Lobster: clove and gilly-floure
vin[e]gar is their best sauce; also buttered with vinegar and pepper they give
strong nourishment to an indifferent stomach.
Sea Hauke. Aquila marina. .... Hath a moist and soft flesh ... and rank, therefore to be
eaten with alliate sauce. Its an unpleasant fish, and not sweet, therefore only
eaten by poor people.
Salmon: they are best sod [boiled] in
wine vinegar and salt, or else parboild, being cut into pieces and stuck with
cloves, broild upon a gridiron, basted with butter, and served in with sauce
made of vineger, cinamon, and sugar.
There are some interesting ideas here for sauces to serve with fish.
For lobster, the author appears to suggest ‘clove and gilly-flower vinegar’, suggesting
two ingredients. It may be that he meant only the single ingredient of the ‘clove
gillyflower’ (Dianthus caryophyllus),
or Clove pink – a clove-scented variety of the Carnation. This flower was widely used in recipes and
herbal remedies in the past - a gillyflower sauce for beef was noted in Wynken
de Worde’s Book of Kerynge [Carving]
(1508.)
Gillyflower Vinegar.
Gillyflowers
infused in Vinegar and set in the Sun for certaine dayes, as we do for Rose
Vinegar do make a very pleasant and comfortable vinegar, good to be used at
times of contagious sickness, and very profitable at all times for such as have
feeble spirits.
Acetaria (1699),
John Evelyn
The Sea Hauke was a
small mystery to me, but I think it refers to the Eagle-ray, now designated Myliobatis Aquila. The suggested
accompaniment is none other than garlic sauce – a suitably strongly-flavoured
and rank (to some) sauce for the ‘rank flesh’ of this fish. The word comes from
Allium, ‘A large genus of
Liliaceous plants, of which garlic, the onion, leek, chive, shallot, and the
British wild flower Ramsons are species.’
Garlicke Sauce (No. 272.)
Pound two cloves of
garlick in a marble mortar, with a piece of fresh butter about as big as a
nutmeg; rub it through a double hair sieve, and stir it into half a pint of
melted butter, or beef gravy.
Apicius
redivivus:or, the Cook’s Oracle,(1817) by William Kitchiner.
As for the salmon, I am greatly intrigued by the idea of the
sweet-sour-spicy sauce of vinegar, sugar, and cinnamon suggested by the writer,
but am unable to find a specific recipe for you. It would be easy enough to
concoct, however, following the basic principles of infusing the spice in hot vinegar, and sweetening to
taste.
I sense a post on flavoured vinegars on the horizon.
Quotation for the Day.
If I had the choice between smoked salmon and tinned
salmon, I'd have it tinned. With vinegar.
Harold
Wilson.
6 comments:
Are these clove scented carnations still available? I searched clove pink and it pulls up carnations but carnations in the US have a very sweet, unclovelike smell. Any knowledge on this?
Les, This is probably a Dianthus, commonly called 'Pinks', it is in the Carnation family. Clove scented pinks are quite common ☺ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianthus_caryophyllus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianthus_caryophyllus
Les, these are the clove-scented 'pinks'. They are sold everywhere under the names Dianthus or Pinks.
Those carnations are available in the US, search under the Latin name. I have wanted to make this for ages but haven't ordered the carnations. There is something wonderful about the scent. I got some pricy murky green perfume absolute that wouldn't be edible but it does give the dark ghost of carnation just misses the lightness the the real flower. I wonder if that comes out in the vinegar??
Off topic again, I'm afraid. Pre-Roman olive pit (also celery & coriander seeds) found in UK excavation. V interesting.
Thanks JB Bernier.
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