Sturgyn – veal dish which resembles a sturgeon

14th century English Dish — strange but very tasty.

Ingredients
4 veal shanks, cleaned
2 calf’s feet, split
water to cover
½ cup honey
¼ cup onion, finely minced
¼ cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
wine vinegar

Directions
Wash meat and place in a large kettle.
Cover with water.
Add honey.
Bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to a slow boil.
Cover.
Cook for 2½ – 3 hours or until meat falls apart.
Remove meat from liquid.
Remove bones from meat when cool enough to handle, chopping large pieces smaller, including skin if any.
Put meat on a clean sterilized white cloth (canvas is best but muslin works fine).
Wrap into a large sausage shaped roll.
Place on a large pan or baking dish.
Set a pan the same size on top and place a weight on it. (A one gallon jug of water works well, or 4 bricks).
Refrigerate for several hours or overnight.
Remove cloth. Place on an oblong serving platter.
Slice thinly. Sprinkle with onions, parsley and wine vingar. Serve.

Note
A line of thinly sliced onion rings down the center and parsley springs around the outside makes a nice garnish. The broth remaining can be strained and reduced to half, refrigerated and then unmolded to serve as an accompanying aspic.

General Comments
When cut into it revealed a nice coppery color that looked without too much of a stretch of the imagination like smoked fish. This dish is a nice looking dish and is really rather tasty.

Original Recipe
To make sturgyn. Take [th]e houghys of vele and caluys feete and sethe hem in hony. And whan [th]ou hast soden hem all to poudre, take [th]e bonys oute. In case [th]at [th]e flesshe be longe, take it a stroke or ii and put it in a fayre cannevasse and presse it welle. Than take it and lese it fayre in thynne leches, and not to brode. Take onyons, vynegre, and percelly and ley [th]eron, and so serue it forthe. (Curye on Inglysch, pp. 155-6)
- Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). New York: for The Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

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