A Feast Complete with Garbage

I'm now (mostly) recovered from cooking the feast on Saturday. Even though it went well - in fact almost too well, in that there were several times where I turned to one of the assistants and shrugged because I had nothing to do at that moment - I was still completely wiped out at the end.

The food all turned out great, with compliments coming back about the Cormarye and the Applemoyse. The biggest sensation though was the dish I included for fun and announced as "The Chef's Challenge". It was an authentic 15th century English dish called "Garbage". Here are the sources I have for the recipe:

xvij - Garbage. Take fayre garbagys of chykonys, as the hed, the fete, the lyuerys, an the gysowrys; washe hem clene, an caste hem in a fayre potte, an caste ther-to freysshe brothe of Beef or ellys of moton, an let it boyle; an a-lye it wyth brede, an ley on Pepir an Safroun, Maces, Clowys, an a lytil verious an salt, an serue forth in the maner as a Sewe.
Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)

Garbage. Take faire Garbage, chikenes hedes, ffete, lyvers, And gysers, and wassh hem clene; caste hem into a faire potte, And caste fressh broth of Beef, powder of Peper, Canell, Clowes, Maces, Parcely and Sauge myced small; then take brede, stepe hit in the same brothe, Drawe hit thorgh a streynour, cast thereto, And lete boyle ynowe; caste there-to pouder ginger, vergeous, salt, And a litull Safferon, And serve hit forthe.
Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)

To mak a garbage tak the heed the garbage the leuer the gessern the wings and the feet and wesche them and clene them and put them in a pot and cast ther to brothe of beef poudere of pepper clowes maces parsly saige mynced then step bred in the sam brothe and cast it to pouder of guingere venygar saffron and salt and serue it.
A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)

The best strained meats you can have on meat days are made from the necks of pullets and chicks. And you must grind up the necks, along with the heads and bones, then grind again, and put in the cooking-liquid from beef cheek or leg, and strain.
Le Menagier de Paris (France, 1393 - Janet Hinson, trans.)

Simply put, it's a stew made from broth, chicken heads and feet, livers and gizzards, and spices. I'd purchased the ingredients from Jungle Jim's (I had to substitute duck heads for chicken heads - don't know why they sell the one and not the other), and put them in a large pot to cook for several hours. I'd checked the broth a couple of times to make sure it was ok, and actually it wasn't at all bad - tasted like a rich chicken soup.

I announced it personally right after the first course was served, briefly went over the ingredients, and told the guests that they could have it English style (with the ... pieces ... left in) or French-style (with them strained out). For added incentive, I offered a box of saffron as a prize to the first person who consumed a bowl of the stuff. I figured only two or three people would go for it. Silly me. As I walked back to the kitchen there were several people chanting "Garbage! Garbage! Garbage!" and shortly thereafter the servers came in with dozens of requests. Of all the things to run short of, I had to ration the garbage.

Her Highness received the saffron for emptying her bowl first (a bit unfair since she received hers first, but then rank has its priveledges). She'd been served a head, foot, and liver along with the broth, and all that was left was a scary looking pile of little bones.

It kind of figures. After years of hearing "medieval food is nasty" and having people turn up their nose at things like roasted turnips with cheese, I intentionally make something that I figure almost no one will like ... and it gets compliments. Now I've got to find something even weirder.

Ceilidh Feast 2010 - Shopping List

The feast is only a few days away, and I'm now putting together my Brain Book™. An important part of this notebook is the shopping list, and since I mentioned it in my earlier post I figured I should say a few words about it.

I've put a copy of my draft shopping list up online (sorry about it being in Excel format - if it's a problem then I'll look into converting it to something that doesn't require using a Microsoft application). It's really just a simple spreadsheet. The first page is all of the ingredients needed for each recipe, which is more an organizational tool so that I don't miss something super important. The second page is the same list, sorted by inrgedients, with totals needed for each ingredient. This page also has an estimate on the number of servings per recipe, a cost per unit, and a total cost for the ingredients.

Over the next couple of days I'll try to post and comment on the other parts of The Brain Book™ for this feast (of course, if things get too nuts then I'll post it all next week after the feast).

Kalendarium Hortense - March

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of March.

Apples.
Golden Ducket, [Doucet] Pepins, Reineting, Lones Pearmain, Winter Pearmain, John-Apple, &c.

Pears.
Later Bon-Chrestien, Double Blossom Pear, &c.

Lentish

Having had some success with changing our diet a bit in order to get a sense of the medieval European diet, this year Cindy and I decided to skip meats for lent.

Many modern Catholics eat fish instead of (terrestrial) meat on Fridays during lent. During the medieval period though, the common practice was much more restrictive. Aside from meats, dairy and eggs were also off the menu. There were some typical substitutions for the wealthy - almond milk, almond cream, almond butter - but for the most part it was nothing but fish and plants for 40 days.

The reasons for these restrictions (other than theological) are unclear. I've heard that at this time of year poultry would have been laying few eggs, so not eating eggs makes sense. Also, I assume that any animals that one didn't intend to keep through the winter would have already been slaughtered in the late autumn, so not eating meat also makes sense. But dairy?

I suppose (caveat lector: I am not a dairy farmer) that milking cows over winter when there is limited feed would stress them further and reduce their chances of reaching spring in a healthy state. By not milking them they'd require less fodder, and even though they'd dry up, when they calved in the spring the milk would start flowing again.

At any rate, we'll be splitting the difference between the modern and medieval Lenten diet. No terrestrial meats on any day, but I'm granting us an indulgence for dairy and eggs. I don't expect it'll be too difficult for us given that we were primarily vegetarian for a couple of years a long while back, but for our children it's a new experience (especially for Alex, who often says things like "Animals are yummy!"). Next year maybe we'll go completely medieval.

Ceilidh Feast 2010 - Menu

I've been asked to cook the feast for an upcoming SCA event here in southwest Ohio, and I thought this would be a good chance to document the whole process I go through in running these things.

The first step for me is working out the menu. In this particular case I don't have much time to try out new dishes or do a lot of research, so I decided to stick with dishes I know reasonably well. Also, since I seem to have been having trouble getting my act together lately, I figured it'd be best to choose more simple, straightforward dishes - less to go wrong. I knew I wanted the whole thing to be primarily English because their feasts were much less structured than those of the French (and therefore, simpler). After a couple of days I took the time to sit down and - with Kristen's input - settled on the following menu:

A Supper for a Meat Day

On Table:
manchet bread
soft cheese
fruit preserves

First Course:
Pegions Stewed (stewed chicken)
Onion and Parsley Salad
Chervis (carrots and parsnips)

Second Course:
Cormarye (roast pork)
Wortes (cabbage)
Rice Lombard

Third Course:
Apple Muse (with Snowe)
Wafers
Walnuts

Ok, so right off the bat I'll point out one major factual error. The title, "A Supper for a Meat Day", is in all truth incorrect. In the medieval religious calendar, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays were meatless days, so properly I should have a fish-based menu. However the problems with doing so are numerous, but the biggest ones are that a lot of people around here don't like fish and that they really like meat. If I did an all-fish feast I would probably be feeding 20 instead of 120.

The bread, cheese, and preserves are all pretty dull and straightforward. For this event I've got someone else to make the bread (thanks Amari!), so that's one less thing for me to do ahead of time.

Pegions Stewed is a simple recipe. I'll be using chicken legs and thighs instead of using pigeons both to save costs and because they're more acceptable to the locals. Of course once I've got that on the menu then the onion and parsley salad is a natural accompaniment.

Chervis is essentially a variation and simplification of a recipe from Menagier de Paris. Really it's just cooked carrots and parsnips with spices.

Cormarye is an old standby for me. Pork is plentiful and inexpensive here - sometimes cheaper than chicken, and this is one of those recipes that is really hard to mess up. If things go well then I'll thicken the juices from the roasting pans with some bread to make a sauce.

The recipe for Wortes is one of Kristen's. One of the VIPs apparently has an intense dislike for cabbage, so I'll have to do a separate dish for head table.

Rice Lombard is a new dish for me, but it's really just rice cooked in meat broth with spices.

Finally in the last course are wafers, walnuts (which will be sugared if there's time), and apple muse topped with snowe.

The apple muse gave me pause though. The most common recipes for it call for almond milk and honey, which adds a lot of effort and expense for such a simple dish - especially when cooking for so many. What I'd like to have is something more like Chardwarden, which is thickened with egg yolks and sweetened with sugar. After some serious digging, I did find a couple medieval variants of the recipe that did call for eggs and sugar, so that's what I'm going to use. Apparently I'm incapable of doing even a simple feast without researching at least one new recipe.

With the menu settled, the next step will be to work out the shopping list.

Kalendarium Hortense - February

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of February.

Apples.
Kentish, Kirton, Russet, Holland Pepins; Deux-ans, Winter Queening, Harvey sometimes, Pome-water, Pome-roy, Golden-Doucet, Reineting, Lones Pearmain, Winter Pearmain, &c.

Pears.
Bon-Chrestien of Winter, Winter Poppering, Little Dagobert, &c.

My Font Overfloweth

Last week I went to see the movie, "Avatar". On the whole it's a pretty good film (read: an overdone plot done very very well), however I was continuously thinking about my website for almost the entire film. Why? Because of the subtitles. Cameron used the same freakin' font - Papyrus for the movie's subtitles as I've been using on my website for years.

Way back when I started the site, I chose Papyrus because it was attractive, vaguely medievalish, and was relatively unknown - especially compared to all the "Ye Olde English" fonts. More and more over the past few years I've been seeing it everywhere. It's on menus and signs and t-shirts and even packaging for socks. Some in the graphic design business now feel that Papyrus is overused.

This gives me just that much more encouragement to replace it on my site. Now of course the question is, what do I use in its place? I'd prefer something with a little historic accuracy, but it also has to be readable (I found a really nice reproduction of a 14th century script, but it's hard for even me to read and I'm a language geek).

I did some searching on various font sites and here are the candidates I found.

One option is to choose a font similar to medieval blackletter calligraphy.

Blackletter

Manuskript Gotisch

1454 Gutenberg Bibel

1456 Gutenberg

1492 Quadrata Lim

Then there are some fonts that are more script-like.

Cantzley AD1600

Cardinal

Gotische Minuskel

Gotyk Poszarpany

Magna Carta

For the moment I'm leaning towards 1456 Gutenberg or Magna Carta. I'll have to do a couple test pages to see how they look.

What's in My Google Books Library

There's some really neat stuff available through Google Books, and I realized that over the past few months I've used their "Library" feature to build up a nice reference list.

---

Bookbinding
The art of bookbinding - Joseph William Zaehnsdorf
Fac-similes illustrating the labours of William Caxton at Westminster - Francis Compton Price

Books of Accounts
Account roll of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, Dublin, 1337-1346 - James Mills
CALENDER OF THE CLOSE ROLLS

Calendars
Medii ævi kalendarium - Robert Thomas Hampson

Cooking
Le vrai cuisinier françois - François Pierre de La Varenne
The forme of cury - Samuel Pegge
Old cookery books and ancient cuisine - William Carew Hazlitt
De opsoniis et condimentis - Apicius, Johann Michael Bernhold
De honesta uoluptate - Platina
The art of cookery, made plain and easy - Hannah Glasse
A new system of domestic cookery - Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell

Domestic Life
Domestic life in England
Early English meals and manners - Frederick James Furnivall
The household of a Tudor nobleman - Paul Van Brunt Jones
Dialogues in French and English - William Caxton

Literature
The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer - Geoffrey Chaucer, Walter William Skeat
Le morte Darthur - Sir Thomas Malory, Sir Edward Strachey, William Caxton
The fables of Aesop - Aesop, William Caxton, Joseph Jacobs
Book of Sir Balin - Sir Thomas Malory, William Caxton

Food
L'histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins - Pierre Belon
The fruit manual - Robert Hogg

Games
Caxton's Game and playe of the chesse, 1474 - Jacobus (de Cessolis), William Caxton

Gardening
Kalendarium hortense (1683) - John Evelyn
Kalendarium hortense (1699) - John Evelyn

Health Manuals
Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum - Sir John Harington
Regimen sanitatis - Robertus Gropretius
Regimen sanitatis Salerni - Jean Petit

Linguistics
On early English pronunciation - Alexander John Ellis
Dialogues in French and English - William Caxton

Medicinals
Le Bastiment de Receptes
A collection of above three hundred receipts - Mary Kettilby
Ars magirica - Jodocus Willich, Jachian Bifrun

Other
An Old English miscellany - Richard Morris
Italian weights and measures from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century - Ronald Edward Zupko

Religion
The fifteen O's, and other prayers - Stephen Ayling
The lay folks' catechism - John Thoresby
The lay folks' Mass book - Thomas Frederick Simmons
The Primer; or, Lay folks' prayer book, v1 - Edmund Bishop
The Primer; or, Lay folks' prayer book, v2 - Edmund Bishop
The golden legend: or, Lives of the saints - Jacobus (de Voragine), William Caxton
The New Testament (1852) - James Murdock
The clergyman's vade-mecum - John Johnson

Medieval Hot Dog Stand?

I'm browsing through the collection of "Culinary Prints" at Academia Barilla when I come aross this image.

La grigliata - The Grill

17th century German etching

Livio e Wilma Cerini di Castegnate Collection

On the website it's described as "A rare representation of a women selling grilled vegetables outdoors." A nice, simple picture. No surprises in terms of cooking utensils or methods. No big deal. I'm about to go on to the next image when I take a closer look at what's in the customer's hands. For all the world, it looks like a sausage in a bun. Maybe it's just being served with a piece of bread? No, it definitely looks like the bread is cut down the middle, with the sausage between the halves.

Now the common belief is that sausage sellers first started putting sausages into split rolls sometime in the late 19th century, so I doubt my own eyes and post a link on a cooking mailing list. The quick consensus is that it does indeed look like a sausage in a bun. Then someone suggests that the caption on the etching might shed some light on things. My German is only good enough to know that it says something about "good fried sausages", but a better translation is provided moments later.

Here, a decent sausage is roasted for not much money, with which hunger can be appeased but not thirst.

This (thirst) can be appeased later as much as someone wants in a place where wine and beer is sold.

[translation courtesy of Emilio Szabo, via the SCA-Cooks mailing list]

So the notes are incorrect - the woman is selling sausages, not vegetables, and she is serving them in a bun. No sign of ketchup or mustard though.

A Medieval Calendar

One of the things that I've always tended to get all geeky about is calendars. For some reason the various methods used around the world and throughout history to measure the passage of time are like chocolate cupcakes to me. I'm pulled to them irresistibly and can't help but to eat four or five ... ok, maybe the simile breaks down there. Anyways, I think calendars are cool, and since I'm also into medieval European history, and into food, it's no surprise that I'm very interested in the type of calendar used throughout Europe in the middle ages.

There's a lot of stuff out on the net about medieval calendars and the like, including some beautiful images, but what I really wanted was a typical example that had links to information about the saints it listed. Nope, I couldn't find one. This of course meant that I had to make one for myself.

So it is with great pleasure that I present Halidai's Kalendarium - a medieval-style calendar that lists the feast days for the saints, as well as the information about those saints taken from the Golden Legend. There really isn't anything groundbreaking here - it's all stuff that's already freely available online. I've just put it together in a way that I thought would be useful to me. Hopefully others will find it useful as well.

Oh, and tomorrow is the feast day of Saint Hilary.

A busy time without much to show for it...

The last couple of months went by in a blur, but apparently very little of what I did was related to medieval food.

The holiday insanity of course started with Thanksgiving. This year we spent it at my parents' house, which limited my cooking a bit. Still, the food was good. I've posted before on what I cook for Thanksgiving - the short version is that I focus on all new-world foods, and not medieval at all (a fun sort of cognitive reversal for me).

I did do a little bit of medieval cooking in December though. For our regular solstice dinner I used the Sauce Madame recipe from Forme of Cury to go with a roast turkey (the last time I cooked a goose - which was good, but not good enough to merit the extra cost). I think I'll have to look into other types of stuffing for next year, just for the sake of something different.

I also made a batch of Cameline Sauce for Christmas Eve dinner with the in-laws. It went really well with the beef tenderloin and duxelles (just learned about duxelles this year - Oh my! - why didn't anyone tell me about them before? Wikipedia says they go back to La Varenne, but I'll have to look and see if there's anything similar in the medieval sources).

There are some neat things in the works for 2010. I hope to teach a couple of cooking classes, which will be a bit of a new thing for me. I've also got one transcription project and a couple of other bits for the web site that I hope to have done soon. I'll be trying out the odd recipe here and there - Kristen told me yesterday that she got some more deer kidneys. Then there's helping others nearby to cook medieval feasts, and in my copious free time I'll finish writing a novel.

I get the feeling that 2010 might be a blur too.

Kalendarium Hortense - January

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of January.

Apples.
Kentish Pepin, Russet Pepin, golden Pepin, French Pepin, Kirton Pepin, Holland Pepin, John-Apple, winter Queening, Maragold, Harvey Apple, Plome-water, Pomeroy, Golden-Doucet, Reineting, Lones-Pear-main, Winter-Pearmain, &c.

Pears
Winter-Musk (bakes well) Winter-Norwich (excellently baked) Winter-Bergamot, Winter-Bon-crestien, both Mural: the great Surrein, &c.

I made a book!

As a cook, much of what I create is gone within a matter of hours. Nothing physical remains of my creative efforts - except perhaps for a few extra pounds that my friends and loved ones carry around for the rest of their lives. I do enjoy making things though, and I love books, so over the past year or so I've been looking into book binding. This summer at Pennsic I picked up some simple equipment for book binding, and I finally decided to go ahead and try it out.

The style of binding is sometimes referred to as a laced-on, limp cover. It appears to have been used for less expensive books in the late medieval period.

Because this was going to be my first try, I didn't want to waste good materials. I figured that I wasn't sure enough of what I was doing, and I have a certain distrust of my manual dexterity (which is scary considering how much time I spend working with sharp knives). Essentially because of this I handicapped myself - I set myself up to fail in a way. I used plain copy paper for the pages (textblock) and some leather strips where I should probably have used heavy twine, and the cover is heavy paper instead of vellum. I also used a cheap gluestick instead of proper glue or paste.

Really, I wasn't expecting to make a great work of art here. I just wanted to see how it was all supposed to go together. Much to my surprise, it went together really well. The leather strips were too thick and stiff for the paper cover - which ripped out almost immediately, but the shape is right and I think it'll be really cool when I try it again with the good stuff.

So with a bit of luck and free time, I'll be starting soon on my next (and first real) binding project - a cookbook for my apprentice.

Kalendarium Hortense - December

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of December.

Apples.
Rousseting, Leather-coat, Winter Reed, Chestnut Apple, Great-belly, the Go-no-further, or Cats-head, with some of the precedent Month.

Pears.
The Squib-pear, Spindle-pear, Doyonere, Virgin, Goscogne-Bergomot, Scarlet-pear, Stopple-pear, white, red, and French Wardens, (to bake or roast) &c. the Deadmans Pear, excellent, &c.

The Quiz - Question 2

A couple of weeks back I posted a 6 question quiz about medieval cooking. I had tried to phrase the questions so that there would be many possible answers that could be considered to be correct depending on viewpoint. Here are my thoughts on the second question.

2. Why did medieval Europeans use a lot of spices in their cooking?

The answer to this question really depends on how the phrase "a lot of spices" is interpreted. It could be understood to mean "a large quantity of spice per dish", implying that the prepared food had a strong flavor of spices. Alternately, it could be read as "a wide variety of spices", which could be meant to imply that each dish included many spices.

The first meaning - "a large quantity of spice" - usually appears in connection with the mistaken belief that medieval cooks used spices to cover the flavor of spoiled meat. I've discussed this myth and its possible origins elsewhere, so I won't go into it here. Suffice to say, if you want to see my head explode, tell someone it's a fact where I can overhear.

Did medieval cooks use large quantities of spices? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. The only recipes we have come from the cookbooks of the wealthy, and almost all of those recipes completely lack measured amounts for ingredients, so there is really no way to know if they put in a lot or a little of any given spice. What's more, even if we did have measurements to work with, what would we use as a comparison? To some people anything more than a pinch of salt is too much. To others anything less than drowning in curry is too little.

Assuming they did use large quantities of spices, one possible reason for doing so presents itself: conspicuous consumption. Serving guests a meal obviously made with great amounts of expensive, imported spices shows the host to be wealthy and therefore influential. There is some evidence to support this in medieval accounts of banquets. Still, I sincerely doubt a host would be successful if he gave a banquet where the guests were served unpalatably spiced food, regardless of how expensive it was.

The second meaning - "a wide variety of spices" - is a bit easier to examine. The list of spices used in medieval European cuisine is surprisingly large and diverse, and a given dish may contain a half-dozen different spices or more. However, this doesn't seem very different from many cuisines around the world (e.g. Indian, Mediterranean, Chinese).

If we take the viewpoint that their use of multiple spices in a dish is exceptional, then is there any possible reason for doing so?

Again, conspicuous consumption is a possibility. A mix of spices though can be harder to identify, and it can still be overdone. If a cook has gone to the expense of putting in rare spices, it'd be a shame if no one wanted to eat the final product.

There has been some recent research that demonstrates how certain spices like cinnamon and cloves can inhibit microbial growth, but given the medieval beliefs about health and disease I doubt that this aspect had any bearing on medieval cuisine. Even medieval humoral theories don't seem to have substantially impacted how spices were used.

On the whole, I think the best answer that we can give for this question is: Because they liked the way it tasted.

Kalendarium Hortense - November

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of November.

Apples.
The Belle-bonne, the William, Summer Pearmain, Lording-apple, Pear-apple, Cardinal, Winter Chestnut, Shortstart, &c. and some other of the former two last Months, &c.

Pears.
Messire Jean, Lord-pear, long Bargamot, Warden (to bake) Burnt-cat, Sugar-pear, Lady-pear, Ice-pear, Dove-pear, Deadmans-pear, Winter Bargamot, Bell pear, &c.

Arbutus, Bullis, Medlars, Services.

Food Prices in Medieval Ireland

I was recently directed to the Account Roll of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, Dublin (1337-1346) (thanks, Johnnae!). It's a book of household accounts for a monastery in medieval Ireland.

The neat thing about household accounts is that they contain a huge amount of information about what was needed for daily life. This particular book of accounts is in Latin, but (happily for me) also has an English translation. While browsing through it, I saw a decent number of food items listed, along with the priced paid for them. This led to the inevitable digging through data and taking notes.

Unfortunately, most of the entries specify what was purchased, the amount paid, and who the money was paid to, but not the actual quantity purchased. Still, there were some scattered about that included quantities. So below are the prices of select items for medieval Ireland, as per this manuscript.

capon, 2d/ea.
capon (cooked), 3d/ea.
chicken, 0.5d/ea.
duck, 1d/ea.
figs, 2d/lb.
fowl, 1d/ea.
fowl (cooked), 2d/ea.
goose, 3d/ea.
hen, 1.5d/ea.
lamb (cooked, whole), 4d/ea.
oats (for horses), 2d/peck
olive oil, 6d/qt.
pasties (fowl), 2d/ea.
pasties (salmon), 1d/ea.
pepper, 20d/lb.
piglet, 3d/ea.
salt, 3d/peck (approx. 0.12d/lb.)
wheat, 11.5d/peck
wine (by the tun), 1d/gal.
wine (red?), 5d/gal.
wine (white), 6d/gal.

There were also some records for amounts paid to laborers, which work out to have unskilled workers paid around 2d per day.

What I found really interesting is how a few of these compared to the prices listed in "Spices and Their Costs in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Europe" by Prof. John H. Munro, University of Toronto. The prices for capons, red wine, and pepper were essentially the same - somewhat surprising given that we're comparing 14th century Dublin to 15h century London. The difference in the price of salt is also surprising - with London's price being roughly 5 times what it is in Dublin a hundred years earlier.

Mystery Things?

I'm going to jump topics for a moment here, but I promise to get back to the discussion on the quiz posts soon.

I just came across a post on the blog "This is why you're fat" that caught my eye. It's an image of a dish from the Republic of Georgia - essentially a sort of custard or quiche cooked in a bread crust.

The reason I note this is that it looks an awful lot like some unidentifiable (to me) things in a Dutch painting from 1559 that I posted about some time ago (look in the lower right portion of the painting, on top of the basket of birds).

I don't know if they're in any way related to this dish, but I find the similarity of shapes interesting.

It's one more bit of information in the quest of the Mysterious Football-Shaped Things^®.

The Quiz - Question 1

On Monday I posted a 6 question quiz about medieval cooking. I had tried to phrase the questions so that there would be many possible answers that could be considered to be correct depending on viewpoint. Here are my thoughts on the first question.

1. What process would you use for converting a modern recipe into a medieval one?

One answer to this is to replace all ingredients not available in medieval Europe with similar ingredients that were available, and for an extra measure you could replace any modern cooking methods or equipment with medieval ones that achieve similar results. The problem is that this doesn't get you a medieval recipe. It gets you a variation of a modern recipe.

The classic example of this is the cheeseburger. In medieval Europe they had almost all the ingredients and equipment necessary to make a cheeseburger. They didn't have tomatoes or ketchup, but they did have mustard and even had what they needed to make mayonnaise. The problem is that they didn't make sandwiches, they don't seem to have served raw vegetables (lettuce, onion, pickles) with meats, and they didn't make mayonnaise.

So even if you grind the beef in a mortar, cook it on a grill over an open fire, put it on a home-made bun, top it with home made cheese and heirloom lettuce and onion slices and pickles, and use camaline sauce instead of ketchup, what you end up with is still a cheeseburger. It may be a very nice cheeseburger, but it's still not even remotely medieval.

In short, you can't convert a modern recipe into a medieval one. Imagine trying to convert a Mexican dish into a Thai one. The best you can hope for is something cooked in a Thai style.

Take a typical recipe for burritos, replace the cumin and garlic with ginger and lemongrass, serve it with soy sauce instead of salsa, and you've got a Thai-style burrito (beef or chicken - I don't think it'd work with a bean burrito). Is it a real Thai recipe? No, not really.

Of course your goal may not be to make a medieval dish. You might be trying to avoid new-world ingredients, or experiment with new flavors. But then it wouldn't be a question of converting a modern dish into a medieval one. It'd be more one of incorporating aspects of medieval cuisine into a modern recipe.

So if you want to make a medieval recipe, then start with a medieval recipe. If you want to be creative in the kitchen and create a new recipe, go right ahead. You can even combine the two - but the results aren't necessarily medieval cuisine.

The Quiz

I'm on several email lists related to medieval history (surprising, huh?), which means that I end up reading a lot of different viewpoints and approaches towards medieval re-creation. Often simple questions explode into long, rambling discussions that border on religious wars. So I thought I'd put together a short quiz made up of carefully worded questions. In some ways the answers could reveal far more about the person answering than they would about medieval cuisine.

1. What process would you use for converting a modern recipe into a medieval one?

2. Why did medieval Europeans use a lot of spices in their cooking?

3. How did the primitive cooking equipment available in 15th century England affect the foods cooked?

4. How was the exorbitantly high cost of spices (e.g. saffron, pepper, ginger) reflected in their use in medieval England and France?

5. How was the primitive technology of the medieval period reflected in the quality of wheat flour, sugar, and salt?

6. To what degree have modern agricultural practices affected the size of poultry and eggs?

I'll give my own take on these in later posts.

More Medieval Catering

On October 1-3 the Ohio State University Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies hosted the 2009 conference for the Committee on Centers and Regional Associations. Having worked with them before, they asked if I'd be interested in cooking a medieval luncheon for their Friday session. I, of course, said "Yes!"

So on Friday morning I got in the car (along with my assistants, Kristen Sullivan and Jennifer Marshal-Craig) and made the two hour drive up to Columbus. Then there was just enough time to unpack, finish what cooking needed to be done, and get the buffet set out. Much of the food was prepared ahead of time, and a good thing too as the lone oven and cooktop in the building could only charitably be described as a "food warmer".

Here's what we served:

Bread
Quince Preserves
Beef with Yellow Pepper sauce
Ember Day Tart
Blancmanger
Salat of Asparagus
Chardewardon with Snowe
Marzipan
Hippocras (non-alcoholic)

The setup looked great, but I was too busy to get any photos before the guests ate. I know their photographer managed to take a couple pictures though, so I might be able to get copies from her.

On the whole, things went well. The yellow pepper sauce didn't thicken up quite right due to the lack of heat from the burners, but it still tasted good. The real surprise for me was the blancmanger. I'd pre-cooked the chicken and decided to cook the rice when we got there. Again, as fortune would have it, I had brought a roaster which was perfect for this dish. We put the rice in to cook early on, and then added the chicken, almond milk, and spices. I kept worrying about it because it just seemed too easy. No problems with it though - I think it's my new favorite recipe (to cook at least).

The chardewardon was a bit of a show-stealer. I had Kristen serve it in individual cups, topped with snowe and a mint leaf garnish. They looked so elegant (even though the cups were plastic), and the combination of pear custard and cream is hard to beat.

It was while cleaning up afterwards that I noticed almost all the plates were completely empty. A good sign, as people don't usually polish off foods they don't like. I mentioned this to Kristen and Jen, and they said they saw people going back for seconds. All in all, I'd say this was a success.

Kalendarium Hortense - October

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of October.

Apples.
Belle-et-Bonne, William, Costard, Lording, Parsley-apples, Pearmain, Pear-apple, Honey meal, Apis, &c.

Pears.
The Caw-pear (baking) Greenbutter-pear, Thorn-pear, Clove-pear, Roussel-pear, Lombart-pear, Russet-pear, Saffron-pear, and some of the former Month, Violet-pear, Petwort-pear, otherwise called the Winter Windsor.

Bullis, and divers of the September Plums and Grapes, Pines, Arbutus, &c.

Forme of Cury Transcription

Photograph: University of Manchester John Rylands University Library

I've recently added a transcription of Forme of Cury to the website. This transcription (based on John Rylands University Library, English MS 7) is not really a huge contribution to the field of food history. After all, John Rylands University already has put the images of the manuscript online, and Pegge's edition of Forme of Cury is already available online as a PDF of the printed book, and as plain text.

Still, as I noted in an earlier post, there are some differences between this manuscript and the Pegge edition, so having the information in a form that's easy to work with should be beneficial to the serious medieval food geek.

I'll be indexing the text and adding it to the Medieval Cookbook Search soon, and in a week or so (with luck) will cross-reference the recipes with those in the Pegge edition.

Kalendarium Hortense - September

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of September.

The Belle-bonne, the Williams, Summer Pearmain, Lording Apple, Pear-apple, Quince-apple, Red-greening ribb'd, Bloody-Pepin Harvey, Violet-apple, &c.

Pears.
Hamdens Bergamon (first ripe) Summer Bon Chrestien, Norwich, Black Worcester, (baking) Greenfield, Orange, Bergamot, the Queen Hedge-pear, Lewis-pear (to dry excellent) Frith-pear, Arundel-pear, (also to bake) Brunswick-pear, Winter Poppering, Bings-pear, Bishops-pear, (baking) Diego, Emperours-pear, Cluster-pear, Messire Jean, Rowling-pear, Balsam-pear, Bezy d'Hery, &c.

Peaches, &c.
Malacoton, and some others, if the year prove backwards, Almonds, &c.

Quinces.

Little Blew-grape, Muscadine-grape. Frontiniac, Parsly, great Blew-grape, the Verjuice-grape excellent for sauce, &c.

Berberries, &c.

Gen Con and Pennsic

I'm still trying to recover from my week of Pennsic followed by 4 days of Gen Con (talk about culture shock), but I think I'm finally up to writing a bit here about how it all went.

Pennsic
For those who haven't heard of Pennsic, I've been describing it to my co-workers as a cross between Woodstock, A Renaissance faire, and a conference of academic historians.

This year was pretty good. The weather was reasonably cool and dry (soggy start and hot finish notwithstanding), and I didn't get sick at all this year. I spent lots of time taking classes and just hanging around with cool, geeky people.

The big focus for me this year was on book binding. I've been wanting to try making books for years, so I was thrilled to take classes on the subject and to talk with people who do it.

Best of all, I got to bring home some equipment for binding books! I suspect a new project will be coming along shortly.

Gen Con
As I have for the past few years, I sat on some of the Writers' Symposium panels, and I gave a two-hour seminar on medieval European cuisine.

The seminar was to a surprisingly large audience - they moved me from one room because we'd gone over the 100 person capacity. The audience was agreeable, interested, and in a good mood. They seemed to enjoy it, and I received a few compliments here and there, so as far as I can tell it went really well. I'll have to come up with a good topic for next year.

The Writers' Symposium panels were lots of fun, though surprisingly I did feel a bit out of my element on the panel about dragons.

Again, I spent a lot of my time hanging out with geeky people and learning cool (to me) stuff. I didn't buy as much stuff this year as I have in previous years - that's a good thing.

Kalendarium Hortense - August

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of August.

Apples.
The Ladies Longing, the Kirkham Apple, John Apple; the Seaming Apple, Cushion Apple, Spicing, May-flower, Sheeps snout.

Pears.
Windsor, Sovereign, Orange, Bergamot, Slipper Pear, Red Catherine, King Catherine, Denny Pear, Prusia Pear, Summer Poppering, Sugar Pear, Lording Pear, &c.

Peaches.
Roman Peach, Man Peach, Quince Peach, Rambouillet, Musk Peach, Grand Carnation, Portugal Peach, Crown Peach, Bourdeaux Peach, Lavar Peach, the Peach Des Pot, Savoy Malacoton, which lasts till Michaelmas.

Nectarines.
The Muroy Nectarine, Tawny, Red-Roman, little Green Nectarine, Cluster Nectarine, Yellow Nectarine.

Plums.
Imperial, Blew, White Dates, Yellow Pear-plum, Black Pear-plum, White Nutmeg, late Pear-plum, Great Anthony, Turkey-Plum, the Jane Plum.

Other Fruit.
Cluster-grape, Muscadine, Corinths, Cornelians, Mulberries, Figs, Filberts, Melons, &c.

Gen Con Seminar Schedule

In just over two weeks (and three days after I get home from Pennsic), I will be Participating in the Writer's Symposium seminars at Gen Con. I've gone to this convention for several years, and given talks on medieval cooking for the past three or four (I'm losing count).

On Thursday evening at 8:00 p.m. I'll be giving a 2 hour talk about medieval cooking ("Getting Medieval with Food"). This will be a sort of general overview, geared towards fantasy authors and game designers who want to make the food in their work more realistic. Here's the description from the Gen Con events catalog:

SEM0903050 - Getting Medieval with Food
Fantasy games and novels are commonly set in a society based on medieval Europe - except for the food, which is commonly way wrong. Learn how medieval English and French cuisine worked as a system. Topics will include medieval ingredients and preparation methods, the structure of medieval feasts, finding medieval recipes (or making them up), and common myths about medieval foods. 08/13/2009, 8:00 PM - Marriott : Indiana Bllrm D

I'm also very likely to ramble a bit, allow myself to be side-tracked by questions, and maybe even rant.

I'll also be part of the following panel discussions:

SEM0902995 - Food for Thought
A key ingredient to believable characters and stories is food. Heroes, villains, and the supporting cast have to eat from time to time. How can you enrich your writing by adding a dining experience or two? What does food say about the world you've crafted? 08/15/2009, 12:00 PM - Marriott : Lincoln

SEM0903002 - Hunting Dragons
Why has going after dragons been so popular in fiction? Our panelists discuss classic dragon hunters like Beowulf, Saint George, and Bilbo Baggins, in addition to how the hunt has changed over the years. Learn how to shape the classic story into something fresh and exciting. 08/15/2009, 3:00 PM - Marriott : Santa Fe

SEM0903003 - Stealing History
Why recreate the wheel each time you create a story, character, or world? Yes, you can build your knighthood or priesthood or religion or society from scratch, but taking what's historically known and warping it might fit the proverbial bill and depth and believability. Join our panelists for a discussion on how we can mine our own rich history for characters, backgrounds, worlds, cosmology, scenery, and more. 08/15/2009, 4:00 PM - Marriott : Santa Fe

On the whole, I expect it to be lots of fun.

What a Difference a Word Makes

I've been spending a good amount of time lately looking at the John Rylands University images of their copy of Forme of Cury (I know, what a surprise) and comparing it to other versions. There are lots of differences, but they're usually minor changes in spelling, with the occasional dropped or added word here and there. Sometimes those dropped words can have a huge impact on a recipe.

A perfect example is the recipe for Payne ragoun. The Rylands manuscript has the following:

Tak hony suger cypres & clarifye it to gider & boyle it with esye fyre & kepe it wel from brennyng & whan hit hath y boyled a whyle tak up a drope ther of with thy fynger & do hit in a litul water & loke yf it hong to gider & tak hit fro the fyre & do therto pynes the thryddendel & poudour ginger, & stere it to gyder tyl hit bigyne to thyk and cast it on a wete table, lesche hit & serve hit forth with fryed mete, on flesch day or on fysch dayes.

Compare this to the version transcribed by Samuel Pegge in 1780:

Take hony suger and clarifie it togydre. and boile it with esy fyre, and kepe it wel fro brennyng and whan it hath yboiled a while; take up a drope therof with thy fyngur and do it in a litel water and loke if it hong togydre. and take it fro the fyre and do therto the thriddendele an powdour gyngener and stere it togyder til it bigynne to thik and cast it on a wete table. lesh it and serue it forth with fryed mete on flessh dayes or on fysshe dayes.

Weird spelling and ampersands aside, there's not a huge amount of difference between the two ... except for one word. The Pegge edition leaves out the word "pynes". The omission of this one word turns the recipe from pine-nut brittle into spice candy, and hides any connection to similar recipes for "Pynade" in both Forme of Cury and Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books.

Interestingly, the word "pynes" is included in the edition of Forme of Cury that appears in Hieatt & Butler's Curye on Inglish (I haven't had a chance to check which manuscript that transcription was based upon), so a correct version of this recipe has been available for quite some time. Still, I'd hazard a guess that the Pegge edition is the one most often consulted (because it is available online for free).

So what's it all mean in the grand scheme of things? Probably that one should always check multiple sources whenever possible.

Kalendarium Hortense - July

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of July.

Apples.
Deux-ans, Pepins, Winter Russeting, Andrew Apples, Cinnamon Apple, red and white Juneting, the Margaret Apple, &c.

Pears.
The Primat, Russet Pears, Summer Pears, green Chesil Pears, Pearl Pear, &c.

Cherries.
Carnations, Morella, Great-bearer, Morocco Cherry, the Egriot, Bigarreaux, &c.

Peaches.
Nutmeg, Isabella, Persian, Newington, Violet muscat, Rambouilet.

Plums, &c.
Primordial, Myrobalan, the red, blew, and amber Violet, Damasc. Denny Damasc. Pear-Plum, Damasc. Violet, or Cheson-Plum, Abricot-plum, Cinnamon-plum, the King's-plum, Spanish, Morocco-plum, Lady Eliz. plum, Tawny, Damascene, &c.

Rasberries, Gooseberries, Corinths, Strawberries, Melons, &c.

Even More on "Forme of Cury"

On Monday I griped a bit about the lack of a way to link directly to the John Rylands University Library images of "Forme of Cury". There are some things that I can't just leave alone, and seeing as I'm somewhat of a web geek, I did what I could to correct the situation.

I put together a web page of links to the manuscript images. That way others can have some place to link to that provides clear and simple access. Note that the images are still hosted on the John Rylands University Library's servers (I'm not violating their copyright). This means that they could easily fiddle with their servers or add some kind of authorization process that would break the links, so I don't know how long this page will be useful.

More on "Forme of Cury"

So the latest big news in medieval cuisine is that the John Rylands University Library in Manchester has made images of their copy of "Forme of Cury" online.

One oddity though about the BBC news story on this event is that there is no link provided to the images. There is a link in the sidebar to John Rylands University Library (and their "Medieval Collection") though, so perhaps it's there.

Nope.

The images are indeed there, and can be viewed free of charge - so I guess I really shouldn't complain - but the university has them (and all their images of other beautiful manuscripts) tucked away behind some clunky code. There is no clear and simple way to link directly to them (it apparently can be done - folio 4, verso - but it's not clear and simple). Instead you need to go to the Rylands Medieval Collection website, click on the link for the Insight Browser (the page says you can use the username 'uman' password 'est1824'), and then find the manuscript (it's reference number English MS 7). Then you can look at each page, one by one.

Really, I'm very happy that they've gone to the effort of digitizing this manuscript and putting it online with FREE access. What keeps echoing in my mind though is the bit from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the demolition orders were on display in the cellar in the back of an unmarked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".

What's wrong with this Picture?

Ok, take a good look at the image below ...

Now let's think about how people really use refrigerators - assuming of course that we're talking about people who cook rather than those who open and heat. No, I'm not talking about how freakin' empty this fridge is, or how clean it is, or even the lack of mysterious containers of food leftover from some forgotten meal in a previous decade. What really stinks my cheese here is how the clueless engineers intended the fridge to be used.

Let me give you a hint. You're going to make beef stroganoff, or maybe grill steaks, or Thai curried chicken, or whatever, so you get the meat out of the freezer to thaw overnight in the fridge. Where do you put it?

Do you see the problem now?

Food safety guidelines have stated for the past million years that raw meats should NEVER be stored above ready-to-eat foods. Yet the bottom of the fridge is specifically set up with bins for fruit and vegetables (my fridge at home helpfully has the bins labeled, with a special little sliding lever to switch from "Fruits" to "Vegetables" - one's vented, the other isn't, I can't remember which is which though). So the frozen meat is set on the lowest open shelf where it can drip bacteria-laden grossness all over those nice grapes or apples or salad greens (my fridge at home helpfully has that little sliding lever and vent to allow the meat juice better access to the produce). I suppose you could rinse the produce with bleach before consuming, but that doesn't sound like a very safe idea either.

Here's a model from a different manufacturer:

This isn't an isolated thing. I can't remember ever having a fridge that didn't have produce drawers at the bottom. Are the people who design these things completely clueless, or do they just not think? Maybe they're all vegetarians?

As to the cause of this rant, suffice it to say that I had to sanitize the bottom of my fridge and pitch all sorts of leftovers that I'd been saving for the next nuclear apocalypse. Time to re-organize, re-purpose, and re-label.

Medieval Catering

So here's the fun news: on Tuesday I cooked for the OSU Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

They did an interview with me last year for their newsletter (Nouvelles/Nouvelles) and I'd been in contact with them off and on.

So when they asked if I could prepare some medieval dishes for their end of year get-together I was thrilled. I planned out a menu that would have a good number of dishes so they'd be able to get a sense of medieval French and English cuisine. Here's what I selected:

Twisted Bread of Milk and Sugar
Marmelade of Quinces
Pumpes
Spinach Tart
Rysschews of Fruit
Pegions Stewed (actually chicken)
Compost
Stuffed Eggs
Breny
Gyngerbrede
Sugared Walnuts
Snowe
Wafers
Hypocras

Kristen was kind enough to make some of the dishes (the bread, wafers, and breny) and also take a day off from work to go to Columbus with me and serve. Things wouldn't have gone nearly as smoothly without her help (especially as my dishwasher died on Sunday in the middle of preparations). She drove down to Cincinnati in the morning, and we loaded up the van and left just after noon for Columbus. It's a two hour drive, with nothing but flat farmland on both sides, ending in a twisting route through OSU's campus. We found the building where the party was going to be held about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Then it was unload, park, and get to work. We were just getting the last dishes plated and out onto the buffet table when the guests started showing up.

The food was very well received, with a couple of surprises. The stuffed eggs always do well, as do the pumpes, but I'm not used to people being that excited about the compost. The average American just doesn't seem to go for pickled root vegetables. Maybe academics have more adventurous palates than lesser mortals. Maybe the vegetarian students were really hungry. Whatever the reason, they ate more of it than I expected.

Oddly, the big winner was the hypocras. I'd never worked up a proper recipe for it before (don't ask me why), but they'd requested some kind of medieval beverage, and hypocras was the easiest of the alternatives. Because the party was held on campus, I had to make it a non-alcoholic version - essentially grape juice and powder douce with a little vinegar added to make it taste more like wine.

The only glitch in the whole thing was that there was waaay too much food, which made it all cost more than it should. This was due to a combination of things, including an overestimate of the number of guests (50 instead of the 30 that showed up) and my typical tendency to overfeed people. Got to watch that for future events.

And there's the good news: the CMRS director, Richard Firth Green, seemed very happy with how things turned out and asked if I'd be willing to do similar events in the future. I, of course, said "Yes!"

Kalendarium Hortense - June

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of June.

Sow Lettuce, Chervil, Radish, &c. to have young and tender Salleting.

About the midst of June you may inoculate Peaches, Abricots, Cherries, Plums, Apples, Pears, &c.

You may now also (or in May before) cleanse Vines or exuberant Branches and Tendrels, cropping (not cutting) and stopping the second Joynt immediately before the Fruit, and some of the under branches which bear no fruit; especially in young Vineyards when they first begin to bear, and thence forwards; binding up the rest to Props.

Gather Herbs in the Full to keep dry; they keep and retain their vertue and sweet smell, better dryed in the shade than Sun, whatever some pretend.

Now is your season to distill Aromatic Plants, &c.

Water lately planted Trees, and put moist and half rotten Fearn, &c. about the foot of their stems, having first clear'd them of weeds and a little stirred the earth.

Look to your Bees for Swarms and Casts; and begin to destroy Insects with Hoofs, Canes, and tempting Baits, &c. Gather Snails after Rain, &c.

¹ - Olitory: of or pertaining to, or produced in, a kitchen garden.

NOT The Medieval Diet™

Got a lot I'm up to (more on that later this week) so I haven't posted much lately, but a friend just sent pointed out a website that I must comment on.

I've talked about the Medieval Diet™ before. It's a very rich and complex topic, and there's a lot we can learn from medieval Europe about healthy eating. This site however has nothing to do with medieval Europe.

Apparently the site was designed (if you can call it that) by one of those sad individuals who think that liberally sprinkling words like "ye" and "verily" through a text make it sound more medieval. There are no medieval recipes in their medieval diet and no information on what was eaten in medieval Europe. I'm surprised they didn't spell it "mid-evil".

Oh, and from what I can tell the advice given isn't all that good from a dietary viewpoint either. Sad. Just plain sad.

Modern Mystery

I've got all sorts of medieval things in the works ... but none of them are ready for the light of day. So as a diversion, I present you with a modern mystery object.

I really don't know what this thing is - my best (and obviously inaccurate) guess is that it's a cow-lip-stretcher.

It's about 6" long, appears to be cast stainless steel, and was manufactured in the early-to-mid 1900s. It has no identifying markings. It may have been farm-related (our family had a farm in the distant past, and I think that's where my dad got it).

My brother thinks it was used for skinning animals. I like the cow-lip-stretcher idea better.

My apologies for the poor quality of the images - I took them with my cell phone camera in poor light.

Anyone out there seen one of these before?

Hitting the Sauce Again

Yesterday evening I put the recipe for Sauce for Stekys on the website. This was the indirect result of a puff-piece in the New York Times about "new" cuts of beef.

The Times article essentially talked about a marketing push by the US beef industry to sell inexpensive cuts of beef. While most (all?) of these cuts have been around for a while, they were rarely used in the US. So the beef industry renamed them and is presenting them as the next new thing.

Marketing antics aside, money is tight nowadays, so a cheap but still decent cut of beef sounds like a good idea to me. That's why when I was shopping for groceries last week, and came across a "Flatiron Steak" (sometimes referred to as a "butler's steak" in Europe), I went ahead and bought the thing without any idea of what I'd do with it.

According to the instructions on the package, it was suitable for broiling or grilling, and then should be cut across the grain. No problem. I decided to brush on some olive oil, salt, and pepper and broil it, and serve it with asparagus and herbed pasta.

Of course I can't leave it at that. I worked out any new recipes in a while, so how about a nice medieval English sauce to go with it? A quick search of recipes in "Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books" had me settled on this recipe:

xxxj - To make Stekys of venson or bef. Take Venyson or Bef, and leche and gredyl it vp broun; then take Vynegre and a litel verious, and a lytil Wyne, and putte pouder perpir ther-on y-now, and pouder Gyngere; and atte the dressoure straw on pouder Canelle y-now, that the stekys be al y-helid ther-wyth, and but a litel Sawce; and than serue it forth.

Wine, vinegar, verjuice and spices - nice and straightforward. No verjuice on hand, so I'd have to use a little lemon juice. Hmm. Likely to be runny too - there's nothing in the recipe that acts as a thickener, and cinnamon in unthickened sauces sometimes makes them turn out kind of strange - almost stringy. Ok, so I'll thicken it. I could use wheat starch or rice flour or even eggs as a thickener, but my favorite medieval thickening method is to use bread.

This has to be the coolest trick in the medieval cook's repertoire. You soak the bread in a liquid like broth or wine for a while, strain out the solids, and then cook the liquid with the desired spices until it thickens. Need it to be thicker? Use more bread. The neat part is that while flour or starch thickeners can cause lumps, and eggs can cause the sauce to curdle if overcooked, using bread like this is amazingly tolerant of adverse cooking situations (like cooking in a large pot over a fire with no temperature control). It simply doesn't make lumps or curdle.

So that's what I did. The flatiron steak turned out perfectly, with a convenient gradation of doneness from medium-rare to medium-well. It wasn't as nice as a fillet mignon, but it was certainly better than some cheap steaks I've had. The Steky Sauce? Cindy proclaimed it to be "Yummy" and the kids both liked it. I'd call that a win.

Kalendarium Hortense - May

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of May.

Sow sweet marjoram, Basil, Thyme, hot and Aromatic Herbs and Plants which are the most tender.

Sow Purslan, to have young: Lettuce, large-sided Cabbage, painted Beans, &c.

Look carefully to your Melons; and towards the end of this Month forbear to cover them any longer on Ridges wither with Straw or Matrasses, &c.

Ply the Laboratory, and distill Plants for Waters, Spirits, &c.

Continue Weeding before they run to Seeds.

Now set your Bees at full liberty, look out often, and expect Swarms, &c.

¹ - Olitory: of or pertaining to, or produced in, a kitchen garden.

Food Related Painting of the Week

January: A Kitchen
Antonio Tempesta (Italy, Florence, 1555 - 1630)

January: A Kitchen
(from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

It's been a while since I babbled on about a painting, so it's about time for another.

A few days ago, someone (thanks, Johnnae!) posted a link to this etching to one of the mailing lists I follow. There was a brief discussion about the items and equipment being used and the thread died down. Basically it centered around the spigots at the sink on the left, and the women nearby apparently plucking poultry. Those aren't what first caught my interest in this image.

The first thing I saw was the stark division of the kitchen.

The table in the center splits the kitchen in half, and separates the functions of cooking and service. It also serves to keep servers, dishwashers, and other non-cooks out of the way of the cooks (and vice-versa). This is surprisingly similar to my preferred setup for cooking medieval feasts (and how many - most? - modern restaurant kitchens work as well).

The second thing I saw was that the dining setup wasn't what I expected.

I'm used to seeing either a U-shaped arrangement of tables with the feasters sitting around the outside, or (in smaller or less formal settings) a single table with the feasters sitting around it. Here the tables are set out as one very long table, and it's hard to be sure but I think the feasters are seated only on the side at the far right. On the left side, opposite the table, is what I believe to be a side-board. It has big serving platters on display, and would probably also have an array of sweets or the like set out during the feast.

After these I started looking at smaller details.

Various pots and pans are being stored on high shelves over the sink. Presumably this would help keep them clean and out of the way. Similarly, there are a couple of cooking implements being stored on the hood over the fire.

The food on the plates (bowls? they look kind of deep to be plates) about to be served is covered with another plate. Is it to keep stuff from falling into the food? I don't think so, because the food on the flatter plates isn't similarly covered. Perhaps it's to keep wetter foods from sloshing, or maybe to help keep the food warm until it reaches the feasters.

I initially thought that the things sticking out of the meats being roasted over the fire were the small skewers that help keep the meat from sliding around and to turn when the spit turns, but it looks like they're still on the meat that the cook is putting onto the table to be served. So I suspect those are pieces of fat inserted into the meat to help keep it moist (a process called larding).

Finally, an odd little detail: on the table in the lower right corner of the image is a small round thing that looks like a drawer knob. Is that really a drawer? I don't think I've seen drawers in medieval artwork before, but then again that's not something I've been paying attention to - up until now.

It Must Be Spring!

Looking out the kitchen window this morning, I noticed something looked odd with my quince tree.

Yes, those beautiful pink blossoms are blooming! (Ok, so the picture above is one I took last year - I didn't have enough time this morning to take a new one. I'll try to take some new ones soon).

There are a lot more blossoms this year than last - which only makes sense given that the tree is about two feet taller than it was last spring. Hopefully I'll have better luck and actually get a couple quince from it this year.

More Thoughts on "The Medieval Diet"™

It's been far too long since I posted last. Things got a bit nuts for a while there - a royalty lunch to cook, a feast to help with, taxes, vacation, minor illness, yadda yadda yadda. It's amazing how life can get in the way of the important things in life. Anyways, I thought I'd give a short update on this dietary experiment I've been toying with.

A while back I posted about the similarities between the diet in medieval Europe, the "Flexitarian" diet, and the advice of modern nutritionists. For the past couple of months I've had my family eating roughly according to the following guidelines.

1. No meat (other than fish) on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays
2. Lunch is the main meal, dinner is smaller
3. Meat portions are small (~4 oz.) with the bulk of the caloric intake coming from other foods
4. Seasonal, locally grown fruits and vegetables
5. Carbohydrates from a variety of grains and tubers
6. Reduced intake of sugars

Note that I used the word "roughly" above. There were occasions where we swapped the menus for a couple days of the week - usually due to having stuff in the fridge that needed to be cooked before it spoiled. However overall we had more meatless days than the required 3 out of 7 per week (vacationing on the Carolina coast was a bonus - it was more like 5 out of 7 days without meat).

The seasonal vegetables part has actually been kind of fun. I end up buying what's cheaper and having to be a bit creative with it to keep things from getting dull. Of course every now and then I need to resort to frozen veggies out of expediency. Mind you, it's spring. Living on seasonal produce will likely be much harder in the winter.

Was the produce locally grown? Probably not. I just don't have time to go to the farmers markets and such, which leaves me with what's available at the grocery. It probably was all trucked in from hundreds of miles away.

The biggest problem of course is having lunch be the main meal of the day. This has been a total failure so far. The kids are in school and I'm working a traditional 9-5, so we can't get together for a big, home cooked dinner in the middle of the day. I suppose I could pack a larger lunch and go light on supper, but somehow that just doesn't click with me.

Still, we're eating a better balance of foods overall with less red meat, and I'm losing weight (veeeery sloooowly). I guess it's one of those cases of incremental improvement, so I'll keep working at it.

Kalendarium Hortense - April

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of April.

Sow sweet Marjoram, Hyssop, Basil, Thyme, Winter Savory, Scurvey-grass², and all fine and tender Seeds that require the Hot-bed.

Sow also Lettice, Purslian, Caully-flower, Raddish, &c.

Plant Artichoke-slips, &c.

Set French Beans, &c. And sow Turneps to have them early.

You may yet slip Lavender, Thyme, Peneroyal, Sage, Rosemary, &c.

Towards the middle of this Month begin to plant forth your Melons and Cucumbers, and so to the later end; your Ridges well prepared.

Gather up Worms and Snails, after evening showers; continue this after all Summer rains.

Open now your Bee-hives, for now they hatch; look carefully to them, and prepare your Hives, &c.

¹ - Olitory: of or pertaining to, or produced in, a kitchen garden.

² - Scurvey-grass: Cochlearia species; a.k.a. Scurvy grass, Scurvygrass, or Spoonwort.