[SCA-AS] horseradish questiion

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> Hello all,
> So this year my garden seems to be having a big horseradish year.  Anyone 
> have some period suggestions on how I might prepare it so it keeps and do I 
> need to do anything speicial before I put it in mustard?
> Thanks for any suggestions you might have.

Well,
Brighid ni Chairain has done a period horseradish sauce and candied 
horseradish.

The horseradish-honey sauce is on her web page, here:

http://breadbaker.tripod.com/sauces.html

There's a collection of horseradish information, not all of it period, 
in the Florilegium file, 
http://www.florilegium.org/files/PLANTS/horseradish-msg.html

There's a mustard in Digby that calls for stirring the mustard with a 
horseradish root. The Closet Opened (sir Kenelme Digbie, KT) 1669 To 
Make Mustar

 The best way of making mustard is this: Take of the best mustard seed 
(which is black) for example a quart. Dry it gently in an oven, and beat 
it to subtle powder, and serse it. Then mingle well strong wine-vinegar 
with it, so much that it be pretty liquid, for it will dry with keeping. 
Put to this a little pepper, beaten small (white is the best) at 
discretion as about a good pugil and put a good spoonful of sugar to it 
(which is not to make it taste sweet, but rather, quick, and to help the 
fermentation) Lay a good onion in the bottom, quartered if you will, and 
a race (root) of ginger scraped and bruised, and stir it often with a 
Horseradish root cleansed, which let always lie in the pot till it hath 
lost its vertue, then take a new one. This will keep long, and grow 
better for a while. It is not good till after a month, that it have 
fermented a while. Some think it will be the quicker if the seed be 
ground with fair water, instead of vinegar, putting store of onions in 
it.

My Lady Holmsby make her quick fine mustard thus: Choose true mustard 
seed; dry it in an oven, after the bread is out. Beat and searce it to a 
most subtle powder. Mingle Sherry-Sack with it (stirring a long time 
very well, so much as to have it of a fit consistency for mustard) Then 
put a good quantity of fine sugar to it, as five or six spoonfuls, or 
more, to a pint of mustard. Stir and incorporate well together. This 
will keep good a long time. Some do like to put to it a little (but a 
little) of very sharp wine vinegar.

http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-CONDIMENTS/mustard-msg.html

There's also some recipes in the Meisters' Eberhard text in the 
florilegium:

This is an excerpt from Das Kochbuch des Meisters Eberhard, G. 
Balestriere (trans.)
To make a good sauce for Lent. Take horseradish and pound it in a mortar 
and take almonds or nuts and pound those, too, and pour some wine to it. 
Horseradish breaks the stone very well if it is eaten with your diet.

Also...
If you do not have too cold a stomach when you go to eat breakfast, you 
may eat horseradish, tart or sweet cherries and other food afterwards 
because these things chill you and make you moist while the season makes 
you hot and dry, and they cause you to sweat, and the cherries drive out 
the excess gall. But you shall not eat too much of them so that you do 
not chill your stomach too much, especially if it is cold and sick at 
the time.


Note from me:
Horseradish roots can be harvested and kept in a cool dry place for some 
time.

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both." 
   -- Alice Stone Blackwell