Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 94 Cold lech viaund

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 © 2014 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

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94. Cold lech viaund
Take quynses boyled pare hem pike out the buyst cut hem yn pecys do hem in a pott of erth do ther to white grece that hony or sygure ys put yn & aley hem up with hony claryfydd & raw yolkes of eyren & a lytyll almond mylke do ther to poudres of safron & lech hit fayre.

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This recipe is a match for recipe 37 from A Noble Boke off Cookry, making the fifth recipe in this sequence in both sources.

To mak cold lesche vyand, tak quynces boiled paire them and pik out the core and cutt them in small pesses and put them in an erthen pot put ther to whyt grec and alay them up with hony claryfied and with raw yolks of egges and a littil almonde mylk and dates pouder of saffron and lesche it furthe.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

The word "buyst" in the Wagstaff version is given here as "core".  I suspect it was meant as the Middle-English word "buiste" or "boist", meaning box or socket, possibly from the French "bois" (wood).