Title: p-marinating-msg
Subject: Period marinating of meats.
Author: Edited by Mark S. Harris
Last saved by: Mark S. Harris
Keywords: marination, marinate, meat, roast, grill, tenderize, medieval, period

p-marinating-msg - 7/16/09

Period marinating of meats.

NOTE: See also the files: pickled-meats-msg, roast-meats-msg, cheap-meats-msg, sauces-msg, Braised-Beef-art, cooking-oils-msg, broths-msg, roast-pork-msg, beer-in-food-msg.

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    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:58:06 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] marinating meat

Debra Hense wrote:
> How common is it in medieval recipes to specify
> that the meat be marinated in oils or sauces
> before cooking?
>
> I thought that most of the adjustments for the
> humors came from the cooking methods and
> the sauces added or stewed in, rather than
> marinated and grilled or baked.
>
> I ran into this because a fellow judge told an
> entrant that to improve their entry they should
> have marinated the meat in the sauce before
> cooking it.  Not that it appeared in the recipe
> instructions... But she said she had seen one
> recipe where it was done, but couldn't tell
> what the source was.

Wasn't there a cormarye recipe posted, like, yesterday or the day
before?  This is a pork loin dish marinated for several hours in things
like red wine, crushed garlic, carway seed, and coriander seed prior to
roasting. I forget what else is involved (pepper?), but it's an
excellent dish. IIRC, it is from The Forme of Cury. That may well be the
source that the judge was referring to. However, there doesn't seem to
be huge scads of evidence to suggest that this was widespread practice
in other dishes. It occurs to me that middle-class people living in
towns, for example, frequently bought their sauces ready-made, and I
expect it would call for a much greater volume of sauce to use it as a
marinade (what with there being no plastic bags and such).

You might also make a claim for Tarpeian Lamb, which is an Apician dish
for which a paste is made from pounded onion and spices (kinda like a
curry paste, actually, except uncooked before using) which is spread on
the meat, then roasted. The meat is then finished in liquid, IIRC, and
the onion-y crust presumably dissolves back into the sauce. But there's
no extensive period of marination.

Overall, though, apart from a simple lack of too many recipes calling
for marination, at least as far as I know, it would seem to have been
preferred practice in most of period Europe to parboil certain meats
before larding them for roasting, or else boiling, then frying.

Adamantius

Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 22:42:21 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] A reference Please?
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

<<< do any of you learned and generous people have a handy reference
to when (or if) oil and vinegar sauces turned into pre-cooking marinades?
All I need is a starting point.. 

Betsy >>>

You might start with a recipe from Harleian 279,  "To make Steyks of venson 
or bef. Take Venyson or Bef, & leche & gredyl it up broun; then take Vynegre 
& a litel verious, & a lytil Wyne, and put pouder perpir ther-on y-now, and 
pouder Gyngere; and atte the dressoure straw on pouder Canelle y-now, that 
the steyks be al y-helid ther-wyth, and but a litel Sawce; & then serue it 
forth."

The mixture of vinegar, verjuice and wine appears to be used as a basting 
sauce with pepper and ginger sprinkled on for seasoning.  Cinnamon is added 
just before serving.

Somewhat earlier, Apicius (269) provides, "Aliter assaturas; petroselini 
scripulos VI, laser scripulos VI, gingiberis scripulos VI, lauri bacas V, 
condimenti, laseris radicen scripulos VI, origani scripulos VI, ciperis 
scripulos VI, costi modice, piretri scripulos III, apii seminis scripulos 
VI, piperis scripulos XII, liquaminis et olei quod sufficit."

"Another way to roast meast; Six scruples of parsley, six scruples of 
silhium, six scruples of ginger, five bay berries, seasonings, six scruples 
of silphium root, six scruples of oregano, six scruples of cyperus, a bit of 
costus root, six scruples pyrethrum, six scruples of celery seed, twelve 
scruples of pepper, sufficient garum and oil."  Whether this is a marinade 
or a baste is open to question.  I suspect it may have been used in both 
manners.  The liquid portion of the recipe are olive oil and garum or 
liquimen, fermented fish sauces that take the place of vinegar.

Bear

Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 10:40:08 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Gervase Markham and "faux venison"
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On May 27, 2009, at 9:55 AM, Vandy J. Simpson wrote:
<<< I'm working on a menu for a late-period feast. One of the books I'd  
been reading, Tudor Food and Cookery, mentions that "Gervase Markham  
suggested that by marinating beef or ram-mutton in vinegar, beer and  
turnsole (a bluish colourant) you could produce counterfeit venison  
for a pie!" >>>

"111. Of baking red deer, or fallow, or anything to be kept cold.

"When you bake red deer, you shall first parboil it and take out the  
bones, then you shall if it be lean lard it, if fat save the charge,  
then put it into a press to squeeze out the blood; then for a night  
lay it in a mere sauce made of vinegar, small drink, and salt, and  
then taking it forth season it well with pepper finely beaten, and  
salt, well mixed together, and see that you good store thereof, both  
upon and in every open and hollow place of the venison; but by no  
means cut any slashes to put in the pepper, for it will of itself sink  
fast enough into the flesh, and be more pleasant in the eating: then  
having raised the coffin, lay in the bottom a thick course of butter,  
then lay the flash thereon and cover it all over with butter, and so  
bake it as much as if you did bake great brown bread; then when you  
have draw it, melt more butter, with three or four spoonful of  
vinegar, and twice so much claret wine, and at a vent hole on the top  
of the lid pour in the same till it can receive no more, and so let it  
stand and cool; and in this sort you may bake fallow deer, or swan, or  
whatever else you may please to keep cold, the mere sauce only being  
left out which is only proper to red deer.

"112. To bake beef, or mutton for venison.

"And if to your mere sauce you add a little turnsole, and therein  
steep beef, or ram mutton; you may also in this manner take the first  
for red deer venison, and the latter for fallow, and a very good  
judgement shall not be able to say otherwise than that it is of itself  
perfect venison, both in taste colour, and the manner of cutting."

		--Gervase Markham, "The English Housewife", ed. Michael R. Best,  
1986 McGill University Press

It appears to me that what's happening here is that venison is being  
marinated [hence "mere sauce"] overnight before being baked in a crust  
in an otherwise pretty straightforward manner. Markham is presumably  
advocating adding a little bluish coloring to the marinade to enhance  
the purple-red shade of the meat and create the illusion of venison.

I have no idea what that would do to the flavor, but with plenty of  
pepper, wine, salt, vinegar, and a ton of butter, one never knows.  
Texturally, my own experience is that  one long-baked red meat in a  
pie and served cold, is very much like another, with a dense and  
almost waxy mouth feel. Season any two alike, and there'll be some  
similarities. Season any two and color one to resemble the other, and,  
well, it'll resemble it to some extent.

Adamantius

Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 07:59:55 -0700
From: edoard at medievalcookery.com
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Gervase Markham and "faux venison"
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

-------- Original Message --------
From: "Vandy J. Simpson" 

<<< I'm working on a menu for a late-period feast. One of the books I'd been reading, Tudor Food and Cookery, mentions that "Gervase Markham suggested that by marinating beef or ram-mutton in vinegar, beer and turnsole (a bluish colourant) you could produce counterfeit venison for a pie!"

I'm thinking this may have been something they culled from one of their commentary sources, since I don't see Markham listed in the bibliography. (It's an old faded photocopy...) I *feel* like I've seen something like this somewhere else, but maybe I'm just convincing myself I have.
I've poked through what I can find of Gervase Markham on line, Kirrily Robert's website, but I'm not seeing a recipe that seems to relate to this.

Does anyone out there have any further suggestions? Sources? Memories? I've reached the point where I've read and re-read so many things, my eyes are crossed! >>>

This appears to be a popular trick.  In addition the recipe from
Markham's that Adamantius posted, there are three in Menagier:

And if you wish to make a piece of beef taste like venison of deer or
bear, if you are in bear country, take numble or leg of beef, then
parboil and lard it, spit and roast; and let it be eaten with (a sauce
of) wild boar's tail. Let the beef be parboiled, then lard it along its
length and cut into portions, and then put the hot boar's tail (sauce)
in a dish over your beef which first is roasted or boiled in boiling
water and taken out soon, for this is more tender than deer.  [Le
Menagier de Paris]

BEEF Like BEAR VENISON. A leg of beef. Do it in a black sauce of ginger,
clove, long and grain pepper, etc. And put in each bowl, two pieces, and
it will taste like bear.  [Le Menagier de Paris]

To Counterfeit Bear Venison from a Piece of Beef. Take flank, and let it
be chopped in large chunks as for loin stew, then parboil, lard and
roast: and then boil a boar's tail, and let your meat boil a little, and
throw sauce and all in a dish.  [Le Menagier de Paris]

- Doc

<the end>

Edited by Mark S. Harris	p-marinating-msg	 of