Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 70 Blaunche Doucet

Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (Beinecke MS 163)

This manuscript is dated about 1460.

The 200 (approx.) recipes in the Wagstaff miscellany are on pages 56r through 76v.

Images of the original manuscript are freely available on the Yale University Library website.

I have done my best to provide an accurate, but readable transcription. Common abbreviations have been expanded, the letters thorn and yogh have been replaced with their modern equivalents, and some minor punctuation has been added.

Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

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70. Blaunche Doucet
Take brawne of capons groundyne & drawyne up withe wyne & do hit in a pot withe a lytylle hony or sygure and aley hit withe almonds & poudyre of gynger & couche ther one yolkes of eyrone and one fysche dayes take perche pyke or haddok or othir goode fysche worche hit up in the same maner & make pelett of past & put ther one as thu dost yolkes of eyrone.

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This recipe is odd in that, while it seems similar to a large number of recipes in other sources, doesn't seem to closely match any of them.  The ingredients are similar to those in "Blanch Mortrews" or "Blanc Desire", both of which appear in A Noble Boke off Cookry, but there are aspects of the recipe that don't appear in either.  The use of egg yolks as a garnish (replaced with dough in the fish-day version) is particularly unusual.

To mak blanched mortrus tak and sethe hennes and freche pork to gedur then bray unblanched almondes and temper them with clene brothe and alay the fleshe small ground ther to put ther to flour of rise and do all to gedur and cast in pouder of guingere and sugur and luk it be not thyn salt it and serue it.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

To mak blank de fire tak ryse and wesshe it and grind it small and temper it up with almond mylk and boile it then tak the braun of capon or henne and hew it small and grind it with myed bred and sesson it with sugur and florishe it with almondes and serue it.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)] 

It may be that this is a bastardized version of one of these or some other recipe, or that it was meant exactly as presented.