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anise-msg - 4/3/10

 

Period use of the spice anise.

 

NOTE: See also the files: spices-msg, herbs-msg, galangale-msg, G-of-Paradse-msg, merch-spices-msg, saffron-art, sumac-msg, spice-storage-msg, spice-mixes-msg, comfits-msg.

 

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NOTICE -

 

This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I  have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

 

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

 

I have done  a limited amount  of  editing. Messages having to do  with 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

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Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 21:27:06 -0400

From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>

Subject: Re: SC - hi, anise

 

Anise is mentioned in Apicius, Platina, the Form of Cury, and various

Spanish cookbooks.

 

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain

Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)

 

 

Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 00:40:44 EDT

From: LrdRas at aol.com

Subject: Re: SC - hi, anise

 

harper at idt.net writes:

<< Anise is mentioned in Apicius, Platina, the Form of Cury, and various

Spanish cookbooks. >>

 

Anise originated in Egypt from which it spread to the middle east and then

throughout the Mediterranean basin. It was used as a medicinal and as a

flavoring agent.

 

Ras

 

 

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 10:58:21 -0500

To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Looking for a recepit

 

Also sprach Barbara Benson:

>I am looking for receipts that prominently feature Anise Seeds (not in

>comfit).

>I was hoping that the combined knowledge of those on this lovely list might

>help me come up with something. Ideally I would like a savory or meat dish

>(boiled would be lovely! wink, wink;) but a non comfit sweet that, again,

>prominently features anise would be good.

>Even a receipt that says "and add spices" or some such vagueness, that could

>be construed to feature anise seeds would be acceptable.

 

The compost recipe in The Forme of Cury uses anise seeds. It's a

mixed pickle of fruits and vegetables in a honey-mustard wine/vinegar

sauce, with various spices, including anise.

 

Adamantius

 

 

From: Christina Nevin <cnevin at caci.co.uk>

To: "SCA-Cooks (E-mail)" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Subject: RE [Sca-cooks] Looking for a recepit

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 15:57:13 -0000

 

> I am looking for receipts that prominently feature

> Anise Seeds (not in comfit). <snip>

> Glad Tidings, Serena da Riva

 

I'm not sure if you want whole seeds or not, but this is an excellent sauce

for meat, and tastes great as a pickled cucumber dish if you put slices in

an hour or so before serving. Alternately I guess cabbage would be OK,

though I've never tried it. I personally usually loathe aniseed (that and

celery - ick), but I like this recipe (though admittedly I go light on the

anise):

 

Buoch von gute spise #48. A little sauce. [Caraway & Anise Sauce]

Grind caraway and anise with pepper, vinegar, and honey, colour it yellow

with saffron, and add mustard. In this sauce you can prepare jellied meat

with parsley berries and some sauerkraut or turnips, anything you want.

 

ciao

Lucrezia

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Lady Lucrezia-Isabella di Freccia   |  mka Tina Nevin

Thamesreach Shire, The Isles, Drachenwald

mailto:thorngrove at yahoo.com <mailto:thorngrove at yahoo.com>  |

 

 

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 11:46:20 -0800

To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

From: david friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Looking for a recepit

 

>I am looking for receipts that prominently feature Anise Seeds (not in

>comfit).

 

Ask and you shall receive. I do like having things available in

machine searchable form. But I'm afraid the anise isn't really

prominent in any of them. And it isn't always clear if its the seeds.

 

 

The Soup Called Menjoire

Taillevent p. 112

 

First you need the necessary meat-Peachicks, pheasants or partridges

and if you can't get those, plovers, cranes or larks or other small

birds; and roast the poultry on a spit and when it is almost cooked,

especially for large birds like peachicks, pheasants or partridges,

cut them into pieces and fry them in lard in an iron pan and then put

them in the soup pot. And to make the soup you need beef stock from a

leg of beef, and white bread toasted on a grill, and put the bread to

soak and skim the broth and strain through a sieve and then you need

cinnamon, ginger, a little cloves, long pepper and grains of paradise

and hippocras according to the amount of soup you want to make, and

mix the spices and the hippocras together and put in the pot with the

poultry and the broth and boil everything together and add a very

little vinegar, taking care that it just simmers and add sugar to

taste and serve over the toasted crackers with white anise or red or

pomegranate powder.

 

---

 

How You Want to Make a Food of Hens

Daz Buoch von Guoter Spise p. B-7 (#28)

 

This is called King's Hens. Take young roasted hens. Cut them in

small pieces. Take fresh eggs and beat them. Mix thereto pounded

ginger and a little anise. Pour that in a strong pot, which will be

hot. With the same herbs, which you add to the eggs, sprinkle

therewith the hens and put the hens in the pot. And do thereto

saffron and salt to mass. And put them to the fire and let them bake

(at the) same heat with a little fat. Give them out whole. That is

called King's Hens.

 

---

 

Flampoyntes Bake

Two Fifteenth Century p. 53

[funny symbol should be a thorn]

 

Take fayre Buttes of Porke, and se=FEe hem in fayre Watere, and clene

pyke a-way =FEe bonys and =FEe Synewes, and hew hem and grynd hem in a

mortere, and temper with =FEe Whyte of Eyroun, and Sugre, and pouder of

Pepir, and Gyngere, and Salt; =FEan take neyssche Cruddis [soft curds],

grynd hem, and draw =FEorw a straynoure; and caste =FEer-to Aneys, Salt,

pouder Gyngere, Sugre; and =FEan take =FEe Stuffe of =FEe Porke, and putte

it on euelong cofyn of fayre past; and take a fe=FEer, and endore =FEe

Stuffe in =FEe cofyn with =FEe cruddys; and whan it is bake, take Pynes,

and clowys, and plante =FEe cofyn a-boue, a rew of on, and rew of

a-nother; and =FEan serue forth.

 

---

 

Recipe for Oven Cheese Pie, Which We Call Toledan

Andalusian p. A-64

 

Make dough as for musammana and make a small leafy round loaf of it.

Then roll it out and put sufficient pounded cheese in the middle.

Fold over the ends of the loaf and join them over the cheese on all

sides; leave a small hole the size of a dinar on top, so the cheese

can be seen, and sprinkle it with some anise. Then place it in the

oven on a slab, and leave it until it is done, take it out and use

it, as you wish.

---

 

A Dish of Pullets Suitable for the Aged and Those with Moistnesses

 

Clean a fat pullet and put in a pot and put with it the white part of

onions, soaked garbanzos, pepper, cumin, caraway, anise, oil and

salt. And when it boils, throw in rue and cinnamon. When it is done,

cover with many eggyolks and pounded almonds and clove and lavender,

and ladle out and serve.

---

 

All but the last of these are in the Miscellany, webbed on my site.

There are a few more in the 13th c. Andalusian cookbook (where the

last one came from).

--

David/Cariadoc

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/

 

 

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 12:35:25 -0800

To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

From: lilinah at earthlink.net

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Anise Seed Recipes

 

Many German recipes use anise. I know it was in a number of the

dishes i made for Boar Hunt 2001. Recipes on my website, starting at:

http://witch.drak.net/lilinah/2001Menu.html

 

Anahita

 

 

Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:09:15 +0100 (CET)

From: Volker Bach <carlton_bach at yahoo.de>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Anise and Bread - Pliny Re: The benefits of Anise

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

 

I found another reference for a bread recipe with

anise in the bread...I only have an english translation:

 

Translation: by Andrew Dalby

White Bread. Bread made from wheat is the best and most nutritious of all foods. Particularly if white, with a moderate use of yeast and salt, the dough kneaded midway between dryness and rawness, and with a little anise, fennel seed and mastic, it is very fine indeed. One with a hot constitution should include sesame in the dough. If wishing to add more moistness to the bread, knead in some almond oil.

-Dalby, Andrew, Flavours of Byzantium, Great Britain: Prospect Books, 2003

 

I have yet to find a transliteration of the original recipe. I tried this the first time with caraway, because I didn't have anise or fennel in my cabinet and I just wanted to give a try. I found the caraway too strong a flavor against the use of the white flour. I had not had come across a recipe before for mastic either, and after my first time trying this recipe looked for a source.

 

Now I have some mastic, is it supposed to be ground to

a powder or possibly dissolved in something? I've never used this

ingredient before. But, I do look forward to playing with this recipe more.

______________________________________________________

 

I've worked with this and found that I liked it best

with a very gentle hand on the caraway and the

fennelseed dominant. You can put in whole fennelseeds

or grind them - I like the rustic appeal of whole

seends, but I suspect the Byzantines preferred them

ground.

 

Mastic can be had in lumps much like gum arabic or

powdered. Art supply shops alsao sometimes sell it in

little granules. I prefer to get mine in lumps because

I can thus be reasonably sure it hasn't been

adulterated, but pre-ground is more practical for

cooking (I use mine as chewing gum sometimes, too).

 

Be prepared to pay through your nose. Mastic has

gotten quite pricy - I think it's the Mediterranean

cooking craze and a fad for traditional materials in

art (I've only once used mastic in my art and wasn't

impressed).

 

Giano

 

 

Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:33:09 -0500

From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Anise and Bread - Pliny Re:  The benefits of

        Anise

To: euriol at ptd.net,    Cooks within the SCA

        <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

 

I pulled Andrew Dalby's  Flavours of Byzantium off the shelf here

last night and looked up this recipe. His translated version appears on

page 180.

 

The source of the original recipe is given as "De Cibis 2."

 

De Cibis is described by Dalby on page 48 as being "a manuscript

compilation...

addressed to a seventh century emperor, presumably by a court  

physician."

 

Looking in the bibliography, De Cibis is given as being edited by

Ideler. 1841-1842.

 

Going back to page 127, it turns out that a scholar named Ideler edited

a collection of various texts in the early 1840's. These were published

in Greek in Berlin.

This collection includes De Cibis.

 

Dalby notes that this collection is now available as part of the TLG

CD-ROM set that is published by the University of California at Irvine.

 

So what is this TLG set? TLC stands for Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. It's

described at

http://www.tlg.uci.edu/

I can tell you that various academic libraries offer access to the texts

now through the TLG database, so if you read Greek you should be able to locate the text in the database. I looked and it appears to be there.

*To view the texts in Greek, a Greek font has to be installed on your

computer.*

 

Johnnae llyn Lewis

 

euriol wrote:

> I found another reference for a bread recipe with anise in the  

> bread... I only have an english translation:

> Translation: by Andrew Dalby

> White Bread Bread made from wheat is the best and most nutritious of all

> foods. Particularly if white, with a moderate use of yeast and salt, the

> dough kneaded midway between dryness and rawness, and with a little anise,

> fennel seed and mastic, it is very fine indeed. One with a hot constitution

> should include sesame in the dough. If wishing to add more moistness to the

> bread, knead in some almond oil.

> -Dalby, Andrew, Flavours of Byzantium, Great Britain: Prospect  

> Books, 2003

> I have yet to find a transliteration of the original recipe.  

> snipped   Euriol

 

<the end>



Formatting copyright © Mark S. Harris (THLord Stefan li Rous).
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Comments to the Editor: stefan at florilegium.org