Gold chickens
Jan. 29th, 2004 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
klwilliamsI roasted my capon last night, the same way I roast chickens: I rubbed butter on it, sprinkled herbs and spices on it, and basted it periodically. It came out golden brown and juicy, and -- tasted like chicken.
The night before last was scribe night, and I actually got something done. I finished outlining all of the leafy bits, and moved on to diapering. But first, I decided to do something silly. In many manuscripts, you'll see people in miniatures with gold circles behind their heads. This originally meant that the person in the miniature was dead (or somehow not a normal living person, like an angel), but since the dead people who were important enough to show up in miniatures were usually saints, the gold circles became associated with holy people, and is where we get haloes. The scrolls I'm working on right now on Viscounty scrolls, and on one of them is a miniature that shows the previous prince and princess standing to the side while the current prince and princess are crowned. I added gold circles around the heads of the previous prince and princess. They look pretty good, and it's a very period thing to do.
The night before last was scribe night, and I actually got something done. I finished outlining all of the leafy bits, and moved on to diapering. But first, I decided to do something silly. In many manuscripts, you'll see people in miniatures with gold circles behind their heads. This originally meant that the person in the miniature was dead (or somehow not a normal living person, like an angel), but since the dead people who were important enough to show up in miniatures were usually saints, the gold circles became associated with holy people, and is where we get haloes. The scrolls I'm working on right now on Viscounty scrolls, and on one of them is a miniature that shows the previous prince and princess standing to the side while the current prince and princess are crowned. I added gold circles around the heads of the previous prince and princess. They look pretty good, and it's a very period thing to do.
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Roasted Capon or chicken... and haloes
Date: 2004-01-29 11:49 am (UTC)Don't baste. Skin is meant to keep liquids out of animals (otherwise we'd explode every time we took a bath), so basting doesn't add much to the taste of the chicken or capon flesh. A good thick slather might help the skin prior to cooking, though.
And opening/closing the door just lets loads of heat out of the oven and makes the whole process take longer. You know; waiting, when you'd rather be eating.
Regarding the gold circles around the dead people .... where/how did that convention originate? I've seen loads of drawings without the halo around dead people... even when they were dead at the time of the creation of the artwork.
Was it a regional thing?
no subject
Date: 2004-01-29 12:56 pm (UTC)Interesting about the saints!
Re: Roasted Capon or chicken... and haloes
Date: 2004-01-29 01:13 pm (UTC)with lots of extra fat on it.
I don't know offhand where the gold circles got started or where,
but I'll see if I can dig up a reference.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-29 02:16 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-01-29 07:06 pm (UTC)---L.