Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 75 Floreye

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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75. Floreye
Take flourys of rosys wesch hem & grynd hem with almond mylke take brawn of capons groundyn & do ther to loke hit be stondyng cast ther yn sygure & cast ther on the leves of floure of the rose & serve hit forth.

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There are several similar recipes in surviving medieval cookbooks, but none are an exact match for this one.  Two of the closest ones are in A Noble Boke off Cookry and Forme of Cury.

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 (England, 1468)]

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.  [Fourme of Curye (England, 1390)] 

The one from A Noble Boke off Cookry is interesting because of the change from "flowers of rose" to "flour of rice".  Given that almond milk thickens when cooked - though not as much as almond milk and rice flour - it is difficult to determine which one is the definitive version.