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Horseradish and Cockscomb Sauce Photo by: Lord-Williams |
The plant
has white flowers blooming on hills in May and broad rough leaves. Today, it is
planted throughout the
year and collected year round. In medieval times, the leaves and roots were eaten for their fleshy, slightly pungent flavor.
Horseradishes
were used medicinally and as condiments. As a medicinal
it is used as an antiscobic, as an appetitive and a digestive to stimulate the
mucus secretions in the stomach and as a diuretic and to combat dropsy,
rachitic and scrofula, alone or mixed with iodine.
There is a 14th C manuscript providing a recipe for horseradish preserved in syrup. The leaves and roots had the virtue of moving and warming. Eaten with vinegar, horseradishes eliminated kidney stones. The heated root thinned the phlegm and helped the boiling process in the stomach. It was eaten to elongate the stomach. It was consumed raw with salt at the beginning and end of meals and served with any dish and as a sauce as Nola’s Horseradish and Wild Clary Sauce. Chaucer warned cooks not to make sauces. without horseradish stating: “Woe to his cook, unless the sauces were poignant and sharp. . . ”
[Alonso, Martín. 1994:III:N:4110;
Chirino/Herrera. 1973:239 ;
ES: Carroll-Mann. “Food.” Sep 1, 02; ES: Chaucer. Aug 23, 03:353-354; ES: Lord.
“gallo cresta.” Aug 10, 14; Font Quer. Plantas.
1999:143:254-255; Gázquez. Cocina. 2000:114;
Henisch. 1976:97; Hieatt. Ordiance.1988:97;
Nola 1989:l-4; Sass.1967:21; and Wilson.1973:205]
See blog titled "gallo cresta" dated Aug 10, 14 for Nola’s recipe for Sauce of Horseradish and of Clary Sage.