Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 175 Storgeon

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 © 2015 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

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175. Storgeon
Take a storgeon cut the vyn from the tayle to the hedde & cleve hym as a samon & cut the sydys yn fayre pecys & make the same of watyr & salt when it boyleth scome hit clene & cast the pecys ther yn & let hem boyle y nowghe then take hem up & serve hem forth with levys of percelley wete hem yn venygger cast hem in disches & the sauce ther to ys venygger.

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This recipe is a match for recipe 110 from A Noble Boke off Cookry.

To boile sturgion tak and cutt of the fynnys from the taile to the hed and chyne hym as a samon and cutt his fides in faire peces and mak a sauce of water and salt and when it boileth scom it clene and cast in the peces and let them boile and serve them.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

There is another, more detailed version in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books.

Take a Sturgeon, and kut of the vyn fro the tayle to the hede, on the bakke; and chyne him and boyle him. And whan hit boileth, skeme it, and caste parcelly there-to, And lete hem boyle ynowe, And then take him vppe, And serue him forth colde with leves of parcelly wet in vinegre, and caste there-on in the dissh; And sauce ther-to is vinegre. [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

It is notable that both the Wagstaff and Two Fifteenth-Century versions use "vyn" in place of fin.