Bread,
Butters,
Cheeses;
Cuminade of Fish,
Funges in Pasty,
Syrosye;
Pullets Rostyd with Cold Sage,
Rice Endored,
Salat;
Venisoun Sauseges on Compot,
Buttered Porray,
Sambocade;
All Served with Divers Potables.
"Poultry flavoured with cumin. Cut it into pieces and put it to
cook in a little wine, then fry it in fat; then take a little bread dipped
in your broth and take first ginger and cumin, moisten them with verjuice,
bray and strain and put all together with meat or chicken broth, and then
color it either with saffron or with eggs or yolks run through a strainer
and dropped slowly into the pottage, after it is taken off the fire. Item,
best it is to make it with milk as aforesaid and then to bray your bread
after your spices, but behoveth it to boil the milk first lest it burn,
and after the pottage is finished let the milk be put into wine (meseemeth
this is not needful) and fry it. Many there be that fry it not, nathless
it tastes best so.
"(Bread is the
thickening and afterwards he saith eggs, which is another thickening, and
one should suffice, as is said in the chapter concerning the cretonneé.
Verjuice and wine.--If you would make your pottage with milk behoveth not
to use wine or verjuice.)
"Commineé
for a fish day. Fry your fish, then peel almonds and bray them and dilute
with pureé or fish broth and make milk of almonds; but cow's milk
is more appetising, though not so healthy for the sick; and for the rest
do as above. Item, on a meat day, if you cannot have cow's milk, you may
make the dish of milk of almonds and meat as above."
Le Menagier de Paris, trans. Eileen Power; Harcourt, Brace New York
1928.
I've elected to bake the fish rather than fry it; from a medieval standpoint
the end results are almost indistinguishable, except that sauteéd
fish for a few hundred people is messy and impractical.
Also, we'll be using
almond milk in our sauce, for, as the Goodman says, only one thickening
is necessary. However, the almond milk will be made with cow's milk and
cream as a base liquid. While this is not the method used in the recipe
above, it was fairly common to produce a particularly rich and thick almond
milk in this way.
I envision this dish
as something like fish fillets in an almond - curry flavored cream sauce.
Almond milk made with cream or half-and-half is appropriate for a fish-day,
and eliminates the need for any additional thickener. Since neither Le
Menagier nor his source, Taillevent, mentions a garnish of any kind, I've
decided to cheat and top the whole shebang with fried onions; both a consistently
appropriate medieval garnish for pale pottages, and a way to introduce
a flavor I feel will improve the dish. The dish is intended as a spoon-food,
so the fish should be either in chunks or soft enough to break up easily.
Season the fish with salt and pepper and either saute or bake at 400° F in a greased pan. Vegetable oil is best for this. Cook for about eight minutes per inch of thickness of your fish, til fish is barely opaque inside and flaky. Keep the fish warm.
Meanwhile, cook the onion and ginger over low heat in a saucepan, with a little more oil. When they are soft and aromatic, but no longer volatile (you'll know it when you see it), add cumin and saffron. Do not brown. Add half and half and mix thoroughly. Raise heat a bit and bring it to a boil. Beat with a whip and add the almonds in a steady stream. Bring back to a boil, stirring frequently. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and add more cumin if you feel like it. You can blenderize and/or strain the sauce if you want it smoother and/or thinner. Pour it over the fish and mess it forth.
"Mushrooms of one night be the best and they be little and red
within and closed at the top; and they must be peeled and then washed in
hot water and parboiled and if you wish to put them in a pasty add oil,
cheese, and spice powder."
Le Menagier de Paris, translated by Eileen Powers, pub. Harcourt,
Brace, New York, 1928.
A pasty is a great way to cook almost anything moist, as the pastry
case seals in any juices which would otherwise escape during cooking. The
exact nature of the dough is fairly unimportant, since it frequently is
discarded in favor of the filling. Most likely it would have been a hot
water/shortening dough such as are used in modern English raised pork pies.
By the way, all you armorers out there, raising pastry is almost identical
to raising sheet metal; a baker's pie mold used to look a lot like an armorer's
raising (or mushroom) stake, only the fingers are used instead of a hammer.
I'm sorry. I've sworn
a mighty oath, at peerpoint and in public, never to make my own pastry
for an event again, so the pasties (pronounced past-ies, not paste-ies)
will be wrapped in either commercial puff pastry, or for preference, in
commercial empanada wrappers, to be baked in the case of the former, or
deep-fried if the latter. The Goya people even make empanada wrappers in
peculiar medievalish colors, like bright neon yellow (done with annatto,
the same stuff that's in most cheddar cheese)!
I suspect le Menagier
is talking about some other mushroom than our standard champignon; the
need for peeling and parboiling suggests some level of toxicity. I intend
to avoid this multifaceted problem by using our standard champignon, sliced
and sauteed.
The cheese will be
ricotta, drained to thicken, and the spice powder I interpret as something
like powder douce, usually consisting of nutmeg, fennel and/or anise. the
oil will be extra virgin olive, and I'll also include some shallots cooked
in vermouth, just because.
Make the filling. Mix your mushrooms with the cheese, the olive oil, and the spice powder. If you use premixed spice powder, remember it probably already has some pepper. Season with salt and, if necessary, pepper. If you're using a commercial baked pie shell, add one or two beaten eggs to hold the filling together.
If using frozen wrappers, follow package directions for thawing and keep covered with a slightly damp towel. If you're using homemade wrappers do the same.
Fill two or three wrappers at a time, keeping the rest covered. If necessary, brush inside edges with water or beaten egg to seal. Pinch shut any cracks the same way; a rub with a wet fingertip erases them. Crimp the edges with fingers or a fork (optional). Fried pasties need to be well sealed or they'll explode and fill your oil with brown curds. Baked ones are easier, but not as good. Any leftover beaten eggs can be used to glaze the baked version.
Deep-fry at 350° F, til golden, or bake at 375° F for 25 minutes or until a knife point comes out clean.
"To make a syrosye. Tak cheryes & do out þe stones &
grynde hem wel & draw hem þorw a streynoure & do it in a
pot. & do þerto whit gres or swete botere & myed wastel bred,
& cast þerto good wyn & sugre, & salte it & stere
it wel togedere, & dresse it in disches; & set þeryn clowe
gilofre, & strew sugre aboue."
Curye On Inglysch, Book III, Utilis Coquinario, ed. Constance
B. Hieatt & Sharon Butler, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.
In other words... To make some cherries. Take cherries, pit them, pureé
them, and put them in a pot. Add lard or sweet butter and some white bread
crumbs, and add some good wine and sugar. Salt it and stir well, serve
it in dishes, and garnish with cloves and sugar.
I'm assuming some actual
cooking, as in the application of heat, takes place here, if only to melt
the lard or butter. I'm going to go for broke and simmer it so the bread
crumbs can thicken the pottage. Bread crumbs are a matter of taste. I opted
for a rather thin soup, but the actual dish was probably a bit thicker.
Some people use enormous quantities of bread crumbs to get a pudding-like
"standing pottage", but the recipe doesn't call for that, and
it's nasty, to boot.
I suspect the cloves
are intended to be left whole, rather than ground, since powder of cloves
is a known, standard, 14th century ingredient. Possibly they were chewed
as a breath freshener. After all, it is cloved fruit, isn't it? I, however,
am a spoilsport at heart, so I intend to use powdered cloves, to avoid
expensive dental accidents in dim feast halls.
As for sugar, it's
likely that it's sprinkled lavishly on top so that it looks really opulent,
while actually this expensive and exotic pharmaceutical is in there pretty
skimpily. Depending on a final decision regarding service, I will probably
stir in any or all sugar used in this dish, which won't be a lot.
Puree the cherries in a food mill or processor. Put everything but the butter, the cloves and the salt into a pot and bring to a boil, whipping to break up any breadcrumb lumps. Add cloves to taste. Cut cold butter into small pieces and drop them into the simmering liquid, whipping constantly until they are melted and incorporated (otherwise you'll have a layer of grease floating on top). Salt to taste and serve.
"A cold sage. Cook your poultry in water, then set it to cool;
grind ginger, cassia buds (var.: cinnamon), grains of paradise and cloves,
and do not strain them; then grind bread, parsley, and sage, with, if you
wish, a little saffron in this greenery to make it a bright green, and
sieve this; and some people add strained, hard-cooked egg yolks steeped
in vinegar; do not boil. Break your poultry apart into halves, quarters,
or members, set it out on plates with the sauce over and hard-cooked egg
whites on top. If you used hard eggs, cut them up with a knife rather than
breaking them by hand."
The Viandier of Taillevent, edited by Terence Scully, University
of Ottawa Press, Toronto, 1988.
First of all, I should point out that virtually every 14th century source
includes a recipe for this sauce, or at least mentions it. Most modern
Italian cookbooks include a recipe for the traditional sauce for mixed
boiled meats: this is it, give or take a couple of garlic cloves. You know,
that's not a bad idea!
The main difference
here is that this is intended as a sauce for boiled poultry; in fact the
boiled poultry is almost an integral part of the sauce itself. Oh, well.
In a shameless bow to popular sentiment, boiled poultry is out. Roast chicken
is in. Actually, menus of the period refer to cold sage sauce with other
meats of various kinds, and it's a reasonably safe bet they're talking
about this sauce without the boiled bird.
The sauce is a green
pureé of parsley and sage, about eight parts to one, with breadcrumbs
and/or hard-boiled egg yolks, vinegar, and some spices. My main departure
from the original recipe will be one used all along in Italy, and in France
and England since the 17th century: our sauce will contain some olive oil,
beaten in at the end, to emulsify it. This brightens the color, lightens
the texture, and improves the flavor of the finished sauce. I suspect olive
or nut oils were a more expensive commodity outside of the Mediterranean
coast area until late in our period. Most 14th century recipes mentioning
oil specify that the oil be either clean or raw: in other words, don't
feed people recycled frying oil, however great the temptation.
The birds themselves
are roasted, whole and unstuffed, with a sprinkling of salt and some powder
fort, a mixture of pepper, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon.
"Fancy Rice for Meat-Days. Cull the rice and wash it thoroughly
in water and set it to dry before the fire, then cook it in simmering cow's
milk; then add ground saffron infused in your milk, to lend it a russet
colour, and greasy beef broth from the pot."
The Viandier of Taillevent, edited by Terence Scully, University
of Ottawa Press, Toronto, 1988.
I'll be blunt. This is an artificial medieval dish, or will be, by the
time I'm through. The last time I served rice at an event, I went against
my natural inclinations, and served a perfectly period dish. It was a pottage
of rice, meant to be eaten with a spoon, somewhere between a chowder and
a risotto in consistency. Several recipes found in The Forme of Cury, The
Viandier, Le Menagier, and elsewhere state or imply that the rice grains
should be broken up and the broth thick. Order asopao in any Spanish or
Latin American restaurant, or jook in Chinatown, and you'll get the idea.
It was not a hit. I think people simply couldn't believe what they were
seeing, and leftovers suggested few even tasted it, although those who
did said it tasted great, but....
This led to an informal
poll. After discussing the question with perhaps thirty gentles around
the kingdom, I found that dishes like the one I cooked were considered
the result of improper cooking and ignorance, since no one but a fool would
deliberately cook rice so as to be "gummy" or "regurgitated".
I argued that I wasn't responsible for others' strange prejudices, and
that the dish was intended as it was. "That makes it worse,"
I was told. I then thought I could get my idea across if I tried the dish
using Cream of Rice cereal: homegeneity doesn't happen by accident, and
many people like polenta, grits, and the like. I was told I should bleeping
well cook baby food on my own time, but not to inflict it on others.
I'd hate to misrepresent
the diet of the average medieval European (if any), and omit its single
most common element, the grain dish. So, in spite of the fact that apparently
steamed rice or pilaf were unknown in most of Europe until the mid 17th
century, I have taken the ingredients from Taillevent's recipe for ris
engoulé, and turned them into modern boiled rice. Check any
cookbook for details.
"Salat. Take persel, sawge, grene garlec, chibolles, oynouns, leek,
borage, myntes, porrettes, fenel, and toun cressis, rew, rosemarye, purslarye;
laue and waische hem clene. Pike hem. Pluk hem small wid dyn honde, and
mynge hem wel with rawe oil; lay on vyneger and salt, and serue it forth."
Curye On Inglysch, Book IV, Forme of Cury, ed. Constance
B. Hieatt & Sharon Butler, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.
Apart from whimsical spelling, this is fairly straightforward. Mixed greens in vinaigrette dressing. However, instead of seasoning a salad of lettuces and other greens with herbs, the herbs are in the spotlight here. Lettuce isn't even mentioned, probably because comparatively few varieties of lettuce existed in the middle ages, and those were clustered around the Mediterranean. However, considering it's quite likely that Richard II's cooks would have included lettuce if it were available to them, and that about half of the herbs mentioned are virtually unobtainable to the typical American anachronist, I've elected to use some lettuce, and damn the ballistas. This recipe is just a vague guideline anyway: gather whatever green stuff is tender enough to be eaten raw, dress it, eat it,and be cured of whatever incipient vitamin-deficiency disease you may have. This must have been a literal life-saver in the spring, after a winter of scurvy-inducing conditions.
"Compot. Take rote of persel, of pasternak, of rafens, scrape hem
and waische hem clene. Take rapes and caboches, ypared and icorue. Take
an erthen panne with clene water and set it on the fire; cast alle þise
þerinne. Whan þey buth boiled cast thereto peeres, & perboile
hem wel. Take alle þise thynges vp & lat it kele on a faire cloth.
Do þerto salt; whan it is colde, do hit in a vessel; take vyneger
& powdour & safroun & do þerto, & lat alle þise
thynges lye þerin al nyzt, oþer al day. Take wyne greke &
hony, clarified togider; take lumbarde mustard & raisouns coraunce,
al hoole, & grynde powdour of canel, powdour douce & aneys hole,
& fenell seed. Take alle þise thynges & cast togyder in a
pot of erthe, & take þerof whan þou wilt & serue forth."
Curye On Inglysch, Book IV, Forme of Cury, ed. Constance
B. Hieatt & Sharon Butler, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.
I must state, in honesty, that the sausage recipe is probably 19th century
Scandinavian. At least one of the spices was unknown to medieval Europeans.
Among the dozens of gentles who requested this Østgarðrian trademark,
not one seemed to care that it doesn't seem to come from our period, or
that extant recipes and menus suggest that sausages as such aren't very
common feast-day food. Østgarðrwurst, Cotechino di Horiccio,
Farcimina Ratus Via Caesariensis, call them what you will, but this was
the only way I could think of to present them in a fairly medieval fashion,
hoping that the comparative elegance of the raw materials would override
the other problems.
Basically, the compot
is part chutney and part Italian mustard fruits. Rote of persel, rafens,
and rapes were unavailable at marketing time, so we went ahead and made
the stuff without parsley roots, and substituted daikon icicle radish for
both the white radishes and the turnips. Same with Lombardy mustard, which
is essentially wholegrain honey mustard, so we had to make do with Guldens,
whole mustard seed, and extra honey. Currants became ordinary raisins,
Greek wine became Rhine wine, instead of Grenache or retsina. The list
goes on and on....
However, this is one
of those melánges where the flavors are so mixed and masked that
it almost doesn't matter what's in it. One French version calls for green
pickling walnuts and the then-exotic medieval prototype of the carrot:
looked like a radish, tasted more like a beet. So what?!? It's a compot,
right? All I know is that we took available, seasonal foods and preserved
them more or less as it would have been done in the middle ages, and then
stood there scarfing the stuff like wild animals. Luckily, we made extra.
"Green porray on a fish day. Let it have the outer leaves removed and be cut up and then washed in cold water without parboiling it and then cooked with verjuice and a little water, and put some salt therein, and let it be served boiling and very thick, not clear; and put at the bottom of the bowl, underneath the porray, salt butter, or fresh if you will, or cheese, or old verjuice. Le Menagier de Paris, trans. Eileen Power; Harcourt, Brace New York 1928.
There's not much I can add, except to say that green porray can be just
about any green leafy vegetable that won't totally disintegrate in cooking.
Good examples are kale, collard greens, beet tops, turnip tops, mustard
greens, various cresses, or a mixture. Spinach should be unmixed, since
it cooks faster than the others.
The meat-day version
of this dish, which contains bacon instead of butter, has pretty much survived
to this day in the American south, where it is traditional New Year's Day
fare.
"Sambocade. Take and make a crust in a trap & take cruddes and wryng out þe wheyze and draw hem þurgh a straynour and put hit in þe crust. Do þerto sugur the þridde part, & somdel whyte of ayren, & shake þerin blomes of elren; & bake it vp with eurose, & messe it forth." Curye On Inglysch, Book IV, Forme of Cury, ed. Constance B. Hieatt & Sharon Butler, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985.
Two departures from a fairly simple recipe: Eurose, eau rose, or rose water, has been replaced with the liquer Sambuca Romana. Like this cheesecake, it is flavored with elderflowers, and we happened to have some on hand. The second departure is less capricious. Somdel whytes of ayren, or egg whites, were replaced with whole eggs. While this detracts from the whiteness of the cake, it means that I don't have to come up with a use for four hundred egg yolks. In any case, the dried elderflowers we used, which were yellowish in color, floated to the tops of the cakes, giving them a sort of mustard color, anyhow. The presence of yolks also gave the middle of the cakes a somewhat custardy texture, and a richness they would otherwise lack. We also, after a bit of tinkering, added some heavy cream to the filling, partly to keep the yolks from curdling in the oven, and partly because, well, just because.
The pieshell should be prebaked in a 350° F oven for about ten minutes, and should not have browned. If using dried flowers, soak them in the heavy cream for 10 - 15 minutes. Thoroughly mix the cheese, eggs, sugar, Sambuca and salt. Add cream and flowers and mix again. Fill pieshell and bake at 350° F for about 25 minutes. The filling will just barely quiver (yes, like Jell-o) when it's done, instead of slopping like a liquid when you shake it a bit. Or test with a toothpick, but by the time the toothpick shows it done, it may overcook. The wiggle test is better, especially if there are spectators. Eat at room temperature.
A few closing words. First of all, you may have noticed that some of
the above dishes are in their Lenten or fish-day form. This is simply because
I feel that a good S.C.A. feast is sort of modular, with many of the dishes
able to stand double duty as food for both omnivores and vegetarians. Obviously
I can't eliminate the meat from a plate of sausages, but I can serve the
vegetables without meat mixed in. This system usually prevents the dreaded
words, "There was nothing there I could eat."
Why nine dishes in
three removes? Well, I always serve nine dishes in three removes because
that is the way any self-respecting citizen of the later Roman world organizes
a dinner party. Also, I find this is the optimum number of dishes; any
more makes life too complex, and any less...well, see final sentence of
previous paragraph. Probably the most important thing I've ever learned
in S.C.A. kitchens is this: Construct your menu in such a way that you
aren't forced to serve anything you really louse up. Have enough dishes
so that even if one or, God forbid, two of them are utterly destroyed,
you don't have to degrade yourself, and your friends in and out of the
kitchen, by serving something hideous.
You may also have noticed
that apart from a vague 14th century Anglo-Norman theme to this feast,
little or no attention was paid to a consistently seasonal menu, or to
the potential medicinal value of the foods. Guilty. I can only say that
opinions, even when from similar backgrounds, vary greatly on these issues.
If the Knowne World is really that place where a Romano-British civil servant
can hobnob with late-period Scottish highlanders, spies of the Great Khan,
and Norman knights, then I've ignored these issues only to provide the
best cheer for the largest number of people.
With thanks to the Fighting Cooks of Østgarðr, I remain, the Kingdom's servant,
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