Starting Points: The Great Cheering Syrup

This weekly feature shows the initial steps I go through for interpreting a medieval recipe. I've been lax in posting lately, and as punishment the universe decided to push me outside of my comfort zone with this randomly selected recipe:

The Great Cheering Syrup: Way of Making It. Take half a ratl each of borage, mint, and citron leaves, cook them in water to cover until their strength comes out, then take the clean part and add it to a ratl of sugar. Then put in the bag: a spoonful each of aloe stems, Chinese rhubarb, Chinese cinnamon, cinnamon and clove flowers; pound all these coarsely, place them in a cloth, tie it well, and place it in the kettle, macerate it again and again until its substance passes out, and cook until [the liquid] takes the consistency of syrups. Take one û qiya with three of hot water. Benefits: It profits [preceding two words apparently supplied; in parentheses in printed Arabic text] weak stomachs, fortifies the liver and cheers the heart, digests foods, and lightens the constitution gently, God willing. [An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook (Andalusia, 13th c. - Charles Perry, trans.)]

Andalusian, eh?  I'm much more comfortable with French and English sources but I'll give it a shot.

My understanding is that these kind of syrups were used for making beverages in the Arabic-speaking world and the instructions appear to confirm that - though it also sounds rather medicinal. Mix it with hot water? Are you supposed to drink it hot like tea? That's all putting the cart before the horse; we've got to make the stuff first.

Borage - Borago officinalis

First thing's first: what the heck is a ratl? A little googling tells me it was a unit of weight equal to about 437.5g (or 15.43 ounces ... which is just under a pound ... cool!). So that's a pound each of the following:

Borage (Borago officinalis):  A common garden plant across Europe. The leaves of borage were often used like spinach in pies and salads. It also has blue flowers that were used for color or decoration. So which do we use here, the leaves or flowers? If you can find it fresh I'd use whichever you can get (or both). I was going to try growing it this summer but never got around to planting the seeds. I think I have a package of the dried flowers somewhere in the depths of my pantry.



Mint (genus Mentha):  There are all sorts of mints out there. I like spearmint but my wife hates it. Go figure. I'd use whichever kind I can get fresh at the grocery.

Citron Leaves (Citrus medica):  Really?!  I wasn't aware they had culinary use. Some googling found another example so it makes sense. I have no idea where I'd get them but their strong, lemony essence would probably have a big impact on the syrup so I can't just skip it. I might be able to substitute some other kind of citrus leaves but they probably wouldn't be the same and they also wouldn't be any easier to find in Ohio. I'd have to put out the word to everyone I know from far off places.

So that's three pounds of leaves in what would have to be a really big kettle, along with enough water to cover them. Then boil it all until ... I guess until the water tastes like you want it to. Then strain out all the leaves and add a pound of sugar and a "spoonful" (a tablespoon?) of each of the following:

Aloe stems (Aloe vera):  I'm guessing this should be fresh. I'm pretty sure I can get this locally. A tablespoon of this doesn't sound like much, but then I'm not sure how much aloe I want in my beverage anyway.

Chinese Rhubarb (Rheum palmatum):  Looking up this plant I found the root has a long history of medicinal use for all sorts of ailments. It's Wikipedia page also includes a health warning.

Pregnant women should avoid all intake of the plant since it may cause uterine stimulation. If taken for an extended amount of time, adverse effects include: "hypertrophy of the liver, thyroid, and stomach, as well as nausea, griping, abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea." 

Though the root of the Chinese rhubarb is a key facet of herbal medicine, its leaves can actually be poisonous if consumed in large amounts due to the oxalic acid content. Patients with "arthritis, kidney problems, inflammatory bowel disease, or intestinal obstruction" should refrain from consumption.

I don't care what it tastes like or how it would affect my re-creation; I'm leaving this stuff out.

Ok, the next two are interesting ...

Chinese cinnamon (Cinnamomum cassia):  The stuff that is sold as "Cinnamon" in the United States.

Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum):  Real cinnamon, sometimes sold as "Ceylon Cinnamon" in the US.

This recipe is one of the rare examples that calls for both types of cinnamon. Most others will call for one or the other (or for just "cinnamon" with no real clue to which).  They do taste different but I suspect a lot of people across medieval Europe couldn't tell them apart and were happy to use whatever they could get.

Clove flowers:  Oh bother.  This is one of those tricky ones. 

They might mean clove pinks (Dianthus caryophyllus), otherwise known as carnations. Clove pinks have historically been used to treat things like upset stomach and fever. You can get these online in dried form - make sure you're getting ones that are meant for eating rather than for making soap or something. Otherwise they might have been sprayed with who knows what pesticides and such.

Alternately they might mean the actual flowers from clove plants (Syzygium aromaticum), though that seems less likely to me than them using the dried flower buds from the same plant, which are called ... cloves.

In this case I think I'd first try clove pinks. They have more of a history of medicinal use.

So the aloe stems, cinnamon, cinnamon, and clove flowers all get smushed, tied up in cheesecloth, and dropped into the kettle. Then it's boil it some more (stirring and prodding the spice sachet from time to time to make sure the flavor gets out) until it all looks like a syrup.

For the last step I finally found a reference that told me an ûqiya is 1/12 of a ratl.  That makes it about 1.5 tablespoons.  So it's 1 to 2 tablespoons in a quarter-cup of hot water.  Sounds more like medicine to me than a beverage.

If there's anyone out there reading this who has more experience with this kind of recipe, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Starting Points: Crane Rostyd

This weekly feature shows the initial steps I go through for interpreting a medieval recipe. Today's randomly selected recipe is the following:

Crane Rostyd. Take a crane blod as thu dedyst a swan draw hym at the went fold up hys leggys cut of his whyngys at the joynte nexte the body wend the necke a boute the spite put the bylle yn his breste & reyse the whinges & the legges as of a gose & yf thu shalt sauce hym mynse hym fyrst & sauce hym with poudyr of gynger mustard & venygger & salt & serve forth with the sauce & yf thu wilt thu may sauce hym with sauce sylito. [Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (England, 1460)]

Yurgh! I'm not sure I would cook a crane.  Fortunately this is more of a mental exercise, though I suppose for the actual cooking part I could substitute a goose.  But first let's get through the theoretical stuff.

The first part says to bleed the crane the same way as a swan.  The same source has specific instructions on the subject.

Cut a swan in the rofe of the mouth touward the brayn of the hede & let hym blede to deth & kepe the blod to colour the chaudon with or cut the necke & let hym dye then skald hym draw hym rost hym & serve hym forth. [Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (England, 1460)]

This process sounded really bizarre to me, but I've found modern references to it so it's probably still done in places. The Humane Slaughter Association has this note on their website: 

Instruments that slice through a bird’s brain from inside the mouth should not be used as they are not effective, immediate or humane.

The next group of steps have to do with prepping the bird for roasting. The bird's organs are removed "at the went" (I assume that's "vent"), the legs are folded up, and the wings are removed. Then the bird is put on a spit with the neck wound around and tucked into the breast, and I assume the thing gets roasted here.

I love recipes that forget to tell you to actually cook things. I found one for squash in a modern cookbook that specifically tells you to "cook it for half the time" and has no further instructions.

Anyway, the rest of the recipe sounds like serving instructions. The wings and legs are raised ... I've seen this a number of times and I think it's to make a more impressive presentation. In this case it's a bit odd because we were told earlier to cut the wings off at the joint next to the body. I would probably just chalk this up to how medieval recipes can be formulaic.

Next it says "if you're going to serve it in sauce, mince it first."  It kind of makes sense, if you're going to serve it as a roast you keep it whole, but if you're going to serve it with sauce you chop it up.

The recipe goes on to mention two sauces. The first is ginger, mustard, vinegar, and salt.  While the instructions don't specify how to make it, I'd go with a bread-thickened sauce.  I'd mix the spices with a quarter cup of vinegar and a cup of broth, then add in three or four pieces of bread and stir it until it's all mush. Then I'd strain out and discard the solids and heat the liquid in a saucepan until it thickens.  This is a pretty standard technique for making sauces in 15th century England and France and makes for a beautifully smooth, and rather fool-proof, sauce.

The other sauce mentioned is "sylito".  I'm really glad the first sauce is there because I'm pretty stumped by this one. I can't find any medieval sauce by that name regardless of how I misspell it.

There's a "Civero of Hare" in An Anonymous Tuscan Cookery Book (Italy, ~1400) which is made from the hare's lungs and liver. I've made a similar sauce for capon, but it seems a bit of a stretch.

It could be a really mangled spelling for gauncile (a garlic and milk sauce). That seems like an even bigger stretch.

I also briefly considered the possibility that "sylito" is a spelling variation for "cilantro", but from what I can tell the word "cilantro" only dates back to the 19th century.

So, setting the butchery aspects of this recipe aside, I would try a roast goose with the ginger and mustard sauce described above.  Though to be honest I'd likely try the sauce out first with the dark meat from a chicken just to see how it tasted before spending the money on a goose.

Starting Points: Hen With Horseradish

This weekly feature shows the initial steps I go through for interpreting a medieval recipe. Today's randomly selected recipe is the following:

LXXIX - Hen with horseradish. First boil the hen in clean water so that it's nicely tender and soft. Take the horseradish and cut it in small pieces or grate it on a grater. Pound a handful of peeled almond and add that. Then make this to taste, not too thin or thick. Then put baked simle slices on a plate. Put the hen over it and then put this horseradish over it. [Koge Bog (Denmark, 1616 - Martin Forest, trans.)]

I haven't done a lot of recipes from Danish sources, but in general they seem to have more subdued spicing than what I've come to expect from medieval European cuisine. That isn't to say they don't have strong flavors - this recipe does call for horseradish after all - but they tend to use fewer spices. I suspect that this is related to Denmark's shift from Catholicism to Lutheranism in the early 16th century, paralleling England's change in both religion and cuisine.

There's not much to this recipe - essentially just chicken and horseradish. The only other recipe I've found like it is this Hungarian one:

Hen with Lippa sauce. Remove the feathers, take out the insides and do what I told you. Boil the hen or the capon in cabbage soup. Grate some horseradish onto it, and once cooked, take it out of the fire, don't let it be too hot, for that will take the power of the horseradish. Once you put it into a plate, pour some sauce onto the horseradish. Hungarians like this dish. If you can, cook a fat hen or capon.  [The Prince of Transylvania's Court Cookbook (Hungary, 16th c.)]

The first step is pretty simple, boil a chicken. While the recipe just uses water I'd be inclined to take a tip from the Hungarian recipe and add some aromatics and salt. Plain boiled chicken is just plain sad. So, the chicken would go into a big pot with some carrots, onions, and celery and a teaspoon of salt and then I'd let it boil for an hour or so until the legs pull out easily.

The next part of the recipe is a little odd. I'm ok with grating horseradish and grinding almonds, but "make this to taste, not too thin or thick" seems a bit nonsensical. Just how thin can a mix of two particulate solids be? It also sounds like it would be an unpleasantly grainy mixture. Given how gound almonds are most often used for making almond milk (or marzipan, but that's not helping) this section makes me thing they mean to make an almond-milk sauce flavored with horseradish.

With this in mind I'd grind a cup of almonds, add a tablespoon or two of grated horseradish, mix it all with two cups of hot water, and then strain out all the solids. I'd then cook the liquid in a saucepan until it thickens a bit. Ok, I'd probably add some salt here too. A little salt helps just about everything.

The serving instructions call for putting the chicken on top of some "simle" and pouring the sauce over it all. My assumption here is that "simle" is "simnel" - a loaf of bread made from fine, white flour (this morphed into a modern sort of cinnamon-raisin bread, but that's aside from things). Pouring soups and stews over slices of bread is pretty common in medieval cookbooks so it's a pretty safe bet. I'd cut the cooked chicken into pieces (or maybe shred it), put some into a bowl on top of a slice of bread (something like a dense, farmhouse white), and pour the sauce on top.

Given that it's pretty much white on white on white, I'd likely garnish it with some parsley or something just for a bit of color.

If I was really feeling brave (or bored) I'd make it exactly as written - as chicken on bread with a gritty paste on top. More likely though I'd let someone else do that part.

Starting Points: Spanish Pastries

This weekly feature shows the initial steps I go through for interpreting a medieval recipe. Today's randomly selected recipe is the following:

199 To make Spanish pastries. First prepare a firm dough with eggs and fat and roll it out very thin, as long as the table, and sprinkle ground almonds and sugar, butter or fat over it and roll it up over itself like a sausage. Afterwards cut it in pieces and close up both ends. In this manner make one after the other and turn the underside to the top. And bake it in a smooth pan, with fat in the pan. And let it bake in a weak heat, with a hot cover over the top, and serve it cold. [Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin (Germany, 16th century - V. Armstrong, trans.)]

Huh. Ok, I'll start off by stating that I haven't done much cooking of pastries. Still, I will give it a shot.

A quick search for similar recipes yields ... nothing. Huh. This turns out to be a rather unique recipe. I don't have much access to Spanish sources though, so if it's really from Spain (and there's no guarantee of that just because of the name) then perhaps there are some variations there. Fortunately it's not a complicated recipe and the instructions seem pretty clear.

The first part calls for making dough with eggs and fat. There's a contemporary short crust recipe from England like that which I've used before:

To make short paest for tarte. Take fyne floure and a cursey of fayre water and a dysche of swete butter and a lyttel saffron, and the yolckes of two egges and make it thynne and as tender as ye maye.  [A Proper New Booke of Cookery (England, 1575)]

With that in mind I'd mix 1 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 tsp. salt, and then cut in 4 Tbsp. butter and the yolks of 2 eggs. Once that forms fine crumbs I'd add water a little at a time until it all sticks together.

I know that seems like a big jump. Sorry. I learned to make pie crusts from my grandmother and the method is pretty automatic for me. To get those proportions I would have started with the flour and fat ratios from the Better Homes cookbook for a single crust pie, added in the egg yolks, and then added more water or flour until the dough was right - still workable but not sticky.

As an aside for anyone who has never made a pie crust with butter instead of shortening, the butter makes for a delicate dough and you have to be more careful working with it. That said it really tastes wonderful.

With the dough made I would roll it out pretty thinly, spread it with softened butter ... or maybe melt butter and brush it on, and then sprinkle it with ground almonds and sugar. Then it would get rolled up, cut into pieces, crimp the ends, and then bake at 350°F until golden.  I'd probably try for half-inch diameter rolls cut into maybe two-inch pieces.

It would be very tempting to add a little cinnamon, almond-flavor, or rosewater to the filling, or maybe even use marzipan. As a possible time and labor saving measure on the second or third try with the recipe I'd see if it would work to mix up the filling separately and spread it on the sheets of dough.

As it turns out, Kristen Wright has an interpretation of this recipe and it looks like she ended up taking much the same route I did.

Starting Points: Stuffed Capon

This weekly feature shows the initial steps I go through for interpreting a medieval recipe. Today's randomly selected recipe is the following:

Stuffed capon. [Take] chickens boiled in water and wine. Make a stuffing of meat, eggs and herbs and put it in the body of the boiled chicken. Make a cooking liquid of pepper, saffron and other herbs, add enough wine and make it [into a] thin [sauce]. Pull it off [the fire] when it is done. [Wel ende edelike spijse (Dutch, late 15th c. - Christianne Muusers, trans.)]

This is a surprisingly unusual recipe. Stuffing birds seems to have been a thing, and the ingredients in the stuffing aren't that odd. The cooking method sounds a bit strange though. Is the capon cooked a second time after it's stuffed? It doesn't explicitly say to but multiple cookings are common in 15th century sources, especially where large pieces of meat are concerned. Meats are boiled and then roasted, or roasted and then pan-fried. Presumably this was to make sure everything got cooked all the way through.

Then there's the "cooking liquid" - is it a sauce for serving or for basting the capon during the unstated second cooking?

I found one similarly-titled (and very long) recipe from Libro di cucina / Libro per cuoco that is actually cooking a capon, chopping up the meat, adding other ingredients, and forming the mixture around the bones before cooking a second time - not quite what the Dutch recipe seemed to have in mind.

The Neapolitan Recipe Collection has a recipe for stuffing that calls for a lot more ingredients:

Stuffing for a Capon. Get marjoram and parsley and grind them up; get one or two breasts of capons and grind them with the other; get a little Parmesan cheese, two egg yolks, cinnamon, pepper, saffron and ginger, with a little lardo or cured ham, and grind everything together; stuff the capon and set it to boil or to roast; make its glazing with egg yolks and rosewater.  [The Neapolitan Recipe Collection (Italy, 15th c - T. Scully, trans.)]

Then there are these which sound a bit closer.

To fasse goos or capon tak parsly saige and isope suet and parboile it in freche brothe then tak it up and put ther to herd yolks of eggs hewene then tak grapes mynced onyons and pouder of ginger canelle peppur and salt and fers the goos or capon with it and rost them and serue them.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

Goce or Capon farced. Take parcill, Swynes grece, or suet of shepe, and parboyle hem in faire water and fressh boyling broth; And then take yolkes of eyeron hard y-sodde, and hew hem smale, with the herbes and the salte; and caste thereto pouder of Ginger, Peper, Canell, and salte, and Grapes in tyme of yere; And in other tyme, take oynons, and boile hem; and whan they ben yboiled ynowe with the herbes and with the suet, al thes togidre, then put all in the goos, or in the Capon; And then late him roste ynogh.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

That last one is notable in that it calls for hard boiled eggs in the stuffing.

So I'd start with boiling a capon in lightly salted water. If I can't get a capon then I'd use a chicken, though capons are much more tender (and expensive!). It should end up being just barely cooked through (to 165°F at the deepest part of the meat). Any more and it would start to fall apart.

Then I'd make the stuffing from four chopped, hard boiled eggs, a half pound of browned sausage, parsley, sage, hyssop, and maybe some powder douce.  This would go into the capon and the capon would go into a roasting pan.

For the sauce I'd go with yellow pepper sauce - it matches the ingredients pretty well.  I'd baste the capon with that and cook the whole thing in an oven at 400° until it starts to brown on the outside. Since all the ingredients are cooked before the roasting step there's no worry about anything being unsafe.

I'm not sure how it would turn out appearance-wise but it all should taste pretty good!

Starting Points: Rosee

I haven't had a lot of time to work on medieval recipes lately, but I realized that the issue is more one of kitchen time than the actual research. So I've decided to try at least once a week to post something that is essentially the mental prep work I go through when trying out a recipe for the first time. This would serve me (and possibly now others) as a sort of starting point. The next step would be trial and error - sometimes I get it right after the first try and sometimes it takes more.

To make things a bit more challenging, I'll be using the "Random Medieval Recipe of the Day" which shows up at the bottom of the main page of MedievalCookery.com. With that restriction there's no telling what I'll have to work with.


Today's recipe is Rosee

XLI - For to make Rosee. Tak the flowris of Rosys and wasch hem wel in water and after bray hem wel in a morter and than tak Almondys and temper hem and seth hem and after tak flesch of capons or of hennys and hac yt smale and than bray hem wel in a morter and than do yt in the Rose so that the flesch acorde wyth the mylk and so that the mete be charchaunt and after do yt to the fyre to boyle and do thereto sugur and safroun that yt be wel ycolowrd and rosy of levys and of the forseyde flowrys and serve yt forth. [Forme of Cury (England, 1390)]

I know there are modern interpretations of this one out there but I'm not going to peek.

On my first read through, this sounds like a sort of thick mash of chicken in rose-flavored almond milk. Grind rose petals, boiled almonds, and chopped and ground chicken. Mix it together so that it's very thick (charchaunt) and cook with some sugar and saffron.

There's the usual vagueness in the recipe though. Are the rose petals fresh or dried? Are the almonds ground? Fortunately this is a fairly common recipe so I have other versions to look at to help figure out what the original intent was.

[1] Rose. Take flour of ryse, as whyte as sylke, And hit welle, with almond mylke. Boyle hit tyl hit be chargyd, þenne Take braune of capone or elle of henne. Loke þou grynd hit wondur smalle, And sithen þou charge hit with alle. Coloure with alkenet, sawnder, or ellys with blode, Fors hit with clowes or macys gode. Seson hit with sugur grete plenté, Þis is a rose, as kokes telle me. [Liber cure cocorum]

[2] C - Roseye. Take Almaunde Mylke an flowre of Rys, and Sugre, an Safroun, an boyle hem y-fere; than take Red Rosys, an grynd fayre in a morter with Almaunde mylke; than take Loches, an toyle (Note: Rub, cover) hem withFlowre, an frye hem, and ley hem in dysshys; than take gode pouder, and do in the Sewe, and caste the Sewe a-bouyn the lochys, and serue forth. [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books]

[3] To mak rose, tak flour of ryse and temper it with almond mylk and mak it chaungynge then tak the braun of capon or of henne sodyn and grind it and charge it ther with and colour it with sanders and blod and fors it with clowes and maces and sesson it with sugur and serue it. [A Noble Boke off Cookry]

[4] Rosee. XX.II. XII. Take thyk mylke as to fore welled. cast þerto sugur a gode porcioun pynes. Dates ymynced. canel. & powdour gynger and seeþ it, and alye it with flores of white Rosis, and flour of rys, cole it, salt it & messe it forth. If þou wilt in stede of Almaunde mylke, take swete cremes of kyne. [Forme of Cury]

[5] .lj. Rosee. Tak thicke mylke as to fore wellid, cast therto suger a gode porcioun, pynes, dates, y mynced, canel & poudour ginger, & seeth hit & alye it with floures of roses white & flour of rys. cole hit, salt it, & messe hyt forth, yf thou wolt in stede of almaund mylk: tak swete cremes of kyne. [Fourme of Curye - Rylands MS 7]

Wow! That's a lot to work through. Right of the top I see that none of the other versions start with grinding rose flowers, but instead they call for rice flower.  That suggests to me a copyist error somewhere along the line.

The first three recipes also call for almond milk, which changes our recipe a bit.  The last two recipes call for pynes (pine nuts) and milk rather than almond milk, so I'm going to ignore them as being too different (either distinct recipes or odd variations).

We also seem to have a bit of a discrepancy with the meat. Recipe [1] says to grind the chicken and then boil it. Recipe [3] says to boil it and then grind it. Recipe [2] calls for a kind of fish (loches). We'll ignore the fish. My first inclination is to go with cooking the chicken first.

That leaves our recipe looking more like it starts with rice flour and a slightly jumbled set of instructions for almond milk. Then add well ground chicken, some sugar and saffron, cook until thick, and garnish with rose petals.

Now comes a tricky part - guessing at the proportions.

Let's start with one pound of chicken in the form of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. We can try dark meat and such later. Boil that in water, let it cool, then chop it finely.

Both almond milk and rice flour have a thickening effect during cooking. I'd start with a tablespoon of the rice four mixed in with the chicken (mix it first to keep it from forming lumps when liquids are added). Then I'd make up a batch of almond milk and pour it in until the chicken looks soupy.

The next thing to add is sugar and saffron. I'd grind a pinch of saffron with about a quarter teaspoon of salt - I know salt isn't called for but unsalted food can taste bland and sometimes you have to break the rules. I'd stir that into the sugar and then mix it in with the chicken goo.

Bring all this to a low boil. I'd be looking for it to act like cooking oatmeal ... blup, blup, blup. If it seems too thin I'd add more rice flour.  When it's thick then garnish with rose petals and serve.

Sweet chicken pudding with rose petals ... well, it could be good. There are some options to try out, like not boiling the chicken first or using fish, but I'd save those for later attempts.

If you make this (or have already made it) let me know what you did and how it came out!

All Manner of Powders

Last Tuesday I posted a link on Facebook to Yonnie Travis' interpretation of Eyron en Poche (poached eggs in a sweet sauce), and one of the commenters asked about "Blawnche pouder" (i.e. "white powder"). Here's the original source of the recipe in question for context (emphasis added):

Cj - Eyron en poche. Take Eyroun, breke hem, an sethe hem in hot Water; than take hem Vppe as hole as thou may; than take flowre, an melle with Mylke, and caste ther-to Sugre or Hony, and a lytel pouder Gyngere, an boyle alle y-fere, and coloure with Safroun; an ley thin Eyroun in dysshys, and caste the Sewe a-boue, and caste on pouder y-now. Blawnche pouder ys best.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

 So just what the heck is this stuff supposed to be? Sugar? Flour? Cocaine?

Medieval Italian cocaine dealer ... ok, it's really a sugar merchant.Theatrum sanitatis, codice 4182 della R. Biblioteca Casanatense. Rome

In the glossary of Curye on Inglysch, Hieatt and Butler offer the following:

Blawnce Pouder - ginger ground with sugar; see also powdour douce

That seems a bit odd considering the recipe above already listed sugar and ginger separately before calling for blawnche pouder. I suspect their conclusion was based on recipes like the following (again, emphasis added):

.Cxxx. Peerus in confyt. Take perus & pare hem clene. take gode rede wyne & mulberyes. other saundres & seeth the peres ther inne. & whan they buth y sode take hem up. make a syryp of wyne creke other vernage with blaunche poudour. other whyte sugur & poudour of ginger. & do the peres ther inne. seeth hit a litul and messe hit forth.  [Fourme of Curye / Rylands MS 7 (England, 1390)]

In modern English that phrase would be "with white powder, or white sugar and powdered ginger". While the "or" there certainly could mean "or in other words", but it could also mean "or if you don't have any".  That's really not as helpful as I'd like it to be.

The problem with that definition is compounded by recipes like ...

Warduns in syruppe. Take wardens (pears), and pare hom clene, and scthe hom in red wyn with mulberryes, or saunders, tyl thai byn tendur, and then take hom up, and cut hom, and do hom in a pot; and do therto wyn crete, or vernage ||, or other gode swete -wyne, and blaunch pouder, and sugur, and pouder of gynger, and let hom boyle awhile, and then serve hit forth.  [Ancient Cookery / Arundel 334](England, 1425)]

While this recipe is related to the one for "Peerus in confyt" from Fourme of Curye, it seems to be calling for sugar and ginger in addition to the blaunch pouder.

Then I found this recipe:

l - A potage on fysshday. Take an Make a styf Poshote of Milke an Ale; than take and draw the croddys thorw a straynoure wyth whyte Swete Wyne, or ellys Rochelle Wyne, and make it sum-what rennyng an sum-what stondyng, and put Sugre a gode quantyte ther-to, or hony, but nowt to moche; than hete it a lytil, and serue it forth al a-brode in the dysshys; an straw on Canel, and Gyngere, and ȝif thou haue Blank powder, straw on and kepe it as whyte as yt may be, and than serue forth.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

... so it's already calling for sugar and ginger, and goes on to say "if you have blanche pouder". That kind of does it in for blawnche pouder being a mix of sugar and ginger. They already know you have both of those, so they wouldn't ask if you had them mixed, right?

At times like this I look and see what the French are up to (the words "blawnche pouder" are, after all, originally French, so why not?  In the glossary of his translation of The Viandier of Taillevent, Terence Scully cites the following entry from Cotgrave's 1611 French-English dictionary (silly, I should have thought to look there first):

Pouldre blanche - A powder compounded of Ginger, Cinnamon, and Nutmegs; much in use among Cookes.

Of course Cotgrave's was written over 150 years after the recipe from TFCCB that started this mess (the one way at the top of the page), so it's possible that the meaning had changed significantly by then ... or was just plain wrong.  It's also worth noting that Nutmeg doesn't really show up much in English cookbooks before the 1600s.

On a side note, Cotgrave's has a recipe for Powder Douce that doesn't quite mesh with the source recipes we have from the fifteenth century.

Pouldre de duc - A powder made of Sugar and Cinnamon, & having (sometimes) other Aromaticall simples added unto them.

So let's get back to what we know (or at least what we're pretty sure of).  Blawnche pouder is probably a mixture of sugar and other spices, possibly including ginger.

Also ... nope, that's pretty much it.

We can guess that the mix is light-colored. After all, the English translation of "blawnche pouder" is "white powder", so it wouldn't make much sense for the stuff to be dark brown or red. Of course annual "white sales" in the US include merchandise in all sorts of colors now (but originally included only white bed linens).

This is one of those situations where I will freely admit I just don't know for sure.  Until someone locates an actual recipe for blawnche pouder, I think I'll go with the sugar & ginger mix. Since it's often sprinkled on top of an otherwise finished dish, perhaps use powdered sugar? That would fit the description and keep it distinct from powder douce.

Theseus' Recipe

The most common question that food historians face is "How old is the recipe for [insert favorite food]?" Sometimes the answer is easy - cream cheese was invented around 1872. Other times though it's hard to be sure, either because of disagreements about history, or because the documentation gets really vague the farther back you go.

This post is about one of the more uncertain dishes: Coq au Vin.

Photo by Steven Depolo via Wikimedia Commons

One of my cousins was talking about making this dish, and was curious about its history. Of course the moment he mentioned it I had no choice but to dive in and see what I could find out. As usual, the first step is just to check Wikipedia. Yeah, I know, but for surface-level information it can be really useful. According to Wikipedia ...

Various legends trace coq au vin to ancient Gaul and Julius Caesar, but the recipe was not documented until the early 20th century; it is generally accepted that it existed as a rustic dish long before that. A somewhat similar recipe, poulet au vin blanc, appeared in an 1864 cookbook.

Ancient Gaul and Julius Caesar ... um, yeah. One of the big red flags in food history is when an origin traces back to Rome. Everyone wants their grandma's specialty dish to date back to ancient Rome (the other big red flag is when a cheese is claimed to have been Charlemagne's favorite - apparently every single freaking cheese in the world was Charlemagne's favorite - I hear he was particularly fond of plastic wrapped American cheese slices).

So lets try a different angle and look at the ingredients in Coq au Vin. I did a quick search and picked a recipe that looked pretty traditional - this one from Bon Apétit. Here is what it calls for:

chicken
salt
pepper
bacon
carrots
celery
onion
red wine
tomato paste
chicken broth
thyme
rosemary
wild mushrooms

There's one big problem in that list already, tomato paste.  The tomato is a new-world plant and wasn't available outside of the Americas before 1500 AD.  I checked a couple of other online recipes and found that not all Coq au Vin recipes call for tomato paste (though Julia Child's recipe does and that's close to religious doctrine there). We'll let this pass ... for the moment.

The recipe also calls for carrots, celery, and onions - a.k.a. mirepoix. While those ingredients were available in Europe for pretty much all of written history, The practice of dicing them up and sautéeing them together as the base of a recipe doesn't seem to go back before 1700. Again though, not every Coq au Vin recipe out there calls for mirepoix.

So what if we pare the ingredients list down to the very basics? We'll limit it to just chicken, bacon, onions, and wine and see if we can find something close in the surviving cookbooks. At first it seems promising - two recipes from medieval France. On closer examination though neither seem quite what we're looking for. The first, Bruet of Almayn, is a long one. It has all the expected ingredients but has a lot of other stuff as well (including almond milk). The second is closer, but still with the additions of cinnamon and liver and blood ... maybe not.

George Soup, Parsley-laced Soup. Take poultry cut into quarters, veal or whatever meat you wish cut into pieces, and put to boil with bacon: and to one side have a pot, with blood, finely minced onions which you should cook and fry in it. Have also bread browned on the grill, then moisten it with stock from your meat and wine, then grind ginger, cinnamon, long pepper, saffron, clove and grain and the livers, and grind them up so well that there is no need to sift them: and moisten with verjuice, wine and vinegar. And when the spices are removed from the mortar, grind your bread, and mix with what it was moistened with, and put it through the sieve, and add spices and leafy parsley if you wish, all boiled with the blood and the onions, and then fry your meat. And this soup should be brown as blood and thick like 'soringue'.  [Le Menagier de Paris, (France, 1393 - Janet Hinson, trans.)]

If we limit the ingredients list to just chicken, onions, and wine then there are a lot more possible matches. Almost a couple dozen. Some of them are closer to Coq au Vin than the others. Does the English recipe below count?

xlij - Conyng, Mawlard, in gely or in cyuey. Take Conynge, Hen, or Mawlard, and roste hem alle-most y-now, or ellys choppe hem, an frye hem in fayre Freysshe grece; an frye myncyd Oynenons, and caste alle in-to the potte, and caste ther-to fayre Freysshe brothe, an half Wyne, Maces, Clowes, Powder pepir, Canelle; than take fayre Brede, an wyth the same brothe stepe, an draw it thorw a straynoure wyth vynegre; an whan it is wyl y-boylid, caste the lycoure ther to, and powder Gyngere, and Salt, and sesyn it vp an serue forth.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, (England, 1430)]

Here's the problem, how many changes can you make to a recipe before it's not the same recipe anymore? My wife and I sometimes joke about making Greek Blueberry Pie with substitutions. It would have lamb and olives and garlic and grape leaves and no blueberries ... actually it wouldn't be much of a blueberry pie, but it would be very Greek.

I don't have a definitive answer, but I'm pretty comfortable saying that the modern recipes are modern. They may be related to something made centuries ago, but they're probably not the same thing. Yes, they cooked chicken in wine back in ancient Rome, but Coq au Vin most likely originated no earlier than the mid-19th century.

Madeleine and the Mad Cow

Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears
Madeleine Ferrières
Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231131925
I haven't had much time to read lately (or post on the blog, for that matter), but if you're curious about what kind of book I keep on the nightstand (and who isn't?) this is it. Yes, I know I'm a geek.

The really cool thing about this book (so far) is that in just the first two chapters, Madeleine Ferrières manages to completely destroy the Moldy Meat Myth™. She does this not through menus or recipes, nor through logic or reasoning. Instead she references several surviving medieval laws and charters.

Some of these laws explicitly forbid the sale of spoiled meat. Others establish an inspection process that rivals that of the USDA. However the laws that most effectively debunk the myth are those that prohibit the sale of meat that was slaughtered the previous day.

So here's a brief recap of medieval meat consumption:

1. On average, urban residents ate three to five pounds of meat each week.
2. Butchers were forbidden to sell day-old meat for human consumption.
3. Livestock was brought into the town alive.
4. Livestock and butchered meat were both inspected for wholesomeness.
5. Butchers were forbidden to sell cooked meat, and cooks were forbidden to slaughter livestock.
6. Meat was a lot cheaper than spices.

So, as the myth would have it, butchers would bring in the huge quantity of livestock needed, butcher it all right away, let it sit around for days, hide it from the inspectors, sell it illegally, and hope that the spice merchants can convince the customers to use £10 worth of spices on a 2p piece of meat.

Yeah, sure.

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.

Alan Coxon and Alegar

One of the big news stories among the bunch of geeks into Medieval European cuisine is the puff piece that's going around online about a new product being launched by "celebrity chef" Alan Coxon.

"This passion is what led him to reinvent a classic and historically valuable recipe from Medieval England, which he has calls the Ale-Gar, putting him in the rare league of chefs who have invented food products of great value. A versatile and uniquely flavoured form of vinegar, to put it very broadly, Ale-Gar can be put to a variety of uses as well-known chefs in many restaurants in the West are attesting to."

Now what makes me cranky about this whole thing isn't that he has "reinvented" a medieval recipe, or even that he's marketing it (and himself) in such a painfully irritating way. No, what bugs me are some of the horribly incorrect and inaccurate things in the article and on Coxon's website.

First, let me make a note about the name of your product: "Ale-Gar". The word alegar is the Middle English term for ale vinegar or malt vinegar. Given that you talk about your product being "infused" with flavors and that it would be a good substitute for balsamic vinegar, you're not making alegar. Instead of giving it such a misleading name, I suggest you change it to something else. "Medieval Themed Vinegar", perhaps. As long as you call it "Ale-Gar", food historians will need to keep reminding the public that "Ale-Gar" isn't alegar.

If a medieval recipe calls for alegar, use this stuff.

"I am proud to be the creator of a historic food range and the globally unique Medieval Old English Ale-Gar – a product that has all but disappeared from our culinary repertoire for over 300 years. After ten years of painstaking research and development, I have managed to bring it back for the world to enjoy."

No, Alan. You are not the creator of a historic food range (whatever that means). You are the creator of a line of products with a historic theme. There's a big difference. Further, malt vinegar has been widely available for the past 300 years, and can easily be found on the shelves of common grocery stores. Any research you've done over the past 10 years had nothing to do with understanding medieval production of alegar. You didn't bring anything back.  You've been doing modern product development, that's all.

"How is Ale-Gar made? Without giving too much away, it is made using a 15th-century Medieval Old English recipe that took me ten years to recreate. The mixture is then placed in acidulation tanks, infused and matured."

I've read the available 15th century recipes for making alegar (one of them is reproduced below). Now maybe you've got access to a source I haven't heard of (possible, but I doubt it), but from what I can tell, the alegar produced back then wasn't that much different from the malt vinegar of today. It didn't take you 10 years to recreate alegar. It took you 10 years to work out something like balsamic vinegar that you thought you could market.

To torne Wyne to Vyneagyr or Ale to Aleger or syder to Aysell. Take a pott and fyll hit Full of wyne Asell or gode Ale And stoppe well the mowth that no thyng cum yn nor owte And do hit in A vessell full of water and set the vessell on the fyre And let the pot of wyne boyle in the same A long while tyll hit be turnyd. [MS Pepys 1047, (England, ca. 1500)]

Oh, and just so you know, the phrase "Medieval Old English" is nonsense. Old English was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons from around 450 to 1066. Middle English was spoken in England from around 1100 to 1500. Pick one. Given that you keep talking about the 15th century, I suggest Middle English.

"In Mediaeval England, wine was limited to Royalty and nobility, ..."

A minor quibble, but this is plain wrong. While it is true that there was less consumption of wine in England by the working class, it wasn't limited to "Royalty and nobility". The growing merchant class imported significant amounts of wine from France, and England had its own (declining) wine-making industry throughout the middle ages.

"For my Ale-Gar, I have used a traditional mediaeval ale recipe, but I have incorporated Chocolate Stout Malt, to tantalise today's more sophisticated and adventurous palate."

So you use a traditional medieval ale recipe, but you add completely non-medieval ingredients to it to make it taste different, which means you don't use a traditional medieval ale recipe. Right. Please also note that any talk about the modern palate being "more sophisticated and adventurous" is complete marketing BS and has no basis in reality.

One last note from the article:

"Of his school life, Alan says he wasn’t a remarkably bright child as he preferred to be engaged in athletics."

It shows.

Graphing Meats

Last week I wrote a post about a news story about an article in Food and History, noting my skepticism towards some claims about medieval beef consumption.

Since then I've added a handful of pages of data to the Statistics from Medieval Cookbooks. That's all well and good, but I wondered if I could graph some of the data and see if it made any trends more apparent. The graphs, along with some comments are below.

First though, I'd like to note again that this data comes from medieval cookbooks, and there is very likely some disconnect between the number of times an ingredient appears and the frequency of consumption. Second, the data set is small and there seems to be a lot of "noise" in the sample. Third, I am not a statistician. That being said, let's take a look at the graphs.


Fish / Seafood

In this graph it looks like there may be a slight downward trend in fish consumption overall. There's a pretty clear downward trend for France, and a slightly smaller one for England.

Poultry

I think the data point for Du fait de cuisine in this graph is an outlier and should be ignored. Everything else looks like a reasonably flat trend line.

Pork

The decreasing trend here is pretty clear, even if Du fait de cuisine is an anomaly. What's more, the trend for the English cookbooks is very clear.

Beef

Finally, the crux of the matter, there appears to be a rising trend for beef, with a very low starting point. The spike from Du fait de cuisine is echoed in Le Recueil de Riom, so it could be valid. When England and France are taken separately, the rate of increase is higher for France.

Overall, this supports the claim that pork consumption in Europe declined during the 14th and 15th centuries, but it still doesn't do much for the ideas that beef was the most popular type of meat in France and England, or that it appears in Viandier or Forme of Curye more often than other meats.

Uncertainty and Doubt and Beef

On Monday I came across an article referring to a paper on medieval beef consumption.  This article contains the following eyebrow-raising statements:

One of the key conclusions of this article is that cattle and sheep were the main sources of meat throughout Western Europe, and that consumption of pork went into general decline during the 14th and 15th centuries, which López attributes to changes in farming after the Black Death.

... in northern France and England beef was the most popular type of meat.

... medieval cookbooks, like the Viandier and the Forme of Curye, had beef in their recipes more often than other meats.

I haven't yet read the paper that the article is referring to - "Consumption of Meat in Western European Cities during the Late Middle Ages: A Contemporary Study", Food and History, Vol.8 No.1 (2010) - but I'm certainly trying to get a hold of a copy.


What makes me question the quotes above (aside from the fact that the economics of the situation make heavy beef consumption unlikely) is that it doesn't mesh with the statistics I've extracted from various medieval cookbooks.


First, the statement that beef appears in the recipes in Viandier and Forme of Curye more than any other meat is just plain wrong.  Beef appears in 3% of the reciped in Forme of Curye, which is plainly less than the 13% of recipes that contain pork.  In fact, beef is sixth on the list in descending order of frequency - it appears just below rabbit (4%).  Fish / Seafood has the top spot, appearing in 22% of the recipes.


Beef does appear higher up in the statistics from Viandier.  There, it's in the second spot with 14%.  It's still below fish / seafood with 29% though.  What's more, poultry (13%) and pork (10%) aren't very far behind.


Note that there is some wiggle-room in these statistics.  For example, I've lumped together a lot of different kinds of aquatic life into the category "fish / seafood", and "pork" includes "ham", "bacon", and any part of a pig.  Still, browsing through the recipes I still find way more references to "pork" than "beef" in Forme of Curye.  Additionally, the number of recipes for a type of meat doesn't necessarily correspond to how often that meat was consumed.


The statement that beef was the most popular type of meat is possibly true, but the data I've seen doesn't support it.  In the dozen cookbooks I've pulled information from, only three (Ancient Cookery, The Good Housewife's Jewell & Ouverture de Cuisine) have beef appearing most often in recipes.  Fish / seafood has the top spot in the vast majority.  I suppose if you don't consider fish to be meat (e.g. as the church dictated) then beef's position improves, but it's still not the most common going by the numbers.


Lastly, the statement about cattle and sheep being the main sources of meat seems to be a real stretch.  Before 1500, sheep / mutton recipes are not that common - generally appearing in less than 10% of the recipes in French and English cookbooks (Du fait de cuisine being the exception).


There are all sorts of possibilities here.  It could be that the paper's author compiled the data differently than I did, and that lead to different conclusions.  It could also be that the article, which was written for a popular (sort of) audience, misinterpreted the author's conclusions.  Either way, I want to see the actual paper.  Something's off somewhere, and I want to make sure it isn't me.

Thoughts on "Medieval Japan"

Every now and then I get asked for recipes or information about medieval cooking outside of Europe, and each time it happens I end up mulling it over for days trying to work out an answer.  I suppose I could say that I focus on Europe (and sometimes I do), but that answer is an evasion.  It doesn't address the question of why I don't research medieval cooking from other cultures.

The first problematical point rests in what is meant by "medieval".  Webster's defines the word as "of, relating to, or in the style of the Middle Ages," and goes on to define the middle ages as:

"... the time in European history between classical antiquity and the Italian renaissance (from about 500 a.d. to about 1350): sometimes restricted to the later part of this period (after 1100) and sometimes extended to 1450 or 1500."

This goes back to the origin of the word, which is from the Latin medium aevum - the middle age, or the time between the classical era and the Renaissance, and most definitions I've seen of "medieval" look something like this.

Europe during this time period had a surprisingly consistent culture.  Yes, there were stylistic and political differences for different regions and countries within Europe, but there was also an amazing degree of uniformity in terms of technology, clothing, and (most significantly) food.

These definitions are rather Roman-centered.  They clearly make sense when applied to Italy: it's the time between the fall of the Roman empire and the Renaissance.  With the extension of years they also make sense when applied to northern Europe (England, France, etc.) as it took much longer for the Renaissance to percolate that far north.  It's a bit of a stretch to get it to mesh with places on the edge of Europe though.

When someone then asks about cooking in medieval Japan (or China, or India, or Central America, etc.) I'm first stuck trying to figure out what "medieval Japanese cooking" means.  Are they asking about Japanese cooking between the years 500 to 1350?  What about 500 to 1500?  Maybe some other date range?  To the best of my (limited) knowledge of Japan, there isn't that much difference in the culture and cooking in Japan between 1000 and 1800, so just where is the dividing line?

Now if they asked about cooking in "feudal Japan", or "India before the British empire", or "pre-1500 Central America," those are concepts I can deal with.  Of course my answer would simply be something like "I just don't study that."  I also suspect that answer would be no more surprising than the response to a car dealer's response to "Why don't you sell bicycles?"

It's not that I don't like Chinese or Indian or other cuisines - as my somewhat padded outline will attest, I like a wide variety of foods.  It's not even that I don't like the history of the other places.  It's just that medieval European cuisine is, in itself, a distinctive cooking system, and since I don't have time to research everything about food and cooking to any real depth, I choose just that one part.

Behind the scenes on the Website

Over the past couple of weeks I've made some major changes to the website, but those changes aren't very obvious.

The most recent changes were also the most noticeable:  I've added a bunch of recipes by Jennifer Marshall-Craig and Diana Hart (To Make a Tart, Cinnamon Brewet, Roast Hen, Mushroom Tart, Cherry Sauce, Beef Pie, King's Chicken, Cabbage).

What doesn't show are the changes I made that make maintaining the site much easier.  The recipes page is now dynamically generated from a database, as are the pages that list recipes by country and category.  This means that when I add a new recipe, I make one entry into the database and the recipe is listed on all the appropriate pages.  If I need to make a correction (and I often do), then that correction is also automagically propagated through the site.

For everyone living outside of my head, the benefit of these changes is that the various pages will not become outdated as new recipes are added.

Similarly, the Online Medieval Cookbooks, Recommended Books, and Menus From Medieval Sources pages are also generated from databases. Exciting, isn't it? I know you're just thrilled.  I'll try to do something more ... fun (?) ... in the near future.

Similar, but Different

Yesterday I wanted to make a pie for dinner to celebrate Pi day, and being the sort of geek I am, I thought I'd try out something medieval.

The Medieval Cookbook Search turned up a bunch of recipes for meat pies, and I picked out one that seemed pretty straightforward - Pyes of Pairis from A Noble Boke off Cookry.

It turned out pretty well, so I wrote it up and went to post it on the website, and that's when I realized I'd had it before. Well ... sort of.

I'd never made it before, but if I'd taken a few minutes to look at my own website I would have seen the link to Kristen Wright's version of the recipe. D'oh! This made me consider not posting it after all - I don't want to seem like I'm stepping on her recipes or anything.

However, there's something interesting to be seen from comparing her interpretation to mine. Even with such a simple recipe (cook meat, add eggs and spices, bake in pie), we ended up with substantially different results. What's more, I think that both interpretations are equally valid.

This is something I've come across many times while re-creating medieval cuisine. Because of the way the recipes are written, and because our cooking culture is so much different now from what it was then, there is a lot of uncertainty packed into even the shortest and most direct recipes.

In some ways it can be frustrating, but in other ways it makes it just that much more fun.

Middle-English Words that I Hate

A couple of weeks back I was talking with a friend about indexing texts.  She (Hi Drea!) works with medieval dye recipes rather than culinary ones, but we both have the same sorts of problems with trying to search texts that are littered with spelling variations and foreign words.

That conversation got me thinking about, and then experimenting with, a couple possibilities for an improved cookbook search for my website.  One of my tests proved to be very functional and much more efficient, so now I've got the new indexing and search interface written and am half way through building new indexes for all the cookbooks.

(While building the indexes is no longer as much work as it used to be - and the new system is a lot more maintainable - it's still a rather labor intensive task.)

Two of the texts I've done so far - "Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books" and "Forme of Cury" - are the most irritating.  They're not only large and loaded with medieval spellings, but they contain many uses of certain words I've now come to loathe.

Pyk - This word, along with its variants (pik, pyke, etc.) can mean pike (as in "Take a fresh pyk and remove the scales") or pick (as in "and then pyk out the bones").  This word is by far the worst, with no consistency in how a given spelling is used.  The only saving grace is that "pick" isn't an ingredient, so I could go through the text and mark all the cases where "pyk" meant "pick" so they wouldn't be indexed.  Anything left is therefore "pike".

Flowre - There are a surprising number of variants for this one (flour, flower, floure).  Indexing them was made a little easier in that a plural always indicates "flowers".  One text did have a couple cases where "flower" meant "flour" though, which is really awkward because people who search on "flower" don't want to see recipes with "flour" but do want to see recipes with "flowers".

Eles - Almost as much of a pain as "pyk".  Here the many variants (els, elys, etc.) can mean either "eels" or "else".  Again though, I only need to index one of the terms.

Haris - It could be "hairs" or it could be "hares".  Fortunately, not only do I need to index only one of them, but neither one shows up very often.

Dere - This one is minor.  There's only one recipe that uses it in the sense of "dear", the rest are "deer".

Grains - For this one I have a different issue.  "Grains" can mean ... well, grains, like wheat.  Alternately, it could be part of the term "grains of paradise" meaning the seeds of the plant Aframomum melegueta.  Generally the plural always means "grains of paradise" and the singular means "grain".

Even though I'm an incredible word geek, after working on these texts I really do hate these words.  I also have a renewed appreciation for standardized spelling (or "standardised" for those in the UK).

Recipe Interpretation

Last night I tried out a new recipe (a modern one for crab soup, from Chef David Young's cookbook), and that got me thinking about the process I used to interpret medieval recipes.  It's really pretty straightforward, but seeing as I'm not the most organized person in the world, it helps keeps me from making mistakes and makes sure I have all the information I need to put the recipes on my website.

[Note for any readers who participate in SCA Arts and Sciences competitions:  following this sort of process will also help you document your recipe properly.  I'll add notes in brackets where applicable.]

1. Select a Recipe

There are all sorts of ways to do this. You can use a medieval cookbook from a library or bookstore, use one of the many books available free online, or even use my searchable index of cookbooks to find recipes that use a given ingredient.

What's important here is to start with a medieval recipe. If you start with a modern recipe then there isn't much chance you'll end up with something medieval.

Write down or print out the recipe, making sure you spell the words exactly as given in the source.

[You should probably write down a sentence or two explaining why you chose the recipe, like "I had read that turnips were popular in the winter", or "I wanted to make one of the more popular medieval chicken dishes, but wasn't pleased with the versions I'd had before". Make sure you write down the source of the recipe as well.]

[It's also a very good idea at this point to look for versions of the same recipe in other medieval cookbooks. A simple Google search on the title will sometimes turn up . If you're using the Medieval Cookbook Search then sometimes links to other versions will be given at the bottom after the recipe text. Copy these down as well.]

the chosen recipe

2. Read & Markup

The idea here is to go over the recipe a couple of times, highlighting all the ingredients needed. This serves a number of purposes: it helps familiarize you with the recipe, it lets you know what you'll need to make it, and it identifies any weird steps or ingredients that you may need to look up. This step can be especially important for recipes written in Middle English or some equally obscure language.

[Here you might want to make a note about any hard-to-find ingredients, or unusual combinations of ingredients. Also, if there are other versions of the recipe, compare them to the one you've selected. You might want to combine them into an "average" recipe, or switch to use one of them instead.]

highlighting the ingredients

3. Print a Working Copy

It should have the recipe at the top, along with a list of the ingredients. Keep this close at hand in the kitchen, along with a pen or pencil.

working copy

4. Cook & Taste

Follow the recipe as written, even if you think it's a bit strange. Make sure to write down the quantities of the ingredients you use, along with any places where you did things differently from the original recipe.

Make notes about the good, the bad, and the weird.

not really the recipe above, but it's pretty

5. Share

While sharing the food is nice, sharing your final recipe is even better. Write out a final version of the recipe and post it on a website or email it to friends (or email it to me!).

[By this point you've got all the information you need for your A&S documentation. Add a couple of sentences to link the parts together, format it neatly, check the spelling, set the font to something readable, and you're pretty much done.]

Oh, here is the link to my interpretation of the example recipe above.

... about that Solstice Dinner

Last night we had our Solstice dinner, celebrating the long night with the kids and a couple of (newlywed) friends (Hi Kristen & Shane!). I posted the menu a couple of days ago, and I thought I'd make a couple of notes about how it went.

Roast Capon - I'd never cooked a capon before, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  Both before and after cooking it really looked just like a chubby chicken.  I made the stuffing as per the directions (but using whole hard-boiled eggs instead of just the yolks), and cooked it in the oven for two and a half hours.

The result was ... a chubby chicken.  The meat had a very nice flavor, and was moist to the point of being buttery.  The stuffing was loaded with flavor, and went really well with the capon.  What did surprise me was the amount of fat in the capon.  Even after cooking there were still layers of fat here and there.  Yummy, but this is not a diet bird.

Roasted Turnips - This is an old standby now.  It's almost as much a custard as it is a turnip dish - add some sugar and it could just about pass for a dessert.  However, with all the eggs, butter, and cheese - this one is also not diet friendly.

Brussels sprouts (steamed, plain and simple) - I made about four tons of sprouts for this dinner and there were no leftovers. None.  Aren't these supposed to be one of the least liked vegetables?  I didn't even smother them with cheese or cream sauce.  I didn't add bacon.  I didn't add sugar.  Just plain old sprouts.  Either the world isn't like I've been lead to believe, or I have a weird family and friends.

Applemoyse (with snowe) - Ok, this is now officially my favorite medieval recipe.  Not only is it incredibly quick and easy to make, but everyone seems to love it (including me).  I made it properly this time (which adds the oh-so-difficult-and-tedious step of separating three eggs), kept it warm until serving, and topped it with snowe that I'd made ahead of time and kept in the fridge.  I think I'll make some more for dessert tonight.

All that's left for my holiday season is the dinner on Christmas Eve.  There's some extended-family drama that may complicate things, but we'll see how it goes.

Solstice Menu

Barring last minute changes, I think I've got the menu set for dinner tomorrow.  Here's what we'll be having:

Roast Capon

Roasted Turnips

Brussels sprouts

Applemoyse (with snowe)

The capon and applemoyse recipes are English (15th and 17th centuries), and the turnips are 17th c. French.  I'm going to keep the sprouts simple - steam and butter, and maybe a bit of garnish or spice, don't know for sure.

The capon recipe will be new, so I'll need to keep track and write things down.  I'll also try to get pictures of the capon and the turnips (which is a recipe I've had for quite some time, but haven't managed to take a photograph for it).