A Medieval Diet?

Last week I came across a post on Lifehacker in which the blogger in question described his change to a flexitarian diet and how he'd been able to lose substantial weight with a few relatively easy modifications to his eating habits. Seeing as I've been getting decidedly Pooh-shaped lately, and remembering that many years back we'd gone semi-vegetarian and didn't die from meat withdrawal, I've come to think that this may be a good thing to try.

Then the thought occurred to me that this sort of semi-vegetarian thing was a major part of the Church-dictated medieval European diet. On three days each week - Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays - meat from land animals was off the menu. They were replaced with fish, leguminous vegetables, and the like. Of course things were much more restricted during lent (no dairy or eggs allowed either, making it a sort of pisco-vegan diet). Interesting, but I'm not quite ready for 40 days of that.

So what would a modern, healthy version of "The Medieval Diet"™ be like? Let's see ...

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

Mind you, this isn't how people actually ate in most of medieval Europe. Most food historians now think that the average worker was consuming around 3000 calories a day (not counting times of famine) and burning it all off with hard work, and the wealthy were eating a diet full of fats, sugars, and protein (and paying the price in terms of diet-related diseases just like we are today). Still, it's a diet that has a basis in medieval practices, and is surprisingly close to what a lot of modern nutritionists advocate.

We'll have to see how well it works.

Items of Note

Music - Venere Lute Quartet
"Aery Entertainments"
Mees Hall, Capital University, Columbus, Ohio
February 20, 2009

Presented by Early Music in Columbus

One of few professional lute ensembles, the Venere Lute Quartet performs
Renaissance and Baroque masterworks and is actively expanding the surviving
lute ensemble repertoire with its own arrangements. In its Columbus debut,
the quartet will perform works by Palestrina, Praetorius, Sweelinck and
others. The Venere Lute Quartet is named after the Italian Renaissance
luthier Vendelio Venere, who (like Stradivarius) was regarded among the
finest luthiers of his age.

Tickets are $25, $20 (seniors), $10 (students) and are available at the
door. To order by phone, call Early Music in Columbus (614-861-4569), the
CAPA Ticket office (614-469-0939) or Ticketmaster (614-431-3600).

http://www.venerelutequartet.com/

On Leaving One's Comfort Zone

Towards the end of last month, we took a family car trip to Florida. About a third of the way into the sixteen-hour return trip we stopped briefly at a gas station/convenience store, and while I was waiting for various family members to be ready to continue the trip I wound up staring at a rack of commercial baked goods with Spanish labels. While I'll freely admit to being an adventurous eater, I found the names and visible contents to be somewhat dubious. I mean, I don't like Twinkies or most store-bought cookies, and here was an array of factory made "food" that apparently is geared to patrons of Mexican gas stations.

So I bought some.

I picked out the most unusual and oddly named items I could find and thus begins the tale of the trying of three products: Pingüinos, Gansitos, and the ever-appetizingly-named ¡Sponch! Into the grocery bag they go, and into the car, and down the road for ten interminable hours, and once we were home I shoved the bag into the back of the pantry to save them for later without worry since they had an expiration date that was sometime in the later half of the 32nd century.

Thus when Avelyn, my apprentice, came over for dinner on Sunday (broiled steak seasoned with coriander and ginger, rice steamed with coconut milk and currants, and fresh asparagus), I was ready with something truly educational for dessert. We cleared the dinner dishes away, got out the grocery bag of dread, and started dividing things up.

Penguins are good, right?

The first thing we tried were the Pingüinos, and they were a bit of a disappointment. In appearance they're indistinguishable from hostess cupcakes - right down to the loops of icing on the top and the plastic tray. That's about where the similarity ends though, for Pingüinos have all the chocolaty flavor goodness of potting soil and a moisture content like that of dryer lint. Of the five people at the dining table, only the nine-year-old child liked them.

¿Eh?

After the Pingüinos we decided to jump right in and try the scariest looking thing here - ¡Sponch! It was obvious right off the bat that this wasn't like any snack cake I'd encountered before. It consists of a square shortbread cookie (imprinted on the bottom with the word ¡Sponch!) topped with four mounds of alleged marshmallow, with a bit of jelly at the center and the whole thing sprinkled with coconut. Apparently ¡Sponch! comes in a variety of flavors. I had purchased a package of "strawberry" (hereafter referred to as PINK) and "grape" (hereafter referred to as PURPLE).

By far, ¡Sponch! received the most reaction from our intrepid team (actually, I think we were all very trepid). Avelyn said the PURPLE flavored ¡Sponch! tasted like chewable vitamins. The eleven-year-old said it tasted like children's chewable Tylenol. The nine-year-old took the tiniest of nibbles from the PINK flavored one and then (wisely) refused to eat it. For some strange reason nobody wanted the PURPLE flavored one that he didn't touch. The general comment upon tasting was something like "Um ... urgh ... ghah!".

How can you go wrong with something called "Little Goose"

Gansitos were by far the best of the lot. They were small (somewhat stale) yellow cakes topped with a strip of jelly, topped in turn with a strip of white fluffy stuff, then coated in chocolate and sprinkled with "chocolate" sprinkles (the shape of which had disturbing connotations when connected with the phrase "Little Goose"). The eleven-year-old said he liked them (but didn't want the extras), the nine-year-old tasted it and decided he was done. I thought the jelly had an odd, acidic, almost alcoholic taste to it. LU Biscuits makes a kind of cookie (PIMS) that are vaguely similar in flavor (but a whole lot nicer).

On the whole, it was a fun thing to do for dessert, and while some things tasted strange (¡Sponch!) none of us got sick or anything.

What does this have to do with Medieval Cooking? Not a heck of a lot. But part of researching culinary history means trying foods that look strange and/or have weird ingredients. You have to be willing to go beyond what is normal for your culture, and you find yourself asking things like "Do people really like this sort of thing? If so, why?" and "What flavor were they trying to get here?"

Hmm ... maybe I need to make another trip to the international section of Jungle Jim's International Market soon. They've got some really weird stuff there!

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 list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of February.

Prune Fruit-Trees, and Vines as yet; for now is your Season to bind, plash, nail, and dress, without danger of Frost: This to be understood of the most tender and delicate Wall-fruit, ² not finish'd before; do this before the Buds and Bearers grow turgid; and yet in the Nectarine and like delicate Mural Fruit, the latter your Pruning, the better, whatever has been, and still is, the contrary custom. Remove Graffs of former years Graffing. Cut, and lay Quick-sets; and trim up your Palisade Hedges, and Espaliers. Plant Vine as yet, other Shrubs, Hops, &c.

Set all sorts of Kernels and stony-Seeds. Also sow Beans, Pease, Rounsevals, ³ Corn-sallet, Marigold, Anny-seeds, Radish, Parsneps, Carrots, Onions, Garlick, &c. And plant Potatoes in your worst ground.

Now is your Season for Circumposition by Tubs or Baskets of Earth, and for laying of Branches to take root. You may plant forth your Cabbage-plants.

Rub Moss off your Trees after soaking Rain, and scrape, and cleanse them of Cankers, &c. draining away the wet (if need require) from the too much moistned Roots, and earth up those Roots of your Fruit-Trees, if any were uncovered. Cut off the Webs of Caterpillars, &c. from the tops of Twigs and Trees to burn. Gather Worms in the Evenings after Rain.

Kitchen Garden Herbs may now be planted, as Parsly, Spinage, and other hardy Pot Herbs. Towards the midde, or latter end of this Month, till the Sap rises briskly, graff in the Cleft, and so continue till the last of March; they will hold, Apples, Pears, Cherries, Plums, &c. the New Moon, and the Old Wood is best. Now also plant out your Caullyflowers to have early; and begin to make your Hot-bed for the first Melons and Cucumbers to be sow'd in the Full; but trust not altogether to them. Sow Asparagas, Lastly,

Half open your passages for the Bees, or a little before (if weather invite;) but to continue to seed weak Stock, &c.

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

² - Wall / Mural fruit: trees trained against a wall.

³ - Rouncival: a large, very late season pea that would be considered a soup pea today rather than a green pea.

Haggis

There was a recent post on slashfood about haggis, which included a link to an interesting YouTube video. Of course this got me thinking. I've come across medieval recipes for haggis before, but I hadn't compared them to modern recipes. How different was medieval haggis?

The recipe in the program seemed pretty simple: onion, suet, sheep's offal, cracked wheat, and spices, all stuffed into a casing (traditionally a sheep's stomach, but in this case beef intestines) and boiled.

After a brief search I found a recipe in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430) titled Hagws of a schepe. It calls for sheep's offal, suet, spices, bread, egg yolks, and cream. All mixed, stuffed into the sheep's stomach, and boiled. That's very close - even the name is similar - all that's missing is the onion.

Here's the part that surprised me. After looking further, I didn't find any other recipes like this one. Nothing earlier from England, and nothing from any other country. This suggests that haggis is not only a very English dish, but it also hasn't changed in over 500 years.

Now the remaining question is: can I get my family to eat it? The kids maybe, but my wife hates the taste of liver. Maybe I can make a pseudo-haggis using ground lamb ...

Goose and Sauce Madame

[Sorry about the recent lack of posts. Chalk it up to a combination of a minor flu bug and a hectic schedule.]

Back in December we had some friends over for a Winter Solstice dinner, and one of the dishes I cooked was Goose with Sauce Madame. I should have taken some pictures, but (of course) things were behind schedule and the kitchen was crazy and yadda yadda yadda, so you'll just have to imagine what it all looked like (though I'll admit it wasn't this pretty). I'll be posting the recipe for Sauce Madame on the website sooner or later (maybe after a couple more tries using chicken or duck instead of goose), but I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on the dinner and how things turned out before I completely forget things.

First, the goose: I'd never made goose before, and the one I got from the grocer was actually relatively small - 10 to 12 pounds. Geese are weird, plain and simple. The skin was tougher than I thought, the meat was (way) darker in color than I expected, and while it put out lots of fat in the roasting pan (which I did expect) there was almost nothing in the way of juices. The meat tasted good enough to eat, but wasn't anything to rave about. Maybe bigger geese are better? Dunno. I've always heard that goose was something people ate more out of tradition than because they like it. That seems believable now.

The Sauce Madame smelled fantastic up until I added the goose drippings as instructed. Everyone seemed to like it (especially my wife), but it had an oily aspect that just didn't sit well with me. Maybe with more broth instead of oil (which implies some other bird than goose)?

The Wastel y-Farced turned out fantastic. I'd used a square, 2 pound loaf of sourdough bread. I had to improvise a steamer using a large pot with some water in the bottom and a bowl to act as a spacer, and the bread resting on the bottom of a small tart pan. It was warm, slightly gooey, and slightly sweet. Got to remember to make it again soon.

For a vegetable I went with the inevitable Brussels sprouts. I was too rushed by this point to make a cream sauce or anything, but perhaps next time. They were fresh, easy, and the family likes them, so if nothing else they blended into the background.

Finally there's the plum pudding. I love making plum pudding each year, and this one turned out just fine. Hector, who had just returned from school in England, noted the amount of butter and brandy used over there when serving these things, but otherwise didn't comment. Maybe I should take that as a bad sign. Then again, I like my plum pudding the way it is (as does the family), which I guess is what's important. Though ... more butter and brandy ... that doesn't sound too bad, eh? Maybe a tweak or two is in order.

So on the whole, it was a bit hectic and crazy, a good amount of yum, a heap of traditional, and a lot of fun. That's what the holidays are all about.

Kokbok för Husmödrar

I am filled with geeky excitement! I just received a neat book in the mail. It was found by an acquaintance's mother (thanks to Laureen and her mom!) at a rummage sale - and of all things, it's a late 19th century Swedish cookbook. Here's what the first page says:

Gustafva Björklunds

Kokbok för Husmödrar

innehållande beskrifningar öfver

mer än 2000 anrättningar.

(Jemte 100 anvisningar för tillredning af Svamprätter.)

Med 106 gravyrer.

Obviously this isn't medieval (misses the mark by a scant 400 years or so), but still it's filled with awesome - in fact, 512 pages of Swedish awesome. The last recipe (Tätmjölk) is numbered 2081!  I plan on transcribing the book to text (or more likely HTML given the number of letters like å and ö) and eventually translating it to English.

Oh, as best I can tell the text on the title page translates to something like:
Gustafva Björklund's Cookbook for Housemothers, containing observations and more than 2000 recipes. (Plus 100 instructions for making Mushroom dishes.) With 106 engravings.

Food Through the Ages

Food Through the Ages: From Stuffed Dormice to Pineapple Hedgehogs
Anna Selby
Remember When
ISBN: 1844680274

This is a really nice book.

Ok, I probably should admit that I've got a slight bias here. About a year ago, Anna Selby emailed me with some questions. There was a flurry of emails back and forth, I did a little translating, and gave permission to use some recipes. I then got wrapped up in other projects and promptly forgot about the whole thing. Lo and behold, a few weeks back this book comes out and a friend mentions it on a mailing list, and notes that it refers to me and my website. I ordered a copy and eagerly awaited its arrival.

While it's fairly basic in content, it doesn't make any of the blunders so common in books geared to the general reader. What's more, it's an absolutely beautiful book, well laid out and loaded with pictures. The text is clear and Anna's writing style is easy to soak in. It may not be detailed enough for a fanatical food historian, but it's perfect for the beginner (or for a fanatical food historian to give to a non-fanatical family member to help explain their fanaticism).

It also includes several of my recipes and refers to me and my website many times, so it really is a very nice book.

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 list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of January.

Trench the Ground, and make it ready for the Spring: prepare also Soil, and use it where you have occasion: Dig Borders, &c. uncover as yet Roots of Trees, where Ablaqueation² is requisite.

Plant Quick-sets, and Transplant Fruit-Trees, if not finish'd: Set Vines, and begin to prune the old: Prune the branches of Orchard Fruit-Trees; especially the long planted, and that towards the decrease: but for such as are newly planted, they need not be disbranched till the Sap begins to stir, that so the wound may be healed with the Sear, and Stub, which our frosts do frequently leave: In this work cut off all the shoot of August, unless the nakedness of the place incline you to spare it: You may now begin to Nail and trim your Wall-fruit³, and Espaliers⁴.

Cleane Trees of Moss, &c. the Weather moist.

Gather Cyors⁵ for Graffs before the Buds sprout; and about the latter end graff them in the Stock, Pears, Cherries, and Plums, and remove your Kernel-stocks to more commodious distances in your Nursery, cutting off the Top root. Set Beans, Pease, &c.

Sow also (if you please) for early Caully-flowers.

Sow Chervil, Lettuce, Radish, and other (more delicate) Salletings; if you will raise in the Hot-bed.

In over-wet, or hard weather cleanse, mend, sharpen, and prepare Garden Tools.

Turn up your Bee-hives, and sprinkle them with a little warm and sweet Wort; do it dexterously.

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

² - Ablaqueation: The act or process of laying bare the roots of trees to expose them to the air and water.

³ - Wall fruit: trees trained against a wall.

⁴ - Espaliers: trees or shrubs that are trained to grow in a flat plane against a wall, often in a symmetrical pattern. Also, a trellis or other framework on which an espalier is grown.

⁵ - Cyors: Probably cions - Detached shoots or twigs containing buds from a woody plant, used in grafting.

Link from NPR!

So I'm looking at the statistics for the website and I very quickly notice that I'm getting a lot more hits than usual - about double the traffic. There's one URL at NPR.org that shows up a lot in the logs. I check it and sure enough, there's a small link to my Frumenty recipe partway down the page.

(the culprit)

This is the coolest link since I got one from the BBC website!

Solstice Dinner

For the past couple of years I've cooked a big dinner on December 21st to celebrate the winter solstice. Partly it's a traditional way to observe the changing seasons of the year, and another special thing to enjoy over the holidays. The biggest reason though is so I can cook a fancy holiday dinner the way I want without making any additional fuss and mess on Christmas eve or Christmas day.

The menu hasn't settled down yet, but this year I decided it should be a counterpoint to Thanksgiving. I've selected mostly medieval English dishes and the focus is on old-world foods. Here's what I've got so far:

Roast Goose with Sauce Madame - The goose is stuffed with fruit and herbs. After roasting, the stuffing is removed and used to make a fruit sauce. This is my first time making this recipe (and for that matter, my first time cooking goose), so we'll see how it goes.

Wastels y-Farced - Since the goose isn't going to have a bread-based stuffing, I thought I'd make this old favorite. It's essentially a steamed, savory bread pudding.

Plum Pudding - While plum puddings aren't at all medieval, I've become quite addicted to this particular English tradition. The holidays just wouldn't be complete without it.

The only thing I still can't decide on is a vegetable. I've thought about Brussels sprouts, but somehow they just don't click. I'll have to make up my mind soon.

If I have time, I'm going to make some gyngerbrede too. Not for dinner or dessert, but as a treat for during the day and with mulled cider later that evening.

Food Related Painting of the Week

Supper at Emmaus
Marco Marziale, 1506

Supper at Emmaus
(from the Web Gallery of Art)

This painting illustrates one of the problems I have to face: early medieval artwork was usually much more concerned with religion than it was with food. I can find heaps of paintings and illuminations depicting religious figures, but very few that have any kind of accurate depiction of medieval food (I almost chose a painting of Herod's banquet where John the Baptists' head was being served on a platter, but it just wasn't food-related enough).

At any rate, there actually is a bit of interesting food-related stuff going on in this picture. Most prominent of course are the oddly shaped loaves of bread. I haven't seen kidney-shaped loaves before. Each loaf has a strange little dimple on the side as well - perhaps it's a baker's mark.

In front of each diner is a rectangular trencher, apparently made of metal. Bread trenchers were increasingly popular for feasts in the later 14th and early 15th centuries, but may have fallen out of fashion by the time this was painted. I'm not sure exactly what;s on these trenchers. It looks kind of like the calamari I get at the local sushi place, but I kind of doubt that. The ones on Jesus' trencher look like uniform slices of something. Meat? Sippets?

Aside from the trencher and a spiffy knife for each diner, the remaining items on the table are all rather plain. Jesus's bowl, the pitcher, and the glasses are certainly of nice quality (metal and glass), but are not ornate. The glasses don't even have the stereotypical prunts (bumps added to the outside to make the glass less slippery). The possible exception is the salt cellar in front of Jesus, which looks like it's made of gold or brass and appears to have some decoration around the side.

That's it for the food though - just bread, wine, and some mysterious things on trenchers.

The sawhorse table is rather interesting of course, as are the stools at either end. I still need to get around to making a couple of tables like this, and maybe stools too. Others may be fascinated by the clothes, hats, rosaries, belt pouches, napkins, boot closures, and the fact that the fold lines are so visible on the table cloth, but not me. I didn't notice those things at all.

Thoughts on Misconceptions

I don't normally let a short story get to me, but one I finished reading yesterday is still bugging me. I won't mention the title or author's name as they're actually irrelevant to my point here. It's not that the story was particularly bad in terms of writing style or plot. I probably would have enjoyed the thing if it hadn't been for one small problem: the author had no idea what he was talking about.

Line many stories, the tale centered upon a person from a primitive culture being taken to a more developed one. This is all well and fine, except that instead of learning what primitive human cultures are/were really like, the tale's author simply repeated every myth about "naked savages" he'd ever read or seen in movies regardless of whether they made sense. Ugh! I did laugh when he actually used the phrase "naked savage" when the main character saw himself in a mirror, but it wasn't a good laugh so much as a shocked laugh of disbelief.

So where's the medieval angle here? Well oddly enough, most of the myths the author perpetuated are often applied to medieval European culture as well. There seems to be some need in humanity to assume that life in any given time of the past must have been shorter, simpler, and nastier than it is now. I'll address some of the specific myths in the story from the viewpoint of a historian and medievalist, but the answers pretty much apply to all human cultures.

Cleanliness

Some cultures do indeed bathe more than others, but if a human is going to live long enough to breed then it must maintain some level of hygiene. Medieval Europeans bathed, and it was more than once a year. No, they probably didn't smell like roses or lemons, but neither do some of the people I deal with on a daily basis. They did understand the importance of washing their hands, cleaning their teeth, and the like. Dirt and sweat are one thing, filth and vermin are another.

Diet

Not everyone lived their entire life on the edge of starvation. Yes, there were periods of famine in the middle ages, but there were also time were people had enough to eat. While they didn't have modern agriculture or preservation techniques, they were generally capable of getting enough food from their lands and storing enough of it to get through the winter.

Intelligence

While the sum of human knowledge has increased, the level of human intelligence has not changed for many thousands of years. In other words, medieval people were just as smart as modern people, but they didn't have as much information as we do. There were geniuses and idiots in ancient Rome, and they were much like their modern counterparts.

Sophistication

Live was not simpler in medieval Europe. The merchants there/then had already invented things like insurance and stock futures. They had bank accounts, brokers, overseas manufacturing, fraud, cartels, and everything else we expect from modern business. People - even in the working or farming classes - didn't spend all their time at work. They had fashion trends, theater, religious debates, wedding celebrations, and even fast food. It seems that humans will always make things as complicated as possible given their environment in order to keep from being bored. (Don't believe me? Check out Polynesian cultures)

So yes, I'm sure there were some people in medieval Europe who were stupid and filthy, who worked all of their waking hours, and lived their entire lives on the edge of starvation. However I'm also sure that I could find such people living in modern cities as well. Their lives are not (and were not) typical.

Food Related Painting of the Week

Fishmongers
Vincenzo Campi, 1580s

Fishmongers
(from the Web Gallery of Art)

Another late-medieval (depending on your viewpoint) painting by Vincenzo Campi. This one depicts a (assumed) fish merchant.

The group of people on the left (family?) immediately catch the eye. The man and woman are both holding bowls of what I assume are cooked beans (see Annibale Carracci's The Beaneater). Nice, simple bowls. Partly obscured view of the spoon the woman's holding. It's hard to tell what's on the table in front of them. I think the blocky, rock-shaped things are pieces of bread. It looks to me like there are dead mice on the plate, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. At the woman's feet is a pitcher with a bowl on top. My guess is that the bowl is being used a drinking vessel, and is filled with some of the wine (or whatever) that's in the pitcher.

On the other side, a young woman is dumping a large bucket of fresh (live?) fish onto the table for sorting. I'm not sure what the stick-like things just in front of her are. Next to her is a big, beautiful copper kettle with a knife.

The variety of seafood in the picture is very impressive. The big guy in the center is a sturgeon. There are at least a half-dozen other species of fish, along with scallops, oysters, clams, and crab. There's also a turtle under the table. Conspicuously absent are skates and rays - they usually show up in these sorts of paintings (see Pieter Aertsen's Market Scene). The one that really gets me though is the starfish at the bottom center. I don't think I've ever seen a recipe for starfish in a medieval cookbook, and from what I remember of biology class there isn't anything in a starfish that is edible. Are they just there as bycatch? Were they used for soup stock? Did Campi just include them because they look cool?

Another thing to check on as soon as I get a time machine.

Projects

Sometimes I feel awfully scatterbrained - I'm well aware that organization is not my strong suit (Oh, and if you've emailed me and I didn't get back to you, it's probably because I was distracted by something, so feel free to email again and nag until you get a response - I promise I won't get annoyed). At any rate, I thought I'd make a list of the current projects I'm working on in the hopes it motivates me to finish a few of them off.

The Projects (in no particular order):

• writing a novel (gothic horror, about 60% done)
• transcription of Kalendarium Hortense (ongoing)
• Halidai's Instant Feast
• image processing for "A Noble Boke off Cookry"
• medieval prayer book (in Middle-English)
• book/paper of medieval scientific knowledge
• transcription of Middle-English cookbook
• construction of various props for RPGs
• about 100 books to be read
• menus for 3 different events
• outfitting a medieval field kitchen

Ugh! That's a lot for someone who still has a day job, and there's a bunch more that I haven't included. I need a staff to follow me around and complete things, kind of like Martha Stewart had - before she went to jail.

No more new projects until I get these done - and this time I meant it!

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 list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of December.

Prune and nail Wall fruit², (which yet you may defer a Month or two longer) and Standard-trees.

You may now plant Vines, &c.

Also Stocks for Graffing, &c.

Sow, as yet, Pomace of Cider-pressings to raise Nurseries; and set all sorts of Kernels, Stones, &c.

Sow for early Beans and Pease, but take heed of the Frosts; therefore surest to defer it till after Christmas, unless the Winter promise very moderate.

All this Month you may continue to Trench Ground, and dung it, to be ready for Borders, or the planting of Fruit-trees, &c.

Either late in this Month, or in January, prune and cut off all your Vine shoots to the very Root, save one or two of the stoutest, to be left with three or four eyes of young Wood. This for the Vineyard.

Now seed your weak Stocks.

Turn and refresh your Autumnal Fruit, lest it taint, and open the Windows where it lies, in a clear and serene day.

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

² - Wall fruit: trees trained against a wall.

Welcome to the New World

[I'm a bit busy this week - big surprise - so my regular posting schedule is on hold. The painting of the week and all will be back next week.]

Once again, Thanksgiving draws near - at least for those of us in the United States. It is the one dinner where I intentionally focus on foods that are native to the Americas. My planned menu isn't very different from last year, but I thought I might make a few comments on some of the dishes (historical and otherwise).

Turkey - The turkey has an odd quirk in its history. While it was native to the Americas, it was domesticated in England. Wild turkeys were brought back to England in the early 16th century, where they were carefully bread for meat production and such. There they quickly supplanted the bustard as the common large bird at the dining table. The domestic turkey was then imported back to the Americas (re-imported? back-ported?).

Gravy - Technically, gravy is one of the four "mother sauces" of French cuisine (i.e. velouté), and while there is at least one medieval sauce recipe that is thickened with flour, the technique didn't really become common until the 19th century.

Stuffing - I suppose this could be considered "old world" and medieval, seeing as there are medieval recipes for a farsure (Middle English for "stuffing") made of bread to stuff into meat, but serving stuffing is a strong tradition in my family, and I'm not going to risk a holiday revolt. I do add dried cranberries to the mix, along with sage, and I usually use a mix of white bread and pumpernickel.

Mashed Potatoes - The potato is thought to have originated in South America. It was introduced to Europe in the early 16th century, and quickly became well established there.

Green Beans - There is some confusion over the history of these beans, mostly due to the use of the word "haricots". From what I understand, that name was used in reference to other varieties of beans before Columbus' voyages, and all members of the genus Phaseolus are new-world plants. This year I'm going to try serving freshly steamed green beans with Mornay sauce and home made pumpernickel croutons.

Cranberry Sauce - Cranberries are related to blueberries and the like, but are very different from their European cousins. I like to make cranberry chutney each year (which includes a little capsicum pepper - also a new world food). It's one of my favorite recipes, and is well liked by the family. I also make a homemade jellied cranberry sauce for my step-father. One of these years I'm going to use a can to mold the jellied stuff so it has the "cutting lines".

Corn Relish - This is something new I'm trying this year. It felt strange to cook a dinner featuring new-world foods that didn't include corn and tomatoes. These are two of the most successful plants in the culinary world. So I'm going to make up a small dish using baby corn and sun-dried tomatoes. If it turns out well then I'll post the recipe.

Pumpkin Pie - Pumpkins, like the other species of squash, originated in North America, though the word "pumpkin" itself appears to have come from France (by way of England). Pumpkins were apparently accepted into European cuisine fairly quickly.

Apple Pie - Ok, I admit that this one is not at all "new world". There are plenty of recipes for apple pies dating back to before the 14th century. Add to that the fact that apples weren't native to North America, and suddenly the phrase "As American as apple pie" is more than a bit ironic. This is another one of those cases where tradition outweighs geekiness though. If I didn't serve apple pie at Thanksgiving, I'd be cast out from the family.

This is what American food is really all about. It's not all cheeseburgers and french fries. It's a mix of traditional European dishes made with new world foods. Happy Thanksgiving!

Food Related Painting of the Week

The Egg Dance
Pieter Aertsen, 1552

The Egg Dance
(from the Web Gallery of Art)

I briefly talked about this painting in my post about medieval eggs, but there's a lot more here worth perusing.

One of the more obvious things is all the leeks and mussel shells scattered over the floor. I read somewhere (and can no longer find the source) that these - along with the leeks in the vase on the wall in the background - indicate that the place depicted in the painting is a house of ill repute. I don't know enough about that aspect of medieval history to be sure, but that sounds reasonable to me. Aside from the mess on the floor there are a couple of interesting kettles hanging over the fire and, at the very top of the painting near the center, some odd things which I think are sausages.

The really big draw though (for me at least) is the stuff on the table. The small loaves of bread are easy to figure out, and the little metal thing is probably a salt cellar, but what are those flat, diamond-shaped things? Waffles? They don't quite look like the waffles in other paintings. They're too thick to be playing cards. Trenchers maybe? The one to the left is curving up slightly at the edges in the same way the trenchers I made did after they started to dry out a bit.

And what in blazes are those things in the center of the table? I've seen these things before (in Aertsen's painting Butcher's Stall) and I couldn't figure then out there either (though in that painting they were accompanied by two similar things with a disturbingly red-brown colored filling). Schmaltz tarts? Marrow? Soft cheese with a rind? If so, the "rind" looks kind of wrong. Whatever they are, they come from the butcher ready-to-eat. I'm stumped on this one.

Food Related Painting of the Week

Christ and the Adulteress
Pieter Aertsen, 1559

Christ and the Adulteress
(from the Web Gallery of Art)

Yet another "inside-out" painting (sense a trend here?), this one from Amsterdam. So what do we have here? Front and center is an assortment of fruit and vegetables: carrots (maybe in two different colors, but it might just be shadow), onions, cucumbers (that look slightly fat like that cucumber-like thing last week), strawberries (in front) and peaches (just behind them), and a couple different kinds of cabbage. I think there's something that looks like an acorn squash in with the cabbage, but it's hard to tell.

Note the basket of very modern looking eggs in the front. Enough said on that.

Just behind the veggies is a basket of round things. They could be bread, but they seem just a bit too uniform in color. Cheeses maybe? That would make sense in connection with the pots of milk just behind them. This brings me to the oddly shaped things in the lower right corner, partly covered, in the bowl sitting on top of the bird cage. I haven't the foggiest idea just what they are. As a guess I'd say butter - something about the way they're kept in a bowl and (presumably) kept covered. I've seen these in other pictures, and they may (or may not) be related to the Mysterious Football-Shaped Things® discussed elsewhere.

Oh, and while they're not food, I love the pile of cookpots in the lower left. I need to buy a few of those.

Items of Note

News Article - A sport of kings, knights, and nomads
The Boston Globe

A short article by Jane Roy Brown on the history of falconry.

http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/vermont/articles/2008/11/09/a_sport_of_kings_knights_and_nomads/

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Blog - A History of Cooks and Cooking

Mae's Food Blog has a review of Michael Symons' book, A History of Cooks and Cooking.

http://maefood.blogspot.com/2008/11/history-of-cooks-and-cooking.html

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Music - Vince Conaway
Louisiana Renaissance Festival, Hammond, Louisiana
November 15 & 16, 2008

"Vince is an interactive performer, believing that the audience should not be separated from the show but instead be a part of it. One of few dulcimer players to converse while performing, he also brings a bit of cultural and historical perspective to every performance. Whether performing Living History, at a bookstore, or busking on the street he holds to his guiding principles of musicianship, showmanship, and professionalism."

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