| Main Recipe Index |
 |
Editor's note: Modern Dishes in Medieval Guise is a series of articles that appeared in The Flames of the Dragon, the Dragons Laire Baronial Newsletter, in 2001 and 2002.(additional articles are planned for future issues and will be added to this file after publication) Exact publication dates of individual installments are listed after the subtitle. Each installment contained a separate bibliography, however, these are collated into a single listing here to save space. Modern Dishes in Medieval Guise; a Discussion of Food. by HL Rycheza z Polska "But I don't like medieval food," is a
lament I too often hear when the subject of recreating a period meal is brought
up. My usual response is something along the lines of "Gee,
that's odd you probably ate some this week." To
quell the yuck factor inspired by tales of dishes of deer testicles and sow
udders, I have embarked on this series of articles about common modern dishes
that were right at home in the Middle Ages. Scroll down or click for these topics; French Toast Salad Medieval Munchies French Toast (originally published in The Flames of the Dragon, Nov, 2001) A simple thing, some stale bread, an egg or two, milk, a touch of cinnamon if you like, fried and served hot slathered in butter and syrup or dusted with powdered sugar. But when did it start? Where did it come from? While the first serving of French toast may have been the invention of some anonymous farmwife or undercook, we can certainly take a look at some of its incarnations through the ages. Start at the beginning they say and so we will. One incarnation may be this recipe for "Aliter Dulcia" or Another Sweet from the late Roman cookbook commonly attributed to Apicius. Siligineos rasos frangis, et buccellas maiores facies. in lacte infundis, frigis et in oleo, mel superfundis et inferes. I don't know about you but I'm not a Latin scholar so let's look at a translation. Joseph Vehling translates the recipe thus: (items inside brackets are his interpretations or additions not found in the original text) [296] Another Sweet Dish Aliter Dulcia BREAK [slice] FINE WHITE BREAD, CRUST REMOVED, INTO RATHER LARGE PIECES WHICH SOAK IN MILK [and beaten eggs] FRY IN OIL, COVER WITH HONEY AND SERVE Leaping ahead a few centuries we find this easy to follow recipe for golden toasts from the well-known late 14th Century French cookbook, Le Viandier de Taillevent. Golden Toasts
In English texts of the next century, we find several versions under the name of pain perdieu or lost bread by which the dish is still known in France. An Ordinance of Pottage lists a recipe for Payn Perdyeu and from A Noble Boke off Cookery for a Prynce Houssolde or eny other Estately Houssolde we have this version. (I have modernized the spelling for clarity in this article.)
Cindy Renfrow's two-volume set of Take a Thousand Eggs or More provides several versions taken from 15th Century texts. The recipe below from Harleian MS 279 also known as Leche Vyaundez even contains a warning about the dish sticking to the pan. A nearly identical version from Harliean MS 4016 is also included in her work.
So far all these recipes have used fine textured white bread for the main ingredient but there are versions featuring coarser breads. Also from Harliean MS 4016 via Take a Thousand Eggs or More is this variant.
Non-English sources also tackle the dish. Platina includes a recipe for Golden Balls in his treatise On Right Pleasure and Good Health, (1475). A little over a century later, Diego Granada includes liberal amounts of cinnamon in his recipe for Golden Sops Fried with Fat in Libro de Arte de Cozina, (1599). To make the best panperdy, Gervause Markham added cloves, mace and nutmeg to the cinnamon for The English Housewife in 1615. But Robert May only seasoned his French Toasts with sack, sugar and the juice of an orange in The Accomplisht Cook, (1660). It is easy to find similar recipes in later cookbooks both great and small. The 1758 edition of The Compleat Housewife by Eliza Smith contains a recipe for fried toasts featuring nutmeg. The famous French chef Escoffier included a recipe in his 1909 A Guide to Modern Cookery using vanilla as a flavoring and serving it as in our medieval recipes sprinkled with sugar. Which brings us right up to the familiar modern versions in The Joy of Cooking and Betty Crocker's Cookbook. Today we think of French toast as almost exclusively a breakfast food, but foods were not relegated to certain times of the day in period. Medieval households divided dishes into feast or fast categories or classified them as appropriate for specific seasons, events or people, for example: good for invalids. In period it may, like any other food, have been eaten in the morning, but it was more commonly offered as a sweet side dish or as a dessert. The recipes I have provided here are fairly easy to try at home as no unusual ingredients or pieces equipment are required. Try your own hand at these medieval dishes or you can find redactions of these and other recipes in some of the sources listed below.* Sources for all articles in this series are combined in bibliography at the end of this file
The Salad: (originally published in The Flames of the Dragon, Nov, 2002) Many varieties of dishes are labeled salad in our modern world. From the lowly green salad through three bean to macaroni and potato salads, they make their way to both our home tables and the potluck spread. All of them have the following in common, a collection of ingredients (despite my husband's assertion that torn up iceberg lettuce constitutes a salad all by itself) either cooked or raw combined with a dressing and served cold. The warm German Potato Salad being an exception that proves the rule. Some of these permutations are most defiantly outside of our defined period. Potatoes are a new world food that did not make serious inroads in European cuisine until the 18th century and while a case can be made for macaroni, the mayonnaise-based dressings are also later inventions. Additionally, these types of salads are not the best idea for potluck contributions since the mayonnaise can very quickly become tainted if not kept properly chilled. But other types of salads are not modern inventions. The Apician texts extant from the 9th century contain directions for preparing many vegetables in a manner we would today consider salads. Ingredients ranging from artichokes to turnips are first cooked and then served cold dressed with oil and vinegar, often with the addition of pepper, cumin and other seasonings. Recipes of this simplicity do not fill the pages of later cookery texts. This does not prove that such simple preparations were not eaten but more likely that how to make them was considered common knowledge. The simple green salad also makes few appearances in period cookery texts, but several do exist. A recipe for a salat appears in the Forme of Cury (1391) and in Platina's De Honesta Volupta (1475). More examples are available in 16th century sources. There is also plenty of evidence outside of actual recipes to support medieval salads. The word salad was well established in the English language before 1400. Salads themselves show up in fiction such as the 15th Century Poem "The Flower and The Leaf", where the protagonists are fed "Pleasaunt salads" by their rescuers "For to refresh" them after their ordeal. Mention of salads also exists in numerous household accounts, menus and health manuals. The style of dressings for these salats almost always consists of oyle (olive) and a little vyneger (wine vinegar). Salt is often added and sugar becomes an additional ingredient in Elizabethan times. Today we almost always start a salad with lettuce and many types were known in period. These included the loose-leaved cos varieties known from Greek and Roman times, the black seeded french and Avigon listed by the Goodman of Paris and the lacticaulis, sessilis, crispa, as well as the wild serrilia lettuce, all mentioned by Platina. Iceberg, however, is a more modern species. But lettuce is only a starting point. The greens or potherbs used for salads span an incredible inventory of fresh young plants gathered wild or out of kitchen gardens. The Roman Historian Columella mentions the use of savory, rue, mint, coriander, parsley, chives, lettuce, colewort, and thyme. The salat recipe in Forme of Cury contains parsley, sage, green garlic, chibolles (green onions), onions, garden cress, rue, leek, borage, mint, fennel, rosemary and purslane. Platina adds bugloss, catmint, mallow, chicory, pimpernel, sorrel, chervil, origan, plantain, morella and dandelion to our list. In "Ode to Jamyn", Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) mentions the following young plants to be gathered for salad: daisy with it's little leaf, lamb's lettuce, burnet, rampion; both shoots and root, and currant bud which he seasons with rosé vinegar and olive oil. A recipe in the Good Huswive's Treasure (1588) expands our list to include tarragon, capers, olives, samphire, broombuds, mushrooms, red and white currents, lemon, tart orange, raisons, almonds, figs, sweet "Virginia" potatoes, field peas, as well as cold chicken, pike and oysters. Salads were most commonly served in the spring or early summer when all the ingredients were available fresh and tender. Even today dandelion leaves are only harvested for salad in the early spring. So gather together your favorite fresh salad greens, toss them with oil and a little vinegar and, voila, a perfectly Medieval dish that's as comfortable next to burgers and fries as next to roast peacock and frumenty. A note of Caution: Some ingredients in medieval cookery such as pennyroyal and rue are no longer considered totally safe. When using unfamiliar ingredients, always acquire them from reputable sources of foodstuffs or consult modern sources to ascertain they are safe.* Sources for all articles in this series are combined in bibliography at the end of this file
Medieval Munchies- (originally published in The Flames of the Dragon, July, 2002) We are a community of snackers. And no matter how much armor, velvet and silk we drape on ourselves, we always will be. It seems likely that our medieval counterparts were as well. A trip to the mini-mart for chips and dip, cheese doodles and twinkies was not their solution and it needn't be ours either. The good news is that more medieval choices are often convenient, tasty and more nutritious. Let's start with the most obvious. Everybody says we ought to eat more fruit and most fruits available today were eaten then. The varieties were different, today's selection is more varied, larger, and generally sweeter but apples, pears, cherries, peaches, apricots and plums were widely cultivated. A selection of melons was grown in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, including watermelons. They were, however, small fruits more the size of softballs than the behemoths we grow today. In the citrus family, oranges were grown, principally in Spain and other warm climates but in some eras as far north as England. Other fruits, such as strawberries, were gathered in the wild. Cheese was perhaps the first convenience food. Many modern types of cheese have lineages back to the Romans and beyond. And bread is not far behind. Even white bread, called manchette, is period, but not sliced bread. Choosing rolls and rustic breads at your local grocery instead of sliced sandwich bread will help maintain the medieval ambiance of events. Add a little bit of ham or sausage and you have more than a snack. Hard-boiled eggs travel well and since they are often listed as ingredients in recipes from Apicius onward, quite period. Olives and nuts like almonds also qualify.
Surprise, pretzels are an actual period food! Think those big soft (or hard) pretzels. They were given out to children during Lent and other times in northern countries. The shape of the baked treat was symbolic of hands folded at prayer according to prevalent folklore. They can be seen in art of the era. Medieval cookbooks abound with
recipes for pyes, tarts and darioles. Fillings
range from eggs and cheese to assorted vegetables and any meat or fish you can
imagine. Made in a small size nearly any of them makes a tasty snack. From
Harleian MS 279, as reprinted in "Take a Thousand Eggs or More" comes this
recipe for a meat pie xxvij.Pyes de pares. Take & smyte fayre buttys of Porke, & buttys of Wele, to-gederys, & put it on a fayre potte, & do ¶er-to Freyssche bro¶e, & quantyte of wyne, & lat boyle alle to-gederys tyl yt be y-now; ¶an take it fro ¶efyre, & lat kele a lytelle: ¶an caste ¶er-to yolkys of Eyroun, & pouder of Gyngere, Sugre, & Salt, & minced Datys, & Roysonys of Coraunce: ¶en make fayre past, and cofynnysm & do ¶er-on: kyer it, & let bake and serue f[orth] And Ms. Renfrow's redaction. Pies of Paris 1cup beef broth Bring the beef broth and wine to a boil in a 2-quart pot. Add the pork and beef and cook until no trace of pink remains. Remove from heat. Cool. (Take up the meat and grind it to paste in a blender if you want a smoother consistency) Take the cooled meat and 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid and mix together with the eggs, date, currants and spices in a large bowl. Roll out half the pastry, Line an 8-inch pie pan with the pastry. Fill with the meat mixture. Roll out the remaining pastry. Cover the pie with the top crust and seal the edges. Cut steam vents in the top crust. Bake at 425 degrees F. for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven and serve hot. If you make these up in the smaller hand held size, they make excellent snacks warm or cold. Or you can put together your own pasties. Use a sturdy pastry, save the filo and puff pastry for that fancy feast. Fill them with whatever suits your taste and bake at home. I've even used leftover stew as filling. When it is wrapped up in pastry who's to know its just potatoes and gravy. If you have a sweet tooth, fruits and nuts were also used in tarts and various versions of gingerbread and shortbread are found in period sources. One of many items you will see quite frequently at SCA events are chocolate chip cookies. They are in no way, shape or size period, strictly a 20th century invention! However, they are one of those things, like duct tape and coffee, which are considered "SCA period" so go ahead and enjoy. (Just don't enter them in that period dish contest.)* Sources for all articles in this series are combined in bibliography at the end of this file
Bibliography Baynard, Tania, trans. and ed., A Medieval Home Companion; Housekeeping in the Fourteenth Century, HarperCollins Publishers, NY, 1991 - This version concentrates on household matters ignoring most of the recipes in the original, but includes gardening info and lots of other interesting stuff. Available from the Baronial Library. Brohaugh, William, English Through the Ages, Writer's Digest Books, Cincinnati Ohio, 1998 De Huguenin, Lady Jehanne, "A Summer Salad", Storm Tidings, (Newsletter, Shire of Adamastor) Nov. AS 33, Cape Town, South Africa, 1998 (accessed through Stefan's Florilegium, http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/summer-salad-art (10/14/01) )- Excellent article covering information from many sources. Also check out the discussion of salad in the Florilegium. Escoffier, Auguste, A Guide to Modern Cookery. London: Bracken Books, 1994. Originally published in 1909, published by William Heinemann Ltd, London. Escoffier was THE premier chef of his age and his book was written primarily for the trade rather than the home cook. Henisch, Bridget Ann, Fast and Feast, Food in Medieval Society, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park and London, 1976 - an excellent book, not so much for food but all that surrounds the rituals of eating. Huston, Rebecca, "Payn Perdu", Tournaments Illuminated, Summer 1998 AS XXXIII issue 127. Redaction of recipe in Harliean 279 with a good discussion of ingredients. MacGrain, Mistress Christianna, "Breaking the Fast or What Did They have for Breakfast" Stefan's Florilegium, April 27th, 2001. http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/Braking-t-Fast-art.html (7/11/2001) MacGrain, Christianna, et al, "From Lost Bread to French Toast" Stefan's Florilegium, March 31, 2000. http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/French-Toast-art.html (6/22/2001) Contains period recipes and redactions from several contributors. Napier, Mrs. Alexander, ed. A Noble Boke off Cookery for a Prynce Houssolde or eny other Estately Houssolde. Printed verbatim from a rare ms. In the Holkham Collection, London: Elliot Stock, 1882 - After 1467, believed to be shortly after by the editor, contains menus from several well known feasts along with a breakdown of dishes by month. Pegge, Samuel, ed., The Forme of Cury, A Roll of Ancient English Cookery, Compiled about 1390, by the master-cooks of King Richard II, Society of Antiquaries, London, 1780 - This has been scanned into the internet and is available at http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/ Prescott, James, trans. Le Viandier de Taillevent, 14th Century Cookery, based on the Vatican Library Manuscript, Alfarhuagr Publishing Society, Eugene, OR MCMLXXXIX (1989) (original French First edition, between 1373-1380, second edition 1386-1393 {basis of this edition}) A slim volume readily available Prescott uses the simplest language possible for his translation, making this fairly easy to work from. The original was used all over Europe and can be used as a foundation for basic medieval cookery. Renfrow, Cindy, Take a Thousand Eggs or More; A collection of 15th Century Recipes, Volume One. Self-published, 1990. Period recipes from Recipes from Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, edited by Thomas Austin, Published for the Early English Text Society by Oxford University Press,1888 reprinted 1964. Volume 1 includes redactions and some additional notes from period sources. Renfrow simplifies spelling and wording to some extent but without bending the meaning. Volume 2 contains additional recipes from the same sources but she leaves the cooking to you. Riley, Gillian, The Dutch Table, Gastronomy in the Golden Age of the Netherlands, Pomegranate Artbooks, San Francisco, 1994 - A beautiful little book full of lovely photos of Dutch art depicting food, eating and cooking. The recipes purport to be at least based on recipes from the 16th -17th centuries, but no direct provenance is provided. Smith, Eliza, The Compleat Housewife, London: Studio Editions Ltd. 1994, Facsimile copy of the 16th edition, with additions, published in London in 1758. This was the first cookbook printed in North America. Written for the housewife or household cook it includes valuable information on shopping, brewing and medicinal recipes, including one for laudanum and snakebite remedies from a Negro slave. Recipes often include exact measurements. Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne, Anthea Bell, Trans., History of Food, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Oxford, UK, 1992 Mistress T'Sivia Tamara v'Amberview, Compleat Dagger Licking Good, Raymond's Quiet Press, Albuquerque, NM, 1986 - Mistress T'Sivia describes this book as "labor of love". It is based on good research and contains a good bibliography, however, the author does not always provide direct links between the recipes and the source materials. Very good as an introduction to medieval and SCA food. But please remember it was written in the early days in regards to Culinary Research in the SCA Vehling, Joseph Dommers, trans. Apicius Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, Walter M. Hill, Chicago, 1936 {English Translation of Latin text with notes} Vehling was a cook by profession and brings his understanding of the art to this translation. He is heavily and justly criticized for sidestepping the issue of the ubiquitous Roman seasoning garum. (Not a factor in this recipe) It is, however, readily available in a Dover edition for a small sum while the more respected Flowers and Rosenbaum Book of Roman Cookery, 1958 is out of print. Latin Text From Bellum Catilinae, a website at http//users.ipa.net/~tanker Copyright 2001and 2002 by L.J.Henson aka HL Rycheza z Polska. Posted dragonslaire.org Aug. 21 2002 Posted receipt book of Rycheza z Polska March 17th 2011 Return to Articles
|
||
| Articles | ||||
| Stuff Mateusz Made for the Kitchen | ||||
| About the Cook and Author | ||||
| Welcome Page | ||||
| Dragons Laire Culinary Guild | ||||
| Feast Menus | ||||
| Categorical Recipe Index | ||||
