Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 181 Gurnarde or Roch Boyled

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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181. Gurnarde or Roch Boyled
Draw hem by the syde from the fyn dounward & save thy sounde & thy resete with thyn slyt hem the poke & the shave hit clene & let hit hong by & wesch hem & make sauce of watyr & salt when hit boyleth scome hit clene & cast yn the fysch when hit ys boyled thorow take hit up esyly with a scomer & let hit dry & serve hit forth cold & sauce hit with sauce gynger.

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This recipe is a match for recipe 117 from A Noble Boke off Cookry.

To boile gurnard or rochet draw a gurnard at the belly and tak out the sound and the resset and slit the pok shave it clene and let it hang by then wesche it and mak the sauce of water and salt and when it boilithe skom it clene and put in the fisshe and when it is sodden tak it up with a scomer and serue it with sauce guinger.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

There also appears to be a related recipe in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books.

Gurnard rosted or boyled. Take a Gurnard, and drawe him in the bely and saue the powche with-yn hole; and make sauce of water and salt; And whan hit bigynneth to boile, skeme it clene, And cast the Gurnard thereto, And seth him, and sauce/ to him is sauce of ginger, or vergyussauce, and serue him colde.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]