potted-foods-msg - 5/21/04 Potted foods in period and just out of period. Potted foods are cooked foods placed in containers sealed with fat. NOTE: See also the files: food-storage-msg, stockfish-msg, drying-foods-msg, meat-smoked-msg, pickled-foods-msg, canning-msg, campfood-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 00:51:33 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Other Foods Chris wrote: > I was wondering if someone has a period resiepe for Rillette. I am positive > it is > period. It is very similiar in cooking style to Confit, which is one of the > oldest known ways of preserving food. > > Aaron Hawksmoor Hmmm. Certainly the method for preserving rillettes is almost identical for that used to preserve confit de porc, d'oie, or du canard. And yes, it is old. Just how old appears to be unknown. On the face of it, though, it seems as if you're looking for proof of something you already seem to know, but on the strength of what, I don't know. Certainly if there were period evidence of such a preservative method being used, that would indicate the method was period. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any such evidence, nor any evidence pre-dating period, either. The period recipes in English and French for confits describe something very different, generally either candied seeds or fruits preserved in spiced syrup. The oldest reference to confit d'oie, etc., _that I'm aware of_, is probably 18th century. I remember being told by someone that Taillevent's Viandier contains a reference to rillettes, but upon checking the comprehensive Scully translation I can't find anything even close, unless you count "ribelettes", meaning rashers or lardons of bacon. For those who may not be up on all this stuff, rillettes, like the Savoyard dishes of confit of pork, duck, or goose, are made from lightly cured meat [usually pork, in cubes, but sometimes goose, rabbit, etc.] cooked in its own fat until much of their water content has evaporated. Confits are then sealed in pots of the fat covering and congealing over the meat to seal out the air, while rillettes are shredded, traditionally with two forks, pounded in a mortar and mixed with most of the fat, with only a thin layer covering it in the pot. It is eaten cold, as a kind of spread or pate. The frequently-less-than-informative Larousse Gastronomique makes no mention of the age of rillettes nor of rillons, their "big (i.e. coarser-ground) brother". Adamantius Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 16:43:21 EST From: LrdRas at aol.com Subject: Re: SC - potted meat alm4 at cornell.edu writes: << I have never heard that term before, what is potted meat? Angeline >> Here are 3 recipes I have. The first is a Pennsylvania Dutch one which would be suitable for your purposes. The second is a lengthier way of preserving meat and the source of the colloquial phrase 'scraping the bottom of the barrel'. Enjoy! :-) The 3rd one is a lengthy procedure also but is done in the tradition of the Languedoc region. Potted Meat (Made from cooked soup bone and veal shin) 2 1/2 cups stock 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 2 cups boiled meat (heaping) Salt and pepper to taste 1 1/2 tablespoons sage 2 hard-boiled eggs 1 grated nutmeg 1 teaspoon parsley (chopped) 1/3 teaspoon cinnamon Put the juice and meat and seasoning in a pan and cook for 10 minutes. The chop up the hard-boiled eggs and parsley together. Take a wet mold, put in meat, then layer of the egg and parsley and then meat again until mold is full. Put away to cool. ........................... This is how we used to do it... Meat potting is preserving meat in it's own grease in a large crock pot. This is how we did it. Early in the morning Dad killed a pig and started cutting it up. He gave the pieces to Mom who had the wood stove in the kitchen hot and ready to cook. She started frying the pork and prepared the 10 gallon crock pot. This pot was about 18 inches in diameter and 24 inches deep. Mother washed it, and got it just as clean as she could get it. As the pork fried, it gave off lots of grease. She took some of this very hot grease and poured it into the bottom of the crock, sealing and sterilizing the bottom. Then she put the meat she had just finished cooking down onto this grease. As she continued to cook throughout the day she added the well fried meat and covered it with the hot fat that came from the cooking process. By the evening the pig was all fried up and in the pot, covered over with a nice layer of lard that had hardened. As the days passed by, we dug down into the lard to where the meat was, pulled out what we needed, and put it in the frying pan. We cooked it good a second time to kill any bacteria that could have possibly gotten into it. Doing this not only sterilized the meat for eating, but melted off all the excess fat. The meat was taken out of the pan and the fat was poured back into the pot to seal up the hole we had just made getting the meat out. -Gordon Schaufertre. copyright © Al Durtschi ........................... Lou Pastis En Pott (Potted Meat) Ingredients (8 servings) 1/2 LB Lard 2 LB Lean beef 2 LB Lean pork 3 Bay leaves A few sprigs of thyme and rosemary 1 ts Juniper berries Salt and pepper 1/2 Bottle red wine (the near-black wine of Cabors or a Medoc) Instructions This is an unusual potted meat prepared only in the Languedoc. Serves 8 - 10 Time: Start at least 2 weeks ahead; 30 minutes plus 2 hours cooking, repeated 3 times First cooking: deep red Medoc) Second and third cooking: the same ingredients again each time You will need a large straight-sided earthenware pot. Scald the earthenware pot and grease it thoroughly with a little of the lard (you can line the bottom with a few fig or walnut leaves if you have them). Cut the beef and pork into slices, trimming the gristle and sinews as you do so. Put the bay leaves on the bottom of the pot. Lay in the meat slices, seasoning with the herbs, salt, and freshly ground pepper as you do so. Pour in the wine -- it should just cover the meat. Simmer the pot uncovered over a very low heat or in a preheated 250 deg F oven, for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until the volume is reduced by half. Allow to cool. Seal with a layer of lard, melted and poured over the cool meat. Cover with wax paper tied down with string. Leave the pot on a refrigerator shelf for a week. Then remove the lard seal and add in another 2 lbs pork and 2 lbs beef, the whole covered with wine, seasoned and cooked as before. Repeat the operation at the end of another week. You will now have a delicious dark jelly-meat which you can either eat hot or cold. If you continue to replace the volume you have removed, the pot can go on forever. -From: THE OLD WORLD KITCHEN - THE RICH TRADITION OF EUROPEAN PEASANT COOKING" by Elisabeth Luard, ISBN 0-553-05219-5 Ras Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 21:54:13 -0600 From: Stefan li Rous Subject: Re: SC - potted meat > I have never heard that term before, what is potted meat? > Angeline > potted meat, in my childhood was any of a variety of processed canned meat > products. In this category could be such favorites as Underwood's Deviled > Ham and other varieties, SPAM, canned corned beef. Basically cooked and > sealed in a tin. You could serve it at the Y3K dinner ;o) > > niccolo difrancesco The period or at least near-period description of potted meat is a little bit different than this, although there are some simularities. The best referance I can recommend is: "Waste Not, Want Not" in the Food and Society series, edited by C. Anne Wilson. 1991, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0 7486 0119 8. Chapter 3 is: Pots for potting: English Pottery and its Role in Food Preservation in the Post-medieval Period by Peter Brears. Basically he describes the progression from pasties and pies to preserving food especially meat and fish by sealing them in airtight containers. "In the late fifteenth century, ... this country's pottery industry entered a period of prolonged expansion... So useful were these new eathenwares that by 1569 the term 'potting' had been adopted to describe the whole process. He then describes the making of pies, as we have discussed here previously, the top is then punctured and butter poured in. Apparently early on it was common to cook the meat in the earthen crock, let it cool and then pour in the butter. It seems to have taken a while (about sixty years from my previous reading of this. I can't find it right now) for them to realize that it was much better to pour in the butter and seal out the air while the meat was still hot. There is also a mention of potting meat and fish in butter in the previous chapter (p22). I seem to remember that at first the meat was just put in the pot and covered with butter. Later on it was found to be better to shred the meat up first before pouring in the butter rather than leaving it in larger chunks. Peter Brears gives a lot more dates for the 17th and 18th century stuff than he does the earlier stuff. So I've had some trouble determining exactly which practices were done prior to 1600 and which weren't. For those interested in period food preservation techniques I highly recommend this book even though a large part of it deals with the time periods after the ones we study. - -- Lord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas stefan at texas.net Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 10:28:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Chris Stanifer Subject: Re: SC - duck and bread - --- Susan Fox-Davis wrote: > Balthazar sez: >> xtra duck fat? Sounds like Confit makin's to me... > Oh my that sounds good. Say, there's a war next > week here. Got a good confit recipe? I'm > having trouble find one, for some reason. Confit is actually one of the easiest things to make, and no real recipe is needed. It's a shame (and a wonder) that it is not used more often (aside from expense, of course). Get one whole duck (frozen is fine). Cut it up into "serving size" pieces (this means you choose how big or small you want the pieces. Seperate the leg and thigh, or leave them attached...it's up to you). Put some thyme, salt, pepper and bay leaf in a mortar, and smoosh it up real good. Put the duck pieces in a shallow bowl, rub the seasoning into them very well, and stick some garlic cloves in between them (as many as you like). Wrap it up and let it refrigerate overnight (24 hours is best). Heat a large skillet, and melt down about a pound of duck fat (or lard, if you don't have enough duck fat yet...Manteca works well for this, and is usually available in most supermarkets). Brown the duck pieces in the lard, turning them until the are evenly browned. Once they are browned, cover the skillet and simmer slowly for about an hour (they will be very tender at this point...that's what you want. The meat should be falling off the bone). When they are done, transfer them to a crock or a bowl, and pour the fat over them to COVER COMPLETELY (you may want to use some kind of weight for this). Let them cool to room temperature, and then they are done! They should last for about two weeks at room temp, or much longer under refrigeration. When you are ready to use them, just pull out a few pieces, scrape away a little of the excess fat, and do whatever you want to with them. So, essentially, the are bits of duck preserved in fat... It doesn't get much easier than that. Balthazar of Blackmoor Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 11:14:12 -0500 From: johnna holloway To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Meat Preservation Sources There seems to be some talk about meat preservation so I thought I would mention these books... Food Conservation. Ethnological Studies. edited by Riddervold and Ropeid. 24 papers from an international conference held in 1987. ISBN: 0907325408 Pub. by Prospect Books, 1988. Pickled, Potted, and Canned. How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World. by Sue Shephard. NY: Simon and Schuster, 2001. This is new. no footnotes but there is a bibliography. Quite readable. For actual instructions on how to preserve at home take a look at: Stillroom Cookery by Grace Firth. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, 1977. Subject headings in case you want to do some online exploring through library catalogues are Canning and preservation-History Food-Preservation-History Johnnae llyn Lewis Johnna Holloway Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 11:52:58 -0400 From: phoenissa at netscape.net (Ariane H) Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Smoked fish and meat--questions To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org (Cooks within the SCA) "Phlip" wrote: > Have you tried preserving water birds in their own fat- confits? I > understand that if done properly, they combine a reasonable shelf life > with immediate edibility. In my experience, even though confit does keep up to a month and can be exquisitely delicious, you still do have to thoroughly reheat the meat before eating it...which means building the fire, etc., and I believe the goal is to find something that can be eaten with no preparation. What about a pate or terrine? They can be made with just about any kind of meat (muscle-meat in addition to or even instead of liver) - poultry or rabbit, as well as pork or wild boar. I know it sounds like an extravagance, but if made with only enough fat as is required to keep it from spoiling, it doesn't have to be unhealthy. I often find them in cans or jars (usually imported from France), which don't need to be refrigerated and have a shelf life of several months. They same ought to go for homemade stuff as well, I guess, depending on how it's stored - in jars or maybe some kind of airtight ceramic container? In any case, it wouldn't need any extra prep once you arrived at camp, you can just slice it and eat it with bread, or however you like. Uunfortunately, I can't vouch for whether or not pates or terrines were made anytime within the SCA period. It doesn't seem unlikely, I just haven't come across any references or recipes...anyway, just an idea I thought I'd throw into the discussion. :) Vittoria Edited by Mark S. Harris potted-foods-msg Page 7 of 7