More Braaaaaaains ...

I will admit that I'm not the most organized person in the world, and this very post is a good demonstration of both my lack of organization and what I do to compensate.

Back in 2008 (wait ... was that really 8 years ago?!) I blogged about how I used The Brain Book when cooking feasts to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible. It's a neat little idea that has saved me all sorts of grief. I figured I'd follow up that post within a week or so with a link to an example Brain Book that others could use as a guide for making their own.

We can see how well that went. I got sidetracked into something else and ... well ... you know. Anyways, I came across a file while spelunking on my computer that turned out to be nearly complete. So I thought I'd clean it up and make it available before something else came along to distract me for another 8 years.

Let me know what you think.

The Brain Book

Levels of Medievalness

Whether it is dinner at a "medieval-themed" restaurant, a feast held by a historic recreation group, or a home-cooked dinner made for a school project (or even just for the fun of it), a question that might arise is "How medieval is this meal?"

Really, it's a very tricky thing to work out. There's all sorts of things that can enter into it, including such diverse elements as the type and source of the ingredients, the atmosphere (both ambiance and air quality) of the dining area, and even the time of year in relation to the foods served. In fact, considering all the extended variables, I suspect the answer to "How medieval is this meal?" is "Not very."

However, there are some aspects that are more easily controlled and which have a much larger impact on the ... medievalness? ... medievalosity? ... medievalery? ... ok, authenticity.  Let's look at them in order from least medieval to most medieval.

1. Medieval Ingredients

There are a number of foods that weren't available in medieval Europe. Some are things from the Americas (e.g. turkey, potatoes, capsicum peppers, peanuts, vanilla, chocolate) and weren't imported into Europe until after 1500.  Some are from other places (e.g. bananas, tea, coffee, yams), but were still not in common use in Europe.  Some are things that were invented well after 1500 (e.g. baking powder, mayonnaise).

The presence of any of these marks a meal as being modern.  It doesn't matter what recipe was used or how the food was cooked, they're simply not medieval.

2. Real Recipes

Even if all the ingredients used to make the meal were available in medieval Europe, that doesn't mean the resulting dishes would have been familiar to a medieval European.  Bread, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, and pickles are all reasonably medieval foods, but there's no account of any medieval cook ever making a cheeseburger (or any other type of sandwich, for that matter).

Fortunately there are a large number of medieval European cookbooks available, both in print and for free online. What's more, many have been translated into several different languages (for the benefit of those who don't read Middle-French or whatever), and there are even recipes that have been worked out with modern measurements and instructions.

3. Menu Consistency

Given both medieval ingredients and recipes, the consistency of the menu becomes an issue. By this I don't mean that the menu is too runny or somesuch, but rather that the individual dishes on the menu make sense to be served together.

While a World Fusion dinner can be fun, most people would be confused to be served a dinner menu of curried beef, Szechuan vegetables, tamales, poi, and hot chocolate. It's too strange a mix of cultures and cuisines.  The differences within regions and time periods in medieval European cultures can be very subtle, but they are there.  Twelfth century English food is very different from sixteenth century German.

Sometimes there are menus along with the recipes in many of the medieval cookbooks, which makes this part a lot easier. However there is still a lot of uncertainty to this aspect, and it's a great area for research.

It is only when the ingredients are medieval, the recipes are medieval, and the menu is medieval, that other aspects become important (like the apple variety, the quality of the spices, the shape of the serving vessel, the way the food is served, the color of the walls).

It's also important to work things in the above order.  Using non-medieval ingredients or modern recipes is kind of like building a ten-million dollar home and skimping on the quality of the materials or workmanship.  The final product simply won't hold together.

Ceilidh Feast 2010 - Menu

I've been asked to cook the feast for an upcoming SCA event here in southwest Ohio, and I thought this would be a good chance to document the whole process I go through in running these things.

The first step for me is working out the menu. In this particular case I don't have much time to try out new dishes or do a lot of research, so I decided to stick with dishes I know reasonably well. Also, since I seem to have been having trouble getting my act together lately, I figured it'd be best to choose more simple, straightforward dishes - less to go wrong. I knew I wanted the whole thing to be primarily English because their feasts were much less structured than those of the French (and therefore, simpler). After a couple of days I took the time to sit down and - with Kristen's input - settled on the following menu:

A Supper for a Meat Day

On Table:
manchet bread
soft cheese
fruit preserves

First Course:
Pegions Stewed (stewed chicken)
Onion and Parsley Salad
Chervis (carrots and parsnips)

Second Course:
Cormarye (roast pork)
Wortes (cabbage)
Rice Lombard

Third Course:
Apple Muse (with Snowe)
Wafers
Walnuts

Ok, so right off the bat I'll point out one major factual error. The title, "A Supper for a Meat Day", is in all truth incorrect. In the medieval religious calendar, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays were meatless days, so properly I should have a fish-based menu. However the problems with doing so are numerous, but the biggest ones are that a lot of people around here don't like fish and that they really like meat. If I did an all-fish feast I would probably be feeding 20 instead of 120.

The bread, cheese, and preserves are all pretty dull and straightforward. For this event I've got someone else to make the bread (thanks Amari!), so that's one less thing for me to do ahead of time.

Pegions Stewed is a simple recipe. I'll be using chicken legs and thighs instead of using pigeons both to save costs and because they're more acceptable to the locals. Of course once I've got that on the menu then the onion and parsley salad is a natural accompaniment.

Chervis is essentially a variation and simplification of a recipe from Menagier de Paris. Really it's just cooked carrots and parsnips with spices.

Cormarye is an old standby for me. Pork is plentiful and inexpensive here - sometimes cheaper than chicken, and this is one of those recipes that is really hard to mess up. If things go well then I'll thicken the juices from the roasting pans with some bread to make a sauce.

The recipe for Wortes is one of Kristen's. One of the VIPs apparently has an intense dislike for cabbage, so I'll have to do a separate dish for head table.

Rice Lombard is a new dish for me, but it's really just rice cooked in meat broth with spices.

Finally in the last course are wafers, walnuts (which will be sugared if there's time), and apple muse topped with snowe.

The apple muse gave me pause though. The most common recipes for it call for almond milk and honey, which adds a lot of effort and expense for such a simple dish - especially when cooking for so many. What I'd like to have is something more like Chardwarden, which is thickened with egg yolks and sweetened with sugar. After some serious digging, I did find a couple medieval variants of the recipe that did call for eggs and sugar, so that's what I'm going to use. Apparently I'm incapable of doing even a simple feast without researching at least one new recipe.

With the menu settled, the next step will be to work out the shopping list.

Goose and Sauce Madame

[Sorry about the recent lack of posts. Chalk it up to a combination of a minor flu bug and a hectic schedule.]

Back in December we had some friends over for a Winter Solstice dinner, and one of the dishes I cooked was Goose with Sauce Madame. I should have taken some pictures, but (of course) things were behind schedule and the kitchen was crazy and yadda yadda yadda, so you'll just have to imagine what it all looked like (though I'll admit it wasn't this pretty). I'll be posting the recipe for Sauce Madame on the website sooner or later (maybe after a couple more tries using chicken or duck instead of goose), but I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on the dinner and how things turned out before I completely forget things.

First, the goose: I'd never made goose before, and the one I got from the grocer was actually relatively small - 10 to 12 pounds. Geese are weird, plain and simple. The skin was tougher than I thought, the meat was (way) darker in color than I expected, and while it put out lots of fat in the roasting pan (which I did expect) there was almost nothing in the way of juices. The meat tasted good enough to eat, but wasn't anything to rave about. Maybe bigger geese are better? Dunno. I've always heard that goose was something people ate more out of tradition than because they like it. That seems believable now.

The Sauce Madame smelled fantastic up until I added the goose drippings as instructed. Everyone seemed to like it (especially my wife), but it had an oily aspect that just didn't sit well with me. Maybe with more broth instead of oil (which implies some other bird than goose)?

The Wastel y-Farced turned out fantastic. I'd used a square, 2 pound loaf of sourdough bread. I had to improvise a steamer using a large pot with some water in the bottom and a bowl to act as a spacer, and the bread resting on the bottom of a small tart pan. It was warm, slightly gooey, and slightly sweet. Got to remember to make it again soon.

For a vegetable I went with the inevitable Brussels sprouts. I was too rushed by this point to make a cream sauce or anything, but perhaps next time. They were fresh, easy, and the family likes them, so if nothing else they blended into the background.

Finally there's the plum pudding. I love making plum pudding each year, and this one turned out just fine. Hector, who had just returned from school in England, noted the amount of butter and brandy used over there when serving these things, but otherwise didn't comment. Maybe I should take that as a bad sign. Then again, I like my plum pudding the way it is (as does the family), which I guess is what's important. Though ... more butter and brandy ... that doesn't sound too bad, eh? Maybe a tweak or two is in order.

So on the whole, it was a bit hectic and crazy, a good amount of yum, a heap of traditional, and a lot of fun. That's what the holidays are all about.

Skirmish Magazine #64

Somewhere in this magazine ...

... is MedievalCookery.com's recipe for Peeres in Confyt.
Your misson: find it!

Ceiling Wax

Ok, I admit it. Until about the age of twelve, I thought it was ceiling wax instead of sealing wax. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the nagging question, "Why would someone need to wax their ceiling." On realizing the correct spelling I had one of those "Duh!" moments. At any rate, this weekend I'm officially taking my second apprentice, Zophia Boreka. The plan is to have a reasonably authentic reproduction of a medieval apprenticeship contract, and for that I will need sealing wax.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, medieval sealing wax was made of a combination of beeswax and resin. Since this is a sort of cooking (kind of, maybe, well ... it's heated in a pot), I figured I'd give a step-by-step description of what I did, complete with pictures.

The Raw Ingredients

beeswax, about 40g

resin (frankincense), about 20g
purchased from Stony Mountain Botanicals

What Was Done

I put the wax and resin into a makeshift double boiler. While I used a bowl I didn't care about in anticipation of not being able to get it clean again, getting the wax off turned out not to be too much of a problem.

ingredients in bowl on top of pot of boiling water

It was at about this point that it occurred to me that it probably would have been easier to melt the wax first and then add the resin powder. It still worked, but probably took longer that it would have. I'll try it the other way next time.

the stuff melts slowly

As I stood over a pot of melting beeswax and frankincense, I realized that this stuff smells really good. It has a sort of sweet-citrus-piney scent that just begs to be a glaze for ham. Please note however that no matter how yummy this stuff smells, do not dip your finger into the hot molten resin and under no circumstances should you taste it.

(no, I didn't do either - but it was really hard to resist the temptation!)

I thought I had a picture of the wax all melted, but apparently the gremlins erased it.

block of commercial candle dye

This is the remains of the block of candle dye I bought at the local craft store. I suppose I could have used a medieval colorant, but then again most of the things they used back then to color sealing wax were really dangerous. I'm not sure how much of this stuff I used - I just kept putting in shavings until I thought it was dark enough.

all done melting and coloring

So all that was left was to pour the wax into a disposable muffin tray I happened to have handy and let it cool. You can see in the picture below where the wax is already hardening around the edges.

a convenient form for the seal blanks

all cool now

Once they're completely cooled, the seal blanks pop out of the foil tray pretty easily. There is something disturbingly familiar about their shape though.

not a peanut butter cup

When it's time to use the wax this weekend, I'll warm it up by putting it in hot water (or maybe in a microwave). This should make it soft enough to press around the pendant cord that is threaded through the document, and also to take an impression from my seal matrix. That's the theory at least. I suppose I should test it out beforehand, eh?

Apprentice Contract

On the 18th of this month I'll be taking a new apprentice (Zophia - I've already been referring to her as my apprentice for months now, but it'll be official on the 18th). Part of the whole apprentice thing (for me anyways) is getting a proper contract of apprenticeship. Below is a picture of my first apprentice's contract.

Avelyn's apprenticeship contract

Once again, I've gone to Mistress Hrefna in heppna Thorgrimsdottir (Raven Fagelson) to do the calligraphy. Her work is positively beautiful.

This time I'll be making the wax for the seal myself. I've got plenty of beeswax and have ordered some resin (frankincense) from Stony Mountain Botanicals (the place I normally get red sandalwood/saunders - excellent quality and fast service). I'll post a step-by-step when I actually make the stuff.

I suppose I could also braid the cord that attaches the seal to the document, and even reel and dye the silk myself, but in medieval Europe I'd have been much more likely to buy that from a silkwoman - convenient that I'm married to one.

Harvest Days 2008 - Feast Report

I guess I've recovered enough from the whole thing, so it's time to post my thoughts before I forget them.

The Menu
No big surprises here. Everything was reasonably well liked, with one exception - the Gelye de Chare. No surprise here, but most people just can't cope with meat-flavored jelly. I really didn't expect people to eat much of it, which is why I only made half a cup per table of 6. I don't think I'd serve the Boiled Sallet or the Frutours at another feast as they both need to be cooked just before serving, and therefore cause logistics troubles.

I did have one good-sized hitch here. The sotlties between the courses were all centered around a piece of food-art created by Wulfwen Atte Belle (Hi Wulfie!). Sadly, her car died early Saturday morning, which meant that the aforementioned piece of food-art was stuck some 5 hours' drive away from the feast. Without it, none of the other sotlties would make sense, so I decided to scrap them and just stick with serving food.

Planning and Prep
Here's where I really fell down on the job. Things have been really nuts for me the past month or so, and I didn't get things planned out as well as I should have. As a result, a lot of food prep that could have been done in advance was left for the day of the feast. If I didn't have the help of my apprentices and a bunch of amazing volunteers, this feast would have been a fiasco.

In specific: I should have had all the bread cooked (was 3 batches short), the needed eggs separated and stored frozen, the turnips roasted and peeled, the Leche Lumbard and Chardwarden made.

The other major planning problem rested with my lack of organization. When I got to the site on Saturday morning, I realized that I'd left the bread in the freezer at home. This meant I had to drive back home and return - an almost 2 hour trip - just to pick it up. I ended up finally getting to the kitchen and getting to work around 1:00 p.m. Again, if it hadn't been for my apprentices taking charge in my absence (and making good use of the Brain Book) things would have gone very badly.

Hall Setup and Service
The hall steward did an excellent job at setting things up and wrangling the servers. There was one issue though that caused continued problems. I had planned the feast to serve 100 (plus head table), but the total number of feasters was actually 90. If I had the presence of mind (or had built it into some sort of checklist) it might have occurred to me to drop two tables from the hall setup. That way instead of having 18 tables that were partly filled, I would have 16 tables that were almost completely filled (each table could seat 6). My failure to realize this meant that we had to dish up 2 extra platters of food for every dish and still have too much food at every table. Obviously I need a "Hall Setup" page for the Brain Book.

Gritty Details

The bread, cheese, and preserves were set out before the feast started. No problems here.

The first course had a couple of hectic parts. The beef in pevorade and blancmanger were pretty straightforward - apparently there were several people who really liked the blancmanger. I had the pety pernauntes made as individual tartlets, which caused some minor issues because of the seating, but it all worked out. The boiled sallet was a real pain though. It had to be cooked right before serving in table-sized batches. Zophia (second apprentice) did an excellent job of making sure this got done.

The second course was where things really started to go haywire. The jelly was sent out first while I plated the venison and frumenty. With the full kitchen staff preoccupied, the servers began taking the venison out while it was still being plated. This made it really hard to keep track of how many plates had been done. The leche lumbard went out sometime around here, but I missed it. Then Avelyn (first apprentice) plated the great pies - which looked really cool - and we sent them out. Life was good. Little did we know ... (insert ominous music here).

Finally, while Zophia was frying apple fritters as quickly as she could (the other pain-in-the-butt dish) and I was plating them, the Chardwarden went out. The fritters followed shortly.

It was then, while we were looking around with an eye to starting the cleanup and saying to ourselves something like, "Wow, we're done!" that someone noticed two big steamer pans. We'd (I'd) forgotten to serve the turnips. The diners were still seated and the servers were just coming back, so we grabbed some bowls and a big spoon and sent the stuff out. Apparently the feasters were amused to receive turnips for dessert. Then again, there is medieval documentation for serving turnips and cheese last at a feast.

Avelyn suggested that I make a huge copy of the menu to post on the wall for next time, so we can cross off dishes as they go out and prevent this sort of thing from happening. I thing that's a great idea, but I don't want to think about a "next time" just yet.

Conclusion
On the whole, I'd say the feast was a success. The food looked and tasted good, and people got fed to the gills. There were some behind-the-scenes problems, but (other than the out-of-place turnips) none of it was apparent in the feast hall. I can live with that.

Medieval Cooking Demonstration

There's a post at News for Medievalists about an upcoming demonstration of medieval cooking at the Lichfield Garrick on September 5th. Since this council-run theatre is in Lichfield (Staffordshire, UK), and since I'm cooking a feast in Dayton (Ohio, US) the very next day I doubt that I'll be able to attend.

Here's the description from the Garrick's website:

Join Prof Roland Rotherham the 'Ancient Foodie' himself and Chef Simon Smith as they give you a selection of recipes spanning from ancient Egypt, pigeon breasts with dried apricots, to Tudor times with Spatchcock Pheasant in beer sauce and berries, plus many more to delight your palate.

The show starts at 12.00pm, with prices of £8 and £6. If you get a chance to attend, send me a note and let me know how it went.

Braaaaaaains ...

No, I'm not going to write about brains as food - at least not yet. What I'm talking about here is one of the most useful kitchen tools for cooks who have to make the occasional huge feast: The Brain Book™.

Background
I'm quite sure others have come up with similar concepts before - I don't claim at all that this is original - but I got the idea for The Brain Book™ after watching a good friend organize a miniature-painting competition. She had a box which she referred to as "the brain", which contained all the paperwork, reference sheets, rules and other documents. When one of the many people assisting her needed to know something, the answer was usually along the lines of, "I don't know, check the brain."

Now I'm one of the first people to admit that I'm not the most organized person in the world. In fact, my organization skills have been scientifically measured as being the third-worst in all of recorded history. This is why, when thought about "the brain" in terms of a way to organize cooking feasts, I immediately saw how useful it could be. So two and a half years later I finally managed to get around to putting it into action (which is a pretty good turnaround time for me).

So what goes into The Brain Book™? Good question!

What goes into The Brain Book™
I start with a thin 3-ring binder - one of the ones with a clear pocket on the front and two pockets on the inside - kind of like this one. All of the pages that go inside are put in clear plastic sheet protectors - an especially good thing in a kitchen, where a notebook naturally attracts substances like grape juice and peanut butter. The actual contents, in order of appearance, are as follows:

• Shopping list
• The Menu
• Pre-cooking and prep work schedule
• Cooking schedule
• Plating and garnishing guide
• Recipes
• Receipts envelope

Shopping List
This is one of the few things in the notebook that doesn't go into a sheet protector because it's a multiple-page document. Instead I staple it and put it into the inside-front pocket. I usually work up the shopping list in a spreadsheet. All the ingredients for each recipe are listed, with the quantity needed multiplied out for the entire feast. Then I sort by ingredients and total everything up. Finally I add a list of all the non-food items (e.g. paper towels) I'll need at the bottom. When things are purchased, I check them off on the list. This seems simple, I know, but it really does help things.

The Menu
Not much to comment on here. This is mostly so the other staff in the kitchen can check on what goes out with what.

Pre-Cooking and Prep Work Schedule
This is a one or two page, day-by-day listing of what needs to be cooked or prepped in the week or so before the feast. For example: Monday - bake & freeze 2 batches of bread, Tuesday - buy tart crusts, Wednesday - put frozen meat into refrigerator.

Cooking Schedule
This is another spreadsheet. I break the day down into 1 hour segments across the top, and have the full menu (broken out into sub-components of a dish where necessary) down the left side. Then I mark out when things need to be chopped, cooked, put into holding boxes, plated, and served. The part of the schedule that covers the actual feast is sometimes broken down into 30 or 15 minute intervals when appropriate.

Plating and Garnishing Guide
A list of every dish, grouped by course. It states what kind of serving plate should be used, what serving gear (e.g. spoon or fork) should be included, and how the dish should be garnished.

Recipes
One page per recipe, with the full list of ingredients and complete instructions. This year I'm experimenting with adding a "red card" to recipes where I need to make accommodation for guests with particular food allergies - I'll let you know how it works out.

Receipts Envelope
This is so I can get reimbursed for any money I've spent. It gets tucked into the rear-inside pocket of the notebook.

This seems like a lot of work, but it's worth it. During the feast, any of the kitchen staff can determine on their own what work needs to be done, how something should be cooked, and how and when it should be served. Because of the redundancy, multiple people can be working on different things at the same time (e.g. two people can be working on different recipes, another can be plating, and another can be instructing servers). This hugely improves the efficiency in the kitchen, reduces stress, and helps prevent mistakes. It's also very helpful in that during a feast, when the staff asks what needs to be done and my mind has turned to mush, I can say, "I don't know. Check my brain."

Harvest Days 2008

I'm now in the middle of preparations for the Harvest Days event. I've got a substantial - all English - feast planned, with some new dishes (OK, the recipes are actually some 500 years old, but they're new to the re-enactors of this region).

The feast is going to be held on September 6th, so naturally I'm going a bit nuts right now. Therefore it seems like a good idea if I add to that workload and start posting bits and pieces about what I'm doing.

The Menu
All was good with the menu until a couple of months back when I realized that the current Prince (and future King) of the Midrealm is allergic to pork - which of course appeared liberally throughout the feast. So I scrapped a half-dozen dishes and added three or four different ones. Then I heard from my local huntsman and game-keeper (Hi James!) that the pigeons weren't breeding fast enough and kept dropping dead for no reason. There goes another dish (bother! I was so looking forward to serving everyone squab. Oh well, there's always next time).

So now as it stands I've got a menu consisting of 3 courses and 16 dishes (give or take, depending on what you count as a dish. Medieval menus are pretty flaky about the number of dishes claimed for a feast, so I see no reason to me more accurate than they were).

Sotlties
I've also got at least three sotlties (entertaining/amusing bits for during the feast - in France they were called entrements) planned that should go over reasonably well. I can't tell you more about them though as it would spoil the surprise.

The Kitchen
My apprentice visited the site yesterday evening and reported back that the kitchen is the size of a small country. There's also an outdoor barbecue pit (which is good because one of the dishes - pommes dorreys - works best when cooked over an open fire).

That's enough on things for now. Sometime in the next few days I'll probably post some pictures of the kitchen with comments, instructions and examples of making a Brain Book™, and various notes about food and prep-cooking.

The Sounds of Pennsic

Pennsic is now over and I'm safely home. While I did little cooking, a bit of partying, a good amount of shopping, and an awful lot of schmoozing, what really seemed to capture my attention this year was music.

---

The Whiskey Bards

While their songs are from a wide range of styles (barbershop, folk, etc.) and the lyrics can get very bawdy, the quality of their performance is stunning. In spite of bad acoustics, interruptions, the pervasive smoke of campfires and torches, and being handed the occasional drink, they still managed to keep the close harmonies clean and clear.

Their music is available from Amazon.com, iTunes, and from their website.

---

Vince Conaway

Vince is a fantastic musician who plays the hammered dulcimer with amazing skill. I've known him for years and have always been impressed with not only his musical talents, but his knowledge of the history of music as well. If you ever have a chance to watch him perform (he's usually playing at renaissance festivals and the like), go ahead and ask him a geeky question. Odds are that he'll have an answer - and that he'll keep playing while he talks (a difficult trick).

Vince Conaway's music is available from Amazon.com, iTunes, and from his website.

---

Wolgemut

These guys are an absolute trip. Most of their songs (at least the ones I've heard) are upbeat numbers driven by a powerful drum line. They look like they stepped out of the Codex Manesse and have a sound that instantly takes you to some rollicking medieval tavern. In short, they really kick medieval butt!

Wolgemut's music is available from Amazon.com (in limited amounts), iTunes, and from their website.

Last Minute Preparations

This week is typically the most hectic of the year for me. Pennsic War (the SCA's huge "medieval" camping event) is next week, and GenCon is the week after. These two events have recently been held at about the same time, and every year I experience a strange kind of culture shock going from one to the other. Anyways, if you've sent me an email recently and it doesn't involve something very time-critical, then I probably won't get back to you until after August 17th.

Pennsic War

Pennsic is an odd combination of people, some with strong interests in accurately re-enacting medieval life, and others just there to have a good time. With over 10,000 people attending and camping for one to two weeks, there's all sorts of stuff going on and plenty to hold the interest of just about anyone. I tend to look at it as sort of a modern version of the medieval market fair. I spend my time shopping for things I can't easily get other places (like re-creations of medieval cooking knives and linens), socializing with people that I otherwise talk to only through email, take classes on extremely geeky subjects (e.g. Saints and Relics), and kick back and relax in general.

the sort of thing I like to see at Pennsic
click on the image to see more of the photographer's work

There are aspects of Pennsic that I could do without (there were infestations of elves and goths in past years, but they've pretty much cleared out), but you take the good with the bad and on the whole it's worthwhile.

GenCon

GenCon is a convention devoted to games of all sorts, and has an annual attendance of over 25,000. For the past few years I've been giving seminars there on medieval cooking (to help provide game designers and writers with some background information for their work), and of recent participating in the Writers Symposium track of seminars (a fun and eclectic bunch). I also spend a lot of time working/hanging out with the folks at the Miniature Hobby Events (which is kind of funny since my miniature painting skills are quite bad).

I'm nowhere near ready for either of these, much less both, but time and tide wait for no one. Excuse me while I panic.

Supersizers Go ...

There's been some chatter on a couple of the mailing lists about this series being aired on BBC2 - "Supersizers Go.". Strangely, the BBC doesn't have a web page for it that I could find, however there's a very nice description on this website. The stars of the program(me) get dressed up to suit a particular time period and then experience the appropriate food.

One of the episodes shown recently was about the Elizabethan period, and seeing as that's at the tail-end of the middle ages (or just after the middle ages according to some, or about two hundred years into the Renaissance according to people who focus on Italian history, but don't get me started on this or I'll go on and on until you're blue in the face), I just had to see it.

On the whole, it was entertaining. The hosts were funny, but got a bit irritating at times. I think they meant to be that way, but I'm not sure. From time to time the show got a bit too focused on the topic of excretia - not necessarily a bad thing for a historical program(me), but really not what one would expect in a show about food.

The big question of course is, "Was it accurate?" The answer is: yes, reasonably so. It did a really decent job of appealing to the average viewer while not being total crap. I do have some nits to pick though (are you really surprised? I didn't think so), but since I'll have a lot to say about each nit, I'll save them for later posts.

Wandering in the Big Gray Zone

A few days back, the New York Times posted an article on their website about "Recipe Deal Breakers" - the things that cooks might read in a recipe that would cause them to skip it. This got me thinking in general about the foods people will and won't eat, and about how that affects medieval cooking geeks like myself.

See, here's the crux of the matter: there's no point in my making 30 pounds of blood sausage to serve to 100 people at a feast if only 3 people are even going to try it. On the other hand, the tastes of the people are not uniform. Instead of a nice, clear line that I could walk right up to and threaten to cross from time to time, I find myself standing in the middle of a vast, gray plain that isn't steadily shaded, but instead is mottled with varying degrees of will and won't. So here's what I've noticed so far about the food preferences of the people.

Meats
In general, people like meat (e.g. beef, pork, chicken). There are some vegetarians, but they're enough used to living in an omnivore world that most of them will be very happy with the slightest accommodation. Offering sauces to go with the meats is good, but it's best to serve the sauce on the side since a substantial number of the carnivores want their meat plain.

Some meats are considered a little unusual or exotic, but are generally acceptable (e.g. duck, venison, quail, rabbit). These can be served, but the serving size can be notably smaller than for the "normal meats"

There are meats that are considered strange enough that if you put them on the table, people will look at you funny (e.g. squirrel, hedgehog). If you know someone who likes these then make a special dish just for them, but don't bother making huge quantities.

Then there are the parts of the animals that are (in the US) often thrown away (e.g. brains, entrails, organs, feet, snouts, ears, tongues, genitals). Getting 1% of the people to eat any of these is nearly impossible. Even the most commonly eaten organ meat, liver, would generally fare badly here (a pity too, 'cause I've got a nice recipe for chopped liver).

Fish
Maybe it's different in other parts of the US, but here in the Midwest fish can be difficult. Something like salmon will go over OK, but just about anything else isn't worth it. The "weird" fish (e.g. eel) are even harder to get them to eat, and if you leave the head and tail on then you might as well forget it.

Frogs? No, not really. No.

Vegetables
What is it with trying to get Americans to eat vegetables? It seems that about half of the population is offended if anything green gets anywhere near their plate. They'll accept a salad as long as it has enough meat and cheese added to it. Starchy vegetables will be eaten if smothered in cheese (e.g. turnips) or glazed with honey (e.g. carrots), but offer them cooked spinach or beets and they'll act like you'd just insulted their mother.

I did have one surprise once on this. I'd made a turnip soup for one feast, scaling it back a little because I figured not everyone would like it, and we ran out. That was a rare exception though.

Fruit
This is an odd one. People will generally eat fruit prepared in just about any way, but they rarely will ask for it. Stewed apples or pears, fruit sauces, baked fruit, all are good. Maybe they don't know what to do with fruit (other than eat it raw) and therefore they just don't think about it.

Other Foods
Mushrooms are iffy. Some people will devour them, others will run screaming.

The same goes for spicy or sour foods.

Eggs and egg-based dishes go over pretty well. You can even serve pies made from eggs and herbs or whatever - just don't call it quiche or a small number of men will suddenly decide not to eat it.

Starchy foods like bread or pasta are almost as widely accepted as the "normal" meats. The no-carb diet fad put a bit of a crimp in this, but it seems to have died down.

Meat jelly? I really don't think they'll eat much of it ... but I'm going to try anyway. Sometimes you've got to break the rules.

Making a Medieval Field Kitchen - Part 3

The thought of a proper medieval kitchen is always lurking somewhere in the back of my mind (oddly accompanied by music from George Harrison), so when I spent Memorial Day at the house of a skilled carpenter and he showed me his reproduction of a medieval table I think I showed remarkable restraint in that I did not scream "WANT" at the top of my lungs, nor did I drool upon it.

What Conal (the woodworker) made was a beautiful copy of a sawhorse table. Sadly, I don't have a picture (yet) of the one he made, but I did find a couple of examples online.

Image from Tacuinum Sanitatis, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

(note: count the legs on each sawhorse)

I've seen several images of this sort of table in various medieval sources. The really nice thing about them is that they can be broken down into their component parts for transport. Conal said the one he made takes up surprisingly little space. That being said, these tables are remarkably stable.

Here's another picture I found online of a similar table:

Detail of a table made by a

member of the Company of the Golden Lyon

So Conal said either he'd make two of these tables for me, or at least he'd help me make them. The plan is to use maple if I can get it cheaply enough. I'll document the whole process with pictures and such.

Endangered Foods

Yesterday evening I caught part of a radio broadcast of The World which was titled 10 Foods to Eat Before They Die. It was an interview with Simon Preston about his planned 10 course dinner in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, England. 

Aside from a substantial amount of gustatorial interest (how could anyone with functioning taste buds and a good imagination not be interested in a discussion about Lancashire asparagus, Herat raisins Saxon village preserves, etc...), I found Mr. Preston's passion for disappearing foodways resonated with my own. While he is highlighting rare foods and food production methods that are falling out of practice, I am researching and re-creating foods that have lain dormant for centuries. I think both of us are somewhat driven by a love of food and a desire not to forget the old in the race to find the new.

For those in the area, the gala dinner, Ten Things to EAT! Before They Die is tonight at 7pm at the Marriott Hotel, Gosforth Park (£85 including wine). I know it's short notice for those in the UK ( sorry, I'll try to learn about these things sooner), but if anyone gets to it I'd love to hear a first-hand account.

Accidental Jelly

A good while back, Kristen (my apprentice) managed to get a hold of some cow's feet and tried making meat jelly.  She used a recipe from Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (included at the end of this article), however her project never quite ... well ... gelled.  That is, it didn't set.  What she ended up with was a large amount of cow-foot soup.

Fast-forward to last Friday when I was preparing food for a royalty lunch.  One of the recipes I made was Cormarye - a sort of marinated, roast pork.  I had a lot of dishes to make, so I cut a few corners, tweaked the recipe a bit, and stuffed it into the oven for a couple of hours.  It smelled absolutely yummy when it came out, so I let it cool, sliced it up, and put it in a sealed container in the fridge overnight.

The next morning I discovered something weird had happened.  As it sat overnight, the wine broth that the pork cooked in had turned to a dark red jelly. Funky. It hasn't done that before. So what had I done differently this time? This is something that I need to figure out if I'm going to intentionally make meat jelly.

The key was in the short cut I took. I used a 4 pound pork loin in a roasting pan that was just big enough to hold the pork and the wine - and therefore left out the broth. I'd figured there was enough liquid to keep it from burning and keep things moist, so what the heck.

Wine is often used when cooking meats since it helps break down connective tissues, and thus makes the meat more tender. This same connective tissue is one of the sources of gelatin (along with bones, hooves, cartilage, hides, and all sorts of other parts that the corporations who sell fruit-flavored gelatin don't want you to think about). Now normally when I make Cormarye I add in some broth. I hadn't realized it, but that broth dilutes the gelatin and keeps it from setting properly. This time when I left it out the gelatin remained un-diluted and could set. Neat.

So all that remains now is to see if I can duplicate this process using white wine instead of the red (which will allow me to color it bright yellow with saffron) and to leave out the seasonings used in Cormarye (so I can flavor it as desired). If so, then I'll have an easy way to consistently make medieval meat jelly and won't need to resort to unflavored gelatin packets - or for that matter cow feet (yeah, you try to find cow feet at the corner grocery).

---

Medieval Jelly Recipe 

from Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books

Cix - Gelye de chare. Take caluys fete, and skalde hem in fayre water, an make hem alle the whyte. Also take howhys of Vele, and ley hem on water to soke out the blode; then take hem vppe, an lay hem on a fayre lynen clothe, and lat the water rennyn out of hem; than Skore a potte, and putte the Fete and the Howhys ther-on; than take Whyte Wyne that wolle hold coloure, and cast ther-to a porcyon, an non other lycoure, that the Fleysshe be ouer-wewyd withalle, and sette it on the fyre, and boyle it, and Skeme it clene; an whan it is tendyr and boylid y-now, take vppe the Fleyshe in-to a fayre bolle, and saue the lycoure wyl; and loke that thow haue fayre sydys of Pyggys, and fayre smal Chykenys wyl and clene skladdyd and drawe, and lat the leggys an the fete on, an waysshe hem in fayre water, and caste hem in the fyrste brothe, an sethe it a-3en ouer the fyre, and skeme it clene; lat a man euermore kepe it, an blow of the grauy. An in cas the lycoure wast a-way, caste more of the same wyne ther-to, and put thin honde ther-on; and 3if thin hond waxe clammy, it is a syne of godenesse, an let not the Fleyshe be moche sothe, that it may bere kyttyng; than take it vppe, and ley it on a fayre clothe, and sette owt the lycoure fro the fyre, and put a few colys vnder-nethe the vesselle that the lycoure is yn; than take pouder of Pepir, a gode quantyte, and Safron, that it haue a fayre Laumbere coloure, and a gode quantyte of Vynegre, and loke that it be sauery of Salt and of Vynegre, fayre of coloure of Safroun, and putte it on fayre lynen clothe, and sette it vndernethe a fayre pewter dysshe, and lat it renne thorw the clothe so ofte tylle it renne clere: kytte fayre Rybbys of the syde of the Pygge, and lay ham on a dysshe, an pulle of the lemys of the Chykenys, eche fro other, and do a-way the Skynne, and ley sum in a dysshe fayre y-chowchyd, and pore thin gelye ther-on, and lay Almaundys ther-on, an Clowys, and paryd Gyngere, and serue forth.

Gas vs. Electric

While considering the potential renovation of our home kitchen the issue of choosing a gas or electric cooktop came up, and a strange thought occurred to me (big surprise, I know - me having a strange thought - you'd think I was used to it by now).

The most common preference among cooking enthusiasts is gas, which allows you to quickly adjust the amount of heat being applied. Not so for electric, where the heating element takes long enough to cool down that it adds a significant challenge to making temperature-sensitive recipes (like many modern French sauces). In spite of being plumbed for gas, we have an electric cooktop.

In fact, I've been cooking on electric stoves for the past 24 years. You get used to it, really. You learn to move the pan around a lot, have it hang halfway off the element as it cools down, or lifting it up an inch or so for a minute. This makes my cooking style a bit funky when I'm working on the nice new gas stove at my mom's.

So my initial reaction was to go with a gas stove. After all, you can't get more medieval than cooking over fire, right?

Then I thought back to last summer, when I did a bit of cooking over a real fire using an earthenware pot. I had Helewyse de Birkestad (Louise Smithson) with me to show me the basics, and the first thing I learned is that I wasn't going to be cooking over flame. Instead we had the pot on a grill over coals. This gives a much more constant and even heat. So here's the kicker: how did we control the amount of heat applied to the pot? By moving it around. As the coals cooled down the pot got moved closer in. If it boiled a bit too much it got moved away - or was raised up a bit.

So maybe the past 24 years of electric cooktops was good training.

Researching Medieval Recipes

Physicists sometimes refer to "The Arrow of Time" - the apparent directionality of how time flows. Apparently there are some sub-fields of physics where this is a big thing. To those of us outside of that academic world, this seems like a "Duh!" kind of thing, and one wouldn't think it is worth considering in the area of historic research.

It is.

When people look at medieval cookbooks, there seems to be a strong desire to ignore the inherent directionality. I think it's part of a built in human need to generalize - to make sense of something that does not fit in with the current world-view.

Ok, that's a bit too philosophical. Let's try some examples.

Let's say you've got this recipe that's been in your family for many generations. One day while serving it to some family or friends the thought hits you that all the ingredients in it were available in medieval Europe. "This might be medieval," you think, and decide to look into it. You then spend months digging through the cookbooks, trying to find recipes with the same ingredients, where similar methods were used, and where the end result sounds similar to the dish you know and love. If you're really really lucky you find an exact match. More likely though is that you find a few "kind-a, sort-a" recipes from widely varying times and places, and then you give up in frustration and tell people that researching medieval recipes is hard.

It's not, really. It only seemed hard because you ignored the directionality of time. You latched on to a piece of modern information and tried to push it some 500 years into the past. You assumed that because all of the ingredients were available in the middle ages, that there must be a cook somewhere back then that made this recipe. [This kind of reasoning is proven invalid by recipes like mayonnaise - all of its ingredients were present back to ancient times, but it wasn't invented until 1756.]

The easier way to research medieval recipes is to keep the information flowing from the past to the present. Pick up (or download) a medieval cookbook and treat it like you would any other cookbook. Read through it, skipping here and there, looking for something interesting, something that sounds tasty or different or that you have all the ingredients called for. If you can't read Middle French or German then use someone else's translation. If you can't read Middle English, borrow (or download) a dictionary and practice - it's mostly funny spelling and a handful of archaic words.

So you've picked out a recipe. Now gather the ingredients and follow the instructions. It may take a couple of tries (or three, or four) before you get the quantities balanced so the flavor and consistency are so you like it - most medieval recipes inconveniently leave out any measurements). You may even find some recipes that sound good but turn out just plain nasty (I've done this, but I've also found such recipes in modern cookbooks). Once you've found a good recipe though, then you've got a truly authentic medieval dish, and you've also got the original source it came from - documenting it becomes a trivial matter.

Of course every now and then, while browsing through a medieval cookbook, you're reading a recipe and the realization hits you, "That's grandma's recipe!" - and you find out that in medieval times they put raisins in it.