Nordik Xperience

So based on a conversation on the CEXAH (Culinary Experimental Archeology & History) Discord server with Daniel Serra, I decided to make the Traveller's Porridge from An Early Meal, Serra and Tunberg The cool thing about this cookbook is the recipes are based on known food ingredients found during archaeological digs. This one is based on Hedeby finds. Hedeby was a trading post in Denmark. Now it's part of Germany, near the Danish border. Barley was the major grain, and rye more common than the other grains. The broad bean is also well represented. Animal remains were dominated by pig, 2:1 to cattle. Less than 10% are sheep and goats. Sea birds were hunted, but there were also domesticated fowl, chicken and geese. This recipe uses those common finds, smoked pork and barley. These are easily transported. I noticed a lot of the recipes have leeks. Leeks aren't common here in the USA. They are in the onion and garlic family. I will likely be substit...

I just realized I need to give the ingredients some context as well. I can't simply say barley. Is it whole, ground coarse or fine? Thar's going to make a difference when it comes to cooking it! I took this photo at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, this past May. I was grinding barley with my quern. The first grind with this quern, some grains of the barley are barely cracked. The second or third may be more reasonable to cook.

The question arose in class about how cooking recipes can be an actual experiment. Scientific methods include recording data. For recipes, the ingredients are important, but also the order of addition, aka Instructions. Weights are more accurate than volumes. So I can weigh ingredients, since I do have a scale. Another thought occurs that in bacon, for example, the portions are of fat to lean, are different in parts adjacent to each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bacon_in_a_pan.jpg I wonder how to control for that... In looking at these pieces of bacon, between three similar pieces, they're relatively the same. I guess I'll have to compare slices/portions of the ingredients in an attempt to keep similarity of ingredients. Other things I need to record are heat in conjunction with the coal volumes. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Embers_01.JPG How am I going to keep up with three separate cooking vessels and record data at the same time? Coals are variable too...

So the first step in Experimental Archaeology is research. In the past couple of trimesters, in our Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture Graduate Certificate through University College Dublin, I've been working towards doing an Experiment in Viking Age Food. I've read loads of papers about soapstone vessels, a common cooking vessel in Viking Age Norway. I've also read about Torksey ceramic pots found in York England. I wrote papers on these topics. (I got excellent grades too!) Along with these two major types, Viking Age cooks also used iron pots. So far, I've acquired some pots (soapstone, ceramic and copper), a quern, used to grind grain, and some wooden utensils. None of these cooking tools are reproductions, but what is easily, but expensively available on Amazon. For recipe suggestions, I've got An Early Meal, by Daniel Serra and Hanna Tunberg. I also have Eat Like a Viking, volumes one and two, by Craig Brooks. I also have Tastes of Anglo-Saxon Engla...