Step 4: Research, experimentation, and more research
For me, this is the fun part. This is the step where I look into what those ‘odd’ words mean and I try to figure out how some lost skills would have worked. I have six concerns about this recipe. I will outline them below and how I research to find the answers to my questions/concerns.
Measures: When a period recipe lists an actual amount to be used – unusual for some time periods and places – make sure that you understand how the measure is used in period (a cup is not necessarily a cup in today’s measures). In this recipe, I have four measures I need to check. If I look into measures in A Soup for the Qan, I find that there is an equivalent section in the scholastic work before the translation. The authors suggest that the amounts they have listed in the text are the modern equivalents and that there is a research paper with more period equivalents. They list these updated amounts as well in their text. The footnotes list the research paper. I will be using “Unification of Weights and Measures by the Mongol Empire as Seen in the Uigur and Mongol Documents” by Matsui Dai to approximate my values in the redaction.
Measure |
Equivalent Modern Meausre |
Liang |
40g |
Jin |
640g |
Cup |
None listed: I will have to go to a different source. |
*Telir |
None listed: I will have to go to a different source. |
Let’s move on to the cup. Okay, with in other recipes from this document and other documents from this time period in Asia, we find the occasional use of ‘cup’ but it is always associated with an adjective such as ‘small’ or ‘large’. This suggests to me that these cups are actual cups…used for drinking. Certainly, it is unlikely that a cup of oil is what we would automatically think of as a cup of oil. This is when assumptions come into play. See the next step.
Measure |
Equivalent Modern Measure |
Liang |
40g |
Jin |
640g |
Cup |
See Assumptions |
*Telir |
A basket for feeding animals or a bucket full |
Let’s move on to the Mutton. I have a few issues here. The first, I have already stated – availability. The Mongols ate a lot of mutton. The modern Australian/American doesn’t eat quit as much mutton. Sure, there are those, especially in Australia, who eat lamb often and thus lamb is commonly found in the shops in Australia. In America, the local butcher is able to get lamb if it is not readily available in the local shops. Mutton is a different animal (okay, not really. It’s just old lamb). I believe that the Mongols ate more mutton – and I believe, well-aged mutton – because the animal is larger. An older animal has been bred several years and would soon be of little use, so why not eat it? While a lamb is smaller and could provide offspring, milk, and then meat if given the years to complete that. The Mongols were a practical people. If we look at the difference in the actual meat, mutton is tougher, gamier meat that has long fibre strips when pulled; while lamb is sweeter, more tender, and shreds better than it pulls. It is possible to get mutton at the local butcher in my local shops but it takes a while to get in and often is only hogget. Hogget is the sheep that is no longer a lamb but hasn’t quite reached the gamey flavour of the older animal. So, taking in all of this, I will be using hogget in my redactions and I will be suggesting lamb in my redacted recipe.
Now that I know what meat I will be using, I need to look at the amount of meat – 2 legs, a head, a set of hooves. That is an amazingly large amount of meat for my family of three (two of which don’t eat sheep). If I were making this recipe for a feast, then yes, I would be all for this amount, but maybe not for my reaction work. Also, I don’t like working with animal heads. They can be difficult to get, smell bad when cooking, and cause my teenage daughter to sulk in her room for the day. I will try to acquire hooves from the butcher to run a trial. The head and the hooves of hoofstock often boil down to gelatine. I need to have a bit of a play to see if a bucket of water, a head, and four hooves would produce an aspic as I suspect that they will. If so, I will need to figure out how much natural gelatine would need to be added to the dish to make an approximate to this so that I can give that as an option for those who do not have access to or do not want to use hooves and heads.
How do you cook pomegranate? The first place I went to do a bit of quick research was google.com. Not surprising to me, this wasn’t overly helpful. It seems that we don’t bake pomegranates by themselves often nowadays. Delving a bit deeper, I did find that the skin and pith of the pomegranate is not poisonous to humans, we just don’t like the bitter flavour. So, it looks like I will be running a set of cooks to see just how you bake a pomegranate. Anyone have a tree nearby with a lot of ripe fruit on it?
As this is a long post, I will leave it here and see you all next week for assumptions.
~ Natal’ia