China". I told him that I really > didn't think it was true but, when he asked, I couldn't tell him what the > earliest known European recipe for pasta was. Can anyone help here? Well, unless there are sources I'm not aware of (well obviously there are, but you know what I mean), it's actually an interesting question. I don't recall seeing any pasta recipes in the various Harpestraeng ms variants, and they appear to date from somewhere around 1250 C.E. They seem to represent a cuisine from a part of the world that has easy access to hard wheats. On the other hand, BL ms. Add. 32085, an English ms. written in French, dates from very shortly thereafter, maybe 1275 C.E. It has three obvious pasta recipes (a ravioli, a woven particolored mat of noodles called cressee, and -- ta da -- kuskynole, a fruit-filled pasta that gets boiled and then grilled). This suggests that pasta was known in _England_, as well as, possibly, in French court cookery, right around the time Marco was leaving for the Far East. Assuming, rightly or wrongly, that Marco "brought back" the idea of pasta to Italy upon his return in 1295, we're talking about a negative number of years for the idea to be established in England. That's quick. More likely, the English pasta recipes are either simply descended from foods known from the Roman Empire in Europe (for example, the tractae Cato describes), or perhaps either "brought back" by early Crusaders or carried across Europe from al-Andalus, where Islamic pasta dishes were presumably well known. Adamantius Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 18:43:30 +0200 From: Volker Bach To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Noodles/Pasta Gwynydd Of Culloden schrieb: > I was having a discussion with a friend and he happened to mention that > "Marco Polo brought noodles back from China". I told him that I really > didn't think it was true but, when he asked, I couldn't tell him what the > earliest known European recipe for pasta was. Can anyone help here? The poor man gets blamed for everything, doesn't he... Apparently the idea of boiling dough is hardly uncommon. Laurioux traces the etymological origin of lasagna to 'laganum', a Roman dish that, in Roman times, was probably baked rather than boiled (but then again, so's lasagna). He also traces 'tria' (a medieval Neapolitan expression for what he thinks are vermicelli) to the Muslim 'ittriya' (no reference for this). Does anyone know of a Middle Eastern source for pasta-like recipes? 13th century texts (he refers to an article "Pates" by himself in Medievales 17 (1989) for details on this, which I don't have handy) are the first to mention the words, and by the 14th century we have recipes and treatments in books on dietetics (a contemporary edition of the Tacuinum Sanitatis is mentioned, unfortiubately without identifying the edition). None of these sources to my knowledge makes any reference to China or Messer Millione. Got my reference: 12th century geographer Abu Abd'Allah Idsrisi (sp?) mentions the large-scale production of dried noodles (ittriya) in Trabia in (then still heavily Muslim-dominated) south Italy. Goodbye to that theory. Giano Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 14:21:06 -0400 From: johnna holloway To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Noodles/Pasta Gwynydd Of Culloden wrote: > I was having a discussion with a friend and he happened to mention that > "Marco Polo brought noodles back from China". I told him that I really > didn't think it was true but, when he asked, I couldn't tell him what the > earliest known European recipe for pasta was. Can anyone help here? > > Gwynydd Johnnae llyn Lewis sends greetings. Suggest to your friend that he needs to read the two articles by Charles Perry in PPC #9 entitled "The Oldest Mediterranean Noodle: A Cautionary Tale." pp.42-45. 1981. and "Notes on Persian Pasta" PPC #10; pp. 48-49. 1982. Or since that is a bit of a bother take a look at http://www.mrsleeperspasta.com/pasta_101.html for an article entitled PASTA 101 which seems to reproduce an article entitled PASTA: Where It Came From and How It Got Here by Corby Kummer from "The Atlantic Monthly," July, 1986. That should explain the pasta problem. Johnna Holloway Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 11:27:04 -0700 To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org From: david friedman Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Noodles/Pasta >Gwynydd Of Culloden schrieb: >> I was having a discussion with a friend and he happened to mention that >> "Marco Polo brought noodles back from China". I told him that I really >> didn't think it was true but, when he asked, I couldn't tell him what the >> earliest known European recipe for pasta was. Can anyone help here? > >The poor man gets blamed for everything, doesn't >he... > >Apparently the idea of boiling dough is hardly >uncommon. Laurioux traces the etymological origin >of lasagna to 'laganum', a Roman dish that, in >Roman times, was probably baked rather than boiled >(but then again, so's lasagna). Does he discuss the alternative that it derives from "losinge" via "Loseyns," which is a 14th c. English (I think) pasta recipe. I'm pretty sure that Charles Perry has a discussion somewhere, probably PPC, that links "losinge" "lasagne," and something Arabic. And I think he has an article arguing that there is no clear evidence of pasta in classical antiquity. >He also traces >'tria' (a medieval Neapolitan expression for what >he thinks are vermicelli) to the Muslim 'ittriya' >(no reference for this). Does anyone know of a >Middle Eastern source for pasta-like recipes? Al- Baghdadi and Ibn al-Mubarrad both have pasta recipes; the former predates Marco Polo by fifty years or so. I believe pasta recipes show up in the earliest post-Roman European cookbooks, which are roughly contemporary with Marco Polo. -- David Friedman ddfr@best.com http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ From: Sandragood@aol.com Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 17:03:15 EDT To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Noodles/Pasta - LONG (Charles Perry) For those who may not have access to the articles mentioned by Charles Perry, his notes on Persian Pasta were reprinted in the Medieval Arab Cookery book that was printed this year. It has most if not all the articles published in the Islamic Culture newsletter/magazine which is what PPC printed. For those that are unable to obtain either, I have included some excerpts from them. I appologize for the length but I know first hand how frustrating it can be not to have access to or funds to acquire needed refrences. Being new to the list I hope I have not overstepped. Please note that I am unable to include the various alphabet pronunciation marks (I cannot think of the correct terms for the dots, dashes, etc. that show up in other languages) and only give the spellings. These have been taken from the newly published Medieval Arab Cookery by Maxime Rodinson, A. J. Arberry & Charles Perry, Prospect Books, 2001. "The first recorded Iranian noodle dish is lakhsha. There are scattered references to it in Persian literature, but in the absence of medieval Persian cookery books we must go to the tenth-century Arabic compilation Kitab al-Tabikh for a recipe. The instructions call for a stiff dough of flour and water, 'rolled out thin with a rolling pin and cut with a knife into strips.'" " A noodle of some description was being made in the Greek-speaking world by the year 500 under the name itria, and one wonders whether there is a connection between it and lakhsha." " In Islamic times, at least, itriya referred to a small soup noodle which could be made by twisting bits of kneaded dough into shape, rather than rolling and cutting, so the Greek pasta may have been a different sort of noodle from the start." "As of the thirteenth century, however, lakhsha had disappeared from Arabic cookbooks and there was a new word for noodle, rishta, which is still common in Iran, the Arab world and Turkey. Rishta is the only word for noodle in the several thirteenth century Arabic cookbooks and in the poems of the fourteenth-century Persian rhymester Bushaq (Abu Eshaq-e Hallaj of Shiraz)." Hope this wets your whistle enough. I also hope it helps. THL Elizabeth Donnan (in the middle of her next A&S research project which this happens to be a part) Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 18:28:52 -0400 From: "Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy" To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Noodles/Pasta - LONG (Charles Perry) Sandragood@aol.com wrote: > "The first recorded Iranian noodle dish is lakhsha. There are scattered > references to it in Persian literature, but in the absence of medieval > Persian cookery books we must go to the tenth-century Arabic compilation > Kitab al-Tabikh for a recipe. The instructions call for a stiff dough of > flour and water, 'rolled out thin with a rolling pin and cut with a knife > into strips.'" > > " A noodle of some description was being made in the Greek-speaking world by > the year 500 under the name itria, and one wonders whether there is a > connection between it and lakhsha." > > " In Islamic times, at least, itriya referred to a small soup noodle which > could be made by twisting bits of kneaded dough into shape, rather than > rolling and cutting, so the Greek pasta may have been a different sort of > noodle from the start." > > "As of the thirteenth century, however, lakhsha had disappeared from Arabic > cookbooks and there was a new word for noodle, rishta, which is still common > in Iran, the Arab world and Turkey. Rishta is the only word for noodle in > the several thirteenth century Arabic cookbooks and in the poems of the > fourteenth-century Persian rhymester Bushaq (Abu Eshaq-e Hallaj of Shiraz)." It's probably worth noting that while rishta may be the only word for noodle in the 13th-century Arabic sources, it is not the only pasta. Off the top of my head, I can recall shushbarrak, which is a meat-filled pasta dish, and then there's another whose name I forget (tutmaj?) which calls for slices to be cut off a roll of dough, and then struck like a coin with the thumb. These last seem to be sauced with yogurt and mint, IIRC, and the shushbarrak are alive and well, and virtually unchanged, in modern-day North Africa. Adamantius From: Sandragood@aol.com Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 20:22:22 EDT Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Noodles/Pasta - LONG (Charles Perry) To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org Adamantius writes: > I can recall shushbarrak, which is a meat-filled > pasta dish, and then there's another whose name I forget (tutmaj?) which > calls for slices to be cut off a roll of dough, and then struck like a > coin with the thumb. These last seem to be sauced with yogurt and mint, > IIRC, and the shushbarrak are alive and well, and virtually unchanged, > in modern-day North Africa. Thank you for adding about the ravioli style pasta. I left it out because I was so long winded in my previous post. I admire those of you that can spout information from the top of your head. I have only just begun my research so have not yet memorized the names and pages of these dishes. Many of my friends that have a copy of the book can do just that. I have to refer to the actual book. :-) For clarification though, salma is the noodle that is struck like a coin. Tutmaj is a noodle that is rolled out and cut. They are both served with a yogurt, mint and garlic sauce and are both served with fried meats. The only other difference in the two is salma mentions onions also. Shushbarak is a tutmaj dough stuffed with meat and served in a yogurt sauce. Rishta is more like a beef soup with noodles. It is important to note also that rishta is a dried noodle whereas salma and tutmaj are both a fresh noodle. Elizabeth Donnan From: "E. Rain" To: Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 09:41:19 -0700 Subject: [Sca-cooks] Timbale was: Disturbing item from the CIA good morning from Eden, who needs an excuse to stop translating for a while... Gunthar wrote re the CIA comment that Timbales have been around for a millennium: > Very pretty and tasty looking. But once the > chef had presented the dish he made the statement > "A dish exactly like was served over 1000 years > ago." Um....excuse me? Not only was the tomato > sauce a major giveaway but I haven't seen anything > like a timbale in any corpus. And how old is ziti? Well the word "exactly" was certainly out of line, and the time frame was stretched past the data I have available, but timbale like dishes do appear in the medieval Italian corpus: Torta de Lasagne, from the 14th c. Neapolitan "Liber De Coquina" is a dish lined with lasagne then filled with raviolis, eggs, cheese etc in layers. It's then decorated with a dough sculpture, but the basic dish is there. The Torta Parmesana present in at least 3 different 14th c. Italian texts lines a pot with "paste" and then fills it with layers of pastas, meat, eggs etc. See PPCs 59 & 61 for a discussion of this dish and it's development into modern timbales (though I don't care for the article's claim that the dish goes back to Babylonian times) I'm told timbales are heavily present in Scappi, but I haven't worked with it much yet to confirm this myself. (so many books so little time!) As for Ziti, if you look at the Martino corpus (Italian 15th c.) you find "To make a devised meat after the Romane manner." which is pasta which you form by wrapping it around a stick to make hollow straws i.e. ziti or penne. Eden - Italian girl Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 13:04:06 -0400 From: "Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy" To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Timbale Michael Gunter wrote: >> but timbale like dishes do appear in the medieval Italian corpus: > > Great information! Thanks! I need to play with > these recipes sometime. I'd love to do them. I can't and won't say they don't, but it should be noted that at least modern timbale are more or less the containers they're cooked in, with a huge variety of ingredients and varying cooking methods. Some have a lining pastry, many don't, some are essentially schtuff mixed with custard and baked in a bain- marie. and most of them are fairly small, along the lines of a double shot glass. Which is not to say they could not share a common ancestry with Italian torta of various types, but then a lot of Italian tortas from period have survived, in largely unchanged form, to the present day. Adamantius From: "E. Rain" To: Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 13:15:41 -0700 Subject: [Sca-cooks] Timbales/Tortas Adamantius wrote: > >> but timbale like dishes do appear in the medieval Italian corpus: > > I can't and won't say they don't, but it should be noted that > at least modern timbale are more or less the containers they're cooked in, > with a huge variety of ingredients and varying cooking methods. Some have > a lining pastry, many don't, some are essentially schtuff mixed with > custard and baked in a bain-marie. and most of them are fairly small, along the > lines of a double shot glass. Which is not to say they could not share a > common ancestry with Italian torta of various types, but then a lot of Italian > tortas from period have survived, in largely unchanged form, to the present day. Hmm, sounds like you're mostly seeing Timballini (single serving timbale) I usually think of timbale on the grand scale myself. Here's the modern definition from Fant & Isaac's Dictionary of Italian Cuisine: "Timballo - Timbale; traditionally, a pie or varied ingredients molded and baked; sometimes, =Bomba; sometimes a filled pastry. Today, even lasagna is sometimes classed as a kind of timballo. A timballetto or timballino is an individual, unmolded serving." Very open to interpretation :-> FYI the term comes from Timpano, an Italian word for drum, and does not seem to have been used in a culinary context pre 1600 (Florio doesn't include it & I haven't come across it looking at various earlier cookbooks) the first definite citation I can find right now is 1778, per the PPC 61 article, If anyone has the full text of scappi & wants to skim for timbale I'd love to have that link confirmed, it's not among the excepts included in Faccioli. 14th & 15th c recipes seem to use only variants of the word torta... Vincente asked: > Eden, do you have the texts/translations? These sound > absolutely fantastic. I've only done a partial redaction so far, but yeah, it's shaping up pretty amazingly. PPC 59 has the 14th c. Neapolitan text for Torta Parmesana I think translated into English. If you can read 14th c. Venetian ;-> it's also on Thomas' website: http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~gloning/frati.htm recipe#112 more Italian versions can be found in Faccioli's "L'arte della cucina in Italia" Failing that, the proceedings of this years Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery should include my translation of the 14th c. Tuscan version :-> Eden From: "E. Rain" To: Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 13:21:17 -0700 Subject: [Sca-cooks] still on Timbales Mercedes wrote: > Mario Batali made somthing similar on his show - he called it > a pastitsio I believe That would be a variant of the Venetian name for the dish: pastisso/pastizzo Eden Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 06:25:22 -0500 To: sca-cooks@ansteorra.org From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] again from Purgatory Also sprach 'Lainie: >And as regards teh Blue and Yellow box, he sez: >> I've yet to see any documentation that _macaroni_ in it's modern shape >> is historic. Pasta and cheese, yes, I've seen enough of that, mostly a >> flat, wide noodle like modern lasagne. ANd not covered in processed >> cheddar, American, or Velveta. > >Cartwheels? Dinosaurs? Spaceships? Footballs? I have a vague memory of >Wookie-shaped pasta, but perhaps I'm lucky and just hallucinating >that... > >Pasta is pretty easy to make flat. How far back do pasta extruders and >such go? Master A? Phlip? Y'all know about that sort of thing? What >about manicotti? Ziti? And long skinny spaghetti? Platina mentions tubular pasta, rolled by hand and then pierced with an iron rod, a skewer or something like that. IIRC. He's probably not the first. Adamantius From: "Terry Decker" To: Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] again from Purgatory Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 07:26:00 -0600 IIRC, the first mention of gnocci is late 13th Century and extruded pasta appears in the 14th. I also seem to remember something about tubular pasta and Platina (15th Century), but my copy is not at hand. Bear Edited by Mark S. Harris pasta-msg