Epic Cooking: The Last Old Polish Feast: Difference between revisions

[[File:Korzenie.jpg|thumb|upright|"''Dalej inne potrawy, a&nbsp;któż je wypowie!''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verse 143</ref><br>Fragment of "General Memorandum for the Preparation of a Banquet" from ''Compendium Ferculorum'']]

: An insipid mush for the ill, made from overcooked chicken, ground into a pulp in a mortar (hence the name; a contusion is also about pounding) and passed though a sieve and thinned down with broth. No aromatics other than parsley. It's rather hard to imagine a dish like this at an opulent feast. Or that you could serve something of such consistency on a platter.

: Something between fresh cheese and jelly. It was made by boiling sweetened milk and adding lemon juice to curdle it. We're going to come back to this when we get to desserts.  

: A dessert quite similar to the arcas, but fit for lean days, as it was made from almond milk. The name means "white food" in French, which seems to be a pretty accurate description.  

: Young cod. I used this word to translate the Polish word ''pomuchla'', which actually refers to Baltic cod of any age, as opposed to cod caught in other seas. We will be returning to fish later on.

: The Italian word refers to Corsican dried pork sausage. In Polish, ''figatelle'' is an archaic word for meatballs. They could be boiled, fried or baked. Often seasoned raisins, they were served as a side to various dishes, including soups.  

: This word appears in ''Compendium'' only once, that is, in the "Memorandum", but not in any of the recipes, so it's hard to tell what Czerniecki meant by it. It could possibly refer to civet, fragrance fixative obtained from the glands found near the anus of an African weasel-like animal; or to Muscat-of-Alexandria raisins, known in Italian as ''zibibbo''; or to cubeb pepper.

: Just civet, it's a kind of fragrance fixative, obtained from the glands found near the same body part, but in a different animal, namely the Siberian musk deer. The culnary use of such fixatives was not uncommon, especially in parfumed dishes

: Natural gum obtained from the sap of ''Astragalus gummifer''. Today also known as E413, it may be used as food additive, for example, to make jellies stiffer.

: Pine nuts. Czerniecki used them interchangeably with pistachios.  

: Brignoles is a Frensh town famous for its plums and prunes. The Polish word "''brunelle''" may have referred to dried plums of any kind.