Fit for a King.

There was a sudden large spike in visits to this blog a couple of weeks ago. When I looked to see what had triggered it, most of the searches were for ‘Eggs Drumkilbo.’ This puzzled me for a while. Then I remembered a rumour that those of you in The Old Country are in for a royal wedding pretty soon. Thankfully we are somewhat protected from the hype over here in the old colony. Eggs Drumkilbo is apparently a dish popular with the royals - especially for wedding breakfasts - on account of it having being a favourite with the dear old Queen Mum. I put this and that together and came up with the theory that perhaps the menu details for the wedding breakfast of the Future King and his bride were being discussed in the press, and the egg dish was named, and, it not being a dish readily available in the caffs and pubs of England, more members of the public than usual Googled it and my story came up. Any truth in that theory? Someone out there must be an avid reader of all things relating to the royal wedding, surely.

All of this led me to the idea that I must give you a right royal menu. The bill of fare (the ‘purveyance’) for a feast for King Richard II (1377-1399) is given in Constance Hieatt’s indispensible book Curye on Inglysch . I have adapted the translation from the old English to make it a little more accessible to food enthusiasts who are not medieval food scholars, and hope that not too many inaccuracies have been introduced in the doing.

This is the purveyance (bill of fare) for the feast for the king at home for his own table. Venison with frumenty in potage, boars' heads, boiled large joints of meat, roasted swan, roasted fat capons, peas, pike, and two subtleties. White pudding, a jellied dish, roast pork, roasted cranes, roasted pheasants, roasted herons, roasted peacocks, bream (fish), tarts, meat served in pieces, roasted rabbit, and one subtlety. German broth, a ‘lombard’(a ‘solid’ spiced dish with pork, dried fruits and eggs in a sauce of almond milk or wine), roasted venison, roasted egret, roasted peacocks, roasted perch, roasted pigeons, roasted rabbits, roasted quails, roasted larks, a puff pastry dish (probably containing fruit – ‘mete’ in this sense referring to ‘food’, not specifically flesh meat), perch, a rice dish, fritters, and two subtleties.

Many of the dishes mentioned have previously appeared in this blog, but as time is short for me today to provide links to earlier posts (there are almost a million words to search now), I invite you to search for the terms yourself, should you be interested. If time permits later today I will return and do the links for you.

The Master Cooks of King Richard II left us their ‘cookery book’, and I have referred to it and given many recipes from it in the past. It is called The Forme of Cury. There are no instructions in it for boiling or roasting the vast amounts of meat on this menu – no cook would have needed these. The manuscript is more like an aide-memoire for the made-dishes, for cooks who did not need detailed instructions on actual methods.

I give you the recipe from the manuscript for the ‘German broth’ (bruet of almayne’, or ‘brewet of almony’ as it is called here.) It is a dish of pieces of rabbit (or kid), cooked with almond milk and sweet spices and thickened with rice flour – and sounds delicious.

Brewet Of Almony
Take Conynges or kiddes and hewe hem small on moscels other on pecys. parboile hem with the same broth, drawe an almaunde mylke and do the fleissh therwith, cast therto powdour galyngale & of gynger with flour of Rys. and colour it with alkenet. boile it, salt it. & messe
it forth with sugur and powdour douce.

Quotation for the Day.

When we decode a cookbook, every one of us is a practicing chemist. Cooking is really the oldest, most basic application of physical and chemical forces to natural materials.
Arthur E. Grosser (Professor of Chemistry at McGill University) 1984

Considering Cabbage.

This week I have set myself a little challenge – to see if I can keep you interested over a whole week of posts on the topic of cabbage.

The cabbage is not a glamorous (artichokes, perhaps?) or sexy (truffles, asparagus?) or fun vegetable ((as potatoes can be), but it is ancient, useful, adaptable, and worthy of respect. The name is old, and is derived from the Latin caput for ‘head’, which is self-explanatory. Botanically speaking an ‘ordinary’ cabbage is “a plane-leaved cultivated variety of Brassica oleracea, the unexpanded leaves of which form a compact globular heart or head.” The specifics of ‘plane-leaved’ and ‘compact globular heart or head’ are important, for as we have seen in a previous post, the full gamut of cabbage, broccoli, kale, collard greens, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts (and others) are simply different cultivars of the same Brassica oleracea. See what I mean about being adaptable?

The cabbage is also adaptable to many different sorts of recipes, as I hope to show you this week. To start with, I want to consider this most ancient and adaptable vegetable it in that most ancient and adaptable dish – soup. We have had recipes for cabbage soup in previous stories – a Russian version from 1862, and three versions from the same cookery book published in 1907 – but I say there is always room for another good soup recipe.

A very early recipe for cabbage soup appears in The Forme of Cury, the manuscript cookery book compiled in about 1390 by the Master Cooks of King Richard II. The dish of cabbage, minced onions, and leeks cooked in a good broth and spiced with saffron and other spices would be just as acceptable today, and proves that there is no expiry date on a good idea.

Caboches in Potage.
Take Caboches and quarter hem and seeth hem in gode broth with Oynouns y minced and the whyte of Lekes y slyt and corue smale, and do thereto safroun an salt and force it with powder douce.

My translation: take cabbages, and quarter them, and simmer them in good broth with minced onions and leeks sliced and chopped small, and add saffron, and salt, and sweet spices.


Quotation for the Day.
“Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things”
Russian Proverb.

Cheese Rules.

‘Cheese Rules’- how did you read that? Cheese, does, without doubt, rule. There are also (or used to be) rules about the eating of cheese.

The fourteenth century book of manner for children, called The Babees Book advises to “have a clean trencher and knife for your cheese.”

A book of manners for children from the fifteenth century – The Lytlylle Childrens Lytil Boke advises not rushing at the cheese, with the words:

“And cheese come forthe, be not too greedy,
Ne cutte thow not thereof to hastely”

And also in the fifteenth century, the Latin poem Modus Cenandi (The Way of Dining) informs as to the polite way of taking cheese.

“Let old cheese be cut thin
And let fresh cheese be cut thick for those that eat it
Do not press the cheese & the butter on to your bread with the thumb.”

And getting closer to modern times, we have:

Another correspondent asks, “Should cheese be eaten with a fork?” We say, decidedly, “Yes,” although good authorities declare that it may be put on a morsel of bread with a knife, and thus conveyed to the mouth. Of course we refer to the soft cheeses, - like Gorgonzola, cream-cheese, Neufchatel, Limburger, and the like – which are hardly more manageable than butter. Of the hard cheeses, one may convey a morsel to the mouth with the thumb and forefinger; but, as a general rule, it is better to use the fork.”
[Manners and Social Usages (American), by Mrs John Sherwood, 1887]

Nowadays we make much ado about the pairing of food and wine, which some interpret as an opportunity to make rules (never red with fish, only white with chicken, sweet wines with dessert etc). There have always been some such folk:

It was formerly the custom to drink porter with cheese. One of the few real improvements introduced by the “Napoleon of the realms of fashion” was to banish this tavern liquor and substitute port. The dictum of Brummel was thus enunciated: “A gentleman never malts he ports”
[The Laws of Etiquette; Or, Short Rules and Reflections for Conduct in Society, 1836]

Good manners rule – that’s my opinion. And good manners stand the test of time. Five or six hundred years later, it is still considered correct to cut oneself a piece of cheese – especially blue cheese - from the side of the wedge, preserving the general wedge-shape, and ensuring that everyone gets a share of the rind and the centre.

For the recipe for the day, I give you an egg and cheese dish from the late fourteenth century The Forme of Cury.

Brewet Of Ayrenn.

Take ayrenn [eggs], water and butter, and seeþ hem yfere with safroun [saffron] and gobettes of chese [cheese]. wryng ayrenn thurgh a straynour [strainer]. whan the water hath soden [boiled] awhile: take þenne the ayrenn and swyng [mix] hem with various [verjuice]. and cast þerto. set it ouere [over] the fire and lat it not boile. and serueit forth.

Quotation for the Day.

Ladies must decline cheeses, and, above all, ‘must not touch the decanters.’
National Encyclopedia of Business and Social Forms, 1882.

Christmas in 1507.

Medieval manorial households were like miniature self-sufficient villages, and keeping the community fed was a massive undertaking. In addition to the extended family members and frequent guests, there were large numbers of household staff (including bakers and brewers) and farm workers, and there was also an obligation to provide hospitality to any travellers (and their servants) passing by.

The job of recording the comings and goings from the household and the management of the accounts fell to the steward, who kept a detailed day to day tally in the Household Book. Some of the surviving household books are a marvellous source of information on daily life on a manorial estate, and one of them is a source for us today.

Thornbury is near Bristol in Gloucestershire, England. In 1508, the holder of the manor, the Duke of Buckingham, began to ‘castellate’ the manor – which then became Thornbury Castle, which you can visit today. The Duke’s household book records the guests and provisions for the Christmas just before this conversion began.

Thornbury, The Feast of the Nativity, Saturday 25th December 1507.

Dined 95 gentry, 107 yeoman, 97 garcons. Supped 84 gentry, 114 yeoman, 92 garcons.

Archates: 4 swans price 12s, 4 geese 2s, 5 suckling pigs 20d, 14 capons 8s, 18 chickens 18d, 21 rabbits 3/6d, 1 peacock 2s, 3 mallards 8d, 5 widgeons 10d, 12 teals 12d, 3 woodcocks 8d, 22 syntes 12d, 12 large birds 3d, 400 hens eggs 3/4d, 2 dishes of butter 20d, 10 flagons of milk 10d, 1 flagon of rum 6d, 2 flagons of frumety 4d, in herbs 1c.

Kitchen spent of the Lord’s store:

1 carcase and seven rounds of beef 20s

9 carcases of mutton price 16s

4 pigs 8s

1½ calves 4s

Cellar spent:

11 bottles and 3 quarts of Gascony wine price 13s

1½ pitchers of Rhenish wine price 15d

½ pitcher Malvoisey price 6d

Butter:

Spent in aile [ale] 171 flagons, 1 quart, price 13s 7½d

In spite of the spelling, it is not difficult to understand the basic meats and so on served at this dinner. This menu is rich in birds – considered fine food partly because, having an aerial life, they were closer to God, and therefore suitable for the fine aristocratic body, especially on a holy day.

It is interesting that ‘flagons’ of ‘frumety’ were purchased. ‘Frumenty’ was a sort of wheat porridge – a staple food for most ordinary folk, but a mere side-dish for the wealthy, and almost obligatory alongside venison. On ‘fish’ (that is, not-meat) days, the well-to-do might have it with porpoise or whale, as in the following recipe, taken from the Form of Cury (the book of the Master Cooks of King Richard II, written about 1390)


Furmente With Porpeys.
Take clene whete and bete it small in a morter and fanne out clene the doust, þenne waisthe it clene and boile it tyl it be tendre and broun. þanne take the secunde mylk of Almaundes & do þerto. boile hem togidur til it be stondyng, and take þe first mylke & alye it up wiþ a penne. take up the porpays out of the Furmente & leshe hem in a dishe with hoot water. & do safroun to þe furmente. and if the porpays be salt. seeþ it by hym self, and serue it forth.
[Form of Cury, c.1390]

Quotation for the Day.

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith

A Law about Eating.

There have been numerous attempts throughout history to regulate personal extravagance in food and drink on the basis of religious, political, economic or moral grounds. In the midst of a period of great dearth and famine in 1346, Edward II promulgated one of Britain’s earliest sumptuary laws.

“Whereas, by the outrageous and excessive multitude of meats and dishes which the great men of our kingdom have used, and still use in their castles, and by persons of inferior rank imitating their example, beyond what their stations require and their circumstances can afford, many great evils have come upon our kingdom, and the health of our subjects hath been injured, their goods consumed, and they have been reduced to poverty; we, being willing to put a stop to these excesses, with the advice and consent of our council, make the following rules and ordinances, - That the great men of the kingdom should have only two courses of flesh meats served up to their tables; each course consisting of only two kinds of flesh meat: except Prelates, Earls, Barons, and the great men of the land, who might have an intermeat (une entremesse) of one kind of meat if they please. On fish days they should have only two courses of fish, each consisting of two kinds, with an intermeat of one kind of fish, if they please. Such as transgress this ordinance shall be severely punished.”

Needless to say, whenever or wherever they have been enacted, sumptuary laws have proven almost impossible to police, and we can be reasonably confident that the great men of Edward’s realm took little or no notice of the restrictions, and continued feasting as they had always done.

There are no early fourteenth century English cookery books known to us, so we must turn to The Forme of Cury, compiled by the Master Cooks of King Richard II in about 1390 for our recipes for today. Here are a couple of nice ideas for you – pork with sage for a “flesh” day and salmon with leeks for a “fish” day.


Pygg in sawce Sawge [sage]
Take Pigges yskaldid [scalded] and quarter hem and seethe [boil] hem in water and salt, take hem and lat hem kele [cool]. take persel [parsley] sawge [sage]. and grynde it with brede and zolkes of ayrenn [eggs] harde ysode [boiled]. temper it up with vyneger sum what thyk. and, lay the Pygges in a vessell. and the sewe onoward and
serue it forth.

Cawdel Of Samoun.
Take the guttes of Samoun and make hem clene. perboile hem a lytell. take hem up and dyce hem. slyt the white of Lekes and kerue hem smale. cole [cool] the broth and do the lekes therinne with oile and lat it boile togyd yfere. do the Samoun icorne therin, make a lyour of Almaundes mylke & of brede & cast therto spices, safroun and salt, seethe it wel. and loke that it be not stondyng [too thick].


Quotation for the Day.

Pork - no animal is more used for nourishment and none more indispensable in the kitchen; employed either fresh or salt, all is useful, even to its bristles and its blood; it is the superfluous riches of the farmer, and helps to pay the rent of the cottager.”
Alexis Soyer (1851)

“Albany Beef"

Humans have a long tradition of substituting an inferior ingredient for an unaffordable, unavailable, or forbidden one – and then naming it in a quite misleading way. Welsh Rabbit is the best known example, but there are many others.

It seems unbelievable today that sturgeon would be the inferior substitute for beef, but that was indeed the situation in the Hudson River Valley in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The town of Albany was once known as ‘Sturgeontown’ on account of the large amounts of ‘Albany Beef’ caught in the Hudson river.

The Atlantic sturgeon is an impressive fish, that is for sure. It is capable of living up to the age of 50 years, and growing up to 14 feet in length. It was fished extensively for its oil, as well as its roe (‘caviar’) and vealy-pink flesh – and was fished so successfully that it was almost fished out by the 1990’s. The slow development to maturity mitigates against its slow return to significant numbers, so we can only protect and hope.

Not everyone was impressed with the substitution. The military journal of James Thatcher during the Revolutionary War has this entry:

July 2lst 1779 - The officers of our regiment invited a select number of officers of the Pennsylvania line to dine on sturgeon, a large fish which Major Meriweather caught in the North river. This fish is a favorite with the Dutch, at Albany, and is on that account by some called Albany beef; but in my view it is worse than horse beef, and it was merely an auxiliary at our table.

The deceit was so good, and the cost-saving so great, that it is said that restaurants often served sturgeon as veal. It was common in both Europe and America over many centuries for cookbooks to give recipes for sturgeon cooked as veal – and for veal disguised as sturgeon.


Veal Disguised As Sturgeon For Six Platters.
The evening before, or early in the morning, take six calves' heads without skinning, and scald them in hot water like a pig, and cook them in wine, and add a half-litre of vinegar and some salt, and let it boil until the meat comes off the bone; then let the heads cool and remove the bones. Then take a piece of good coarse cloth, and put it all in it, that is to say, one on top of the other in the smallest space you can, then sew with good strong thread, like a square pillow, then put put it between two strong planks and press very hard, and leave overnight in the cellar; then slice it up with the skin on the outside like venison, and add parsley and venison, and only put two slices on each dish. Item, if you cannot find enough heads, it can be done with a (skinned?) calf.
Le Menagier de Paris (late 14th C)

Quotation for the Day.

An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home.
Author Unknown

From the Orient.

I (and my lovely daughter) are in Thailand this week. Shopping and Eating. It seems appropriate then, to give you something with an Eastern flavour.

Mrs Woolley from last week was silent on the subject of the Orient, which is not surprising for a woman born in the early seventeenth century. A hundred years later however, knowledge of the outside world was pressing in on England, and the author of  Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor(1827), known at the time only as “A Lady”, had quite a comprehensive chapter on “Oriental Cookery.”

She starts by saying:

“WE are accustomed to look to the East for the origin of arts and sciences. I am not, however, inclined to ascribe the invention of cookery to Brahma or Visnu, nor do 1 feel myself so far implicated in its honour as to fall out with the heathen of old for not elevating to a niche in the Pantheon a deity that has, in these latter ages, found so many worshippers. The art of cookery; more than any other, depends upon local circumstances, as it is with the greatest difficulty communicated from one country to another, the natural productions of the soil requiring to be transported, as well as the modes of dressing them. In the early emigrations, the people must have been shepherds to abandon their native country without very great inconvenience; in their progress to husbandry and civilisation, they would adopt peculiar fashions of their own, from chance or necessity. The styles of the different nations might be thus various, though much on a par with respect to quality; and, although that of one country might surpass the rest, the others, not admitting of any general standard, could not possibly adopt it or profit by it. Travellers, while they might communicate unknown sciences, against which there could be no very rooted prejudice, or discoveries in known ones, which would be received with avidity, not only would have found it impossible to introduce improvements in this art, but would also have had to divest themselves of the deepest rooted of all prejudices. …

She then finds a recipe to illustrate her point:

“On opening Dr. Hunter's Culina accidentally, at the last page (quite in the oriental style), I was not a little pleased at finding the following admirable receipt, so different from the English style; there being some obsolete words in it, he has thus rendered it …”  

A delicious Dish,
Take good cow's milk and put it into a pot; take parsley, sage, hyssop, savory, and other good herbs; chop them and stew them in the milk; take capons, and after half roasting them, cut them in pieces, and add to them pines [pine nuts], clarified honey, and salt; colour with saffron, and serve up.

The Lady goes on to say:

“Nothing but prejudice could call any thing in this receipt disgusting. This dish is completely Turkish. The sweet herbs (the milk is in the Arab style), the saffron, the capons, the making of which is a constant practice in the East, and of which we have no trace among our nations anterior to the time of the Crusades; but, above all, the sweets, the honey, and the pine kernels, which arc richer and stronger than almonds, and must have been imported, as they never bear fruit more towards the north than the 43°, all proved to me that our travelled forefathers had not been proof against the dainties of the East. The dish I have tried, and, even without capons, I can affirm that it well merits its title.”

And then:

“But what was my surprise, on turning the page for the connexion, to read as follows: “Whoever looks into the 'Forme of Cury,' as compiled about 400 years ago, by the master cook of Richard the Second, will he highly disgusted with the dishes there recorded. Much, therefore, is due to those who have brought forward the culinary manners of the present age, in opposition to the nauseous exhibitions of former times. For example:” then follows (will the reader believe me ?) the above-mentioned ‘Delicious Dish’ ”

The author is referring to a dish (or one of a number of dishes) that are a fore-runner of our modern blancmange, or “white eat”, - one variety being called Blank Dessire or Blank de Sur, meaning “white dish from Syria”.

For to make Blank de Sur.

Take the zolyks of Eggs sodyn and temper it with the mylk of a kow and do thereto Comyn and Safron and flowr’ of ris or wasted bread myced and grynd in a morter and temper it up with the milk and make it boyle and do thereto wit of Egg corvyn smale and take fat chese and kerf ther’to wan the liquor is boyld and serve it forth.

Form of Cury, circa 1390.

A recipe for Blanc Maunger, also from the Form of Cury, is HERE.

Quotation for the Day …

I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman:  subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert.  Delicately made up, not highly rouged.  Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts.  Graham Kerr.

A French Wedding.

The wedding of my young friend is approaching fast (The Girls’ Lunch is today), and the realisation of all that planning is at hand. Wedding catering always means a lot of work for someone. It was no different in fourteenth century France. Here are some instructions from Le Menagier: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by A Citizen of Paris, published about 1393.

Arrangements for the wedding done by Master Helye in May, on a Tuesday; dinner only for twenty bowls.

Platter: butter, none because it is a meat day. Item, cherries, none, because none could be found; and so no platter.

Soups: capons in fricassee, pomegranate and red sugared almonds on top.

Roast: on each plate a haunch of kid: haunch of kid is better than lamb; a gosling, two young chickens and sauces for them, oranges, cameline, verjuice, and for this fresh towels or napkins.

Side dish: crayfish jelly, loach jelly, small rabbits and pigs. Dessert: frumenty and venison. End: hippocras and wafers. Extras: wine and spices.

The arrangements for supper done this day are for ten bowls.

Cold sage soup of halves of young chickens and little geese, and a vinaigrette of this same dish for supper on a plate. A pie of two young rabbits and two flans - it is said that at French weddings you must have meat pies - and on the other dish the kids' mesenteries and the half-heads, browned.

Side-dish: jelly as above. End: apples and cheese without hippocras, because it is out of season .

Dancing, singing, wine and spices and torches for light.

Now we shall talk about the quantities of the things spoken of above and what goes with them and the prices, and who provides them and sells them.

At the baker's, ten dozen flat white bread baked one day ahead and costing one denier each.

Trencher bread, three dozen of half a foot in width and four fingers tall, baked four days before and browned, or what is called in the market Corbeil bread.

Vintner: three pairs of wines.

At the butcher, half a sheep to make the soup for the companions and a quarter of bacon for larding; the master bone of a leg of beef to cook with the capons so as to get broth to make the fricassee; a forequarter of veal to serve in the fricassee. For the seconds a hind leg of veal or veal feet, to make the liquid for the jelly. Venison, a hefty leg.

At the pastry-cook order: first, to serve the young women, a dozen and a half conical wafers stuffed with cheese, three sous; a dozen and a half long wafers, six sous; a dozen and a half porte wafers, eighteen deniers; a dozen and a half stirrup wafers, eighteen deniers; one hundred sugared cakes, eight deniers.

Item, they shopped for twenty bowls, for the wedding-day dinner, and for six bowls for the servants, and this cost six deniers per bowl, and served each bowl eight wafers, four supplications and four stirrup wafers.

At the poulterer, twenty capons, two Paris sous each; five kids, four Paris sous; twenty young geese, three Paris sous each; fifty young chickens, twelve Paris deniers each; that is to say forty to be roast for the dinner, five for the jelly and five for supper in the cold soup. Fifty young rabbits, that is to say forty for the dinner, which will be roasted, and ten for jelly, and cost twelve Paris deniers each. A thin pig, for the jelly, four Paris sous; twelve pairs of pigeons for the supper, ten Paris deniers the pair. One may enquire of him for venison.

In the market, trencher bread, three dozen. Pomegranates for fricassee, three costing... Oranges, fifty costing... Six new cheeses and one old, and three hundred eggs.

You must realise that each cheese must furnish six tartlets, and also for each cheese you need three eggs.

Sorrel to make verjuice for the chickens, sage and parsley for the cold soup, two hundred pommes de blandureau.

Two brooms and a shovel for the kitchen and salt.

At the sauce-maker's, three half-pints of cameline for dinner and supper and a quart of sorrel verjuice.

At the grocer's: ten pounds of almonds, forty deniers a pound. Three pounds of blanched wheat, eight deniers a pound. - One pound of columbine ginger, eleven sous. - one quarter-pound of mesche ginger, five sous. - A half-pound of ground cinnamon, five sous. - Two pounds of ground rice, two sous. - Two pound of lump sugar, sixteen sous. - A quarter-pound of cloves and seed of garlic, six sous. Half a quarter-pound of long pepper, four sous. - Half a quarter-pound of galingale, five sous. - Half a quarter-pound of mace, three sous four deniers. - Half a quarter-pound of green laurel leaves, six deniers. - Two pounds of tall thin candles, three sous four deniers the pound, making six sous eight deniers, - Torches at three pounds apiece, six; smaller torches at one pound apiece, six; that is to say a cost of three sous a pound, and six deniers less per pound on the returns .

For chamber-spices, that is to say, candied orange peel, one pound, ten sous. - Candied citron, one pound, twelve sous. - Red anise, one pound, eight sous. - Rose-sugar, one pound, ten sous. - White sugared almonds, three pounds, ten sous a pound. - Of hippocras, three quarts, ten sous a quart, and all will be needed.

These spices amounted to twelve francs, including returns on the torches, and a few spices left over; this works out to half a franc per bowl

At Pierre-au-Lait, a sixth of full-cream milk without water added, to make the frumenty.

In the Place de Greve, a hundredweight of coal from Burgundy, thirteen sous two sacks of charcoal, ten sous.

At the Forte-de-Paris: may, green herb, violet, bread-crumbs, a quarter of white salt, a quarter of coarse salt, a hundred crayfish, a half-litre of loach, two clay pots, one of six quarts for the jelly, and the other of two quarts for the cameline.

The Menagier includes a large number of recipes. What to chose? This one, on the basis of its name, wins for today.

STUFFED CHICKS.
A chick should be suffocated while it is still alive, and it is suffocated at the neck; then bind its neck and let it die: then scald, pluck, gut, put it back together and stuff.
Item, or else, when it is all ready to put on the spit, at the hole where it was gutted, you can separate with your finger the skin from the flesh, then stuff it using the end of your finger, then sew it back up with a whip-stitch, at the hole, sewing the skin with the flesh, and put it on the spit.
And note that the stuffing is made of parsley and a little sage with hard-cooked eggs and butter, all chopped up together, and powdered spices too. For each chick you need three eggs, whites and all.

Quotation for the Day …

Marriage is not merely sharing the fettuccine, but sharing the burden of finding the fettuccine restaurant in the first place. Calvin Trillin.

A plea for Cheesecake.

Before quiche and the likes of marbled-mocha-vanilla-strawberry-topped-hazelnut-crusted cheesecake, there was simply cheesecake. Cheesecake has a very long history indeed. Not all cheesecakes have cheese in them (we will perhaps have a nice Chester Cheesecake soon.) They have never been ‘cakes’ either, in the modern sense of the word, but they have mostly been thinnish and flattish like a ‘cakes’ of soap, or mud. Neither have they always been ‘tarts’ – there was a crustless variety called a pudding-pie (although the Kentish Pudding-Pie of relatively recent history does have a crust.) It was confusing enough before the French imposed quiche on us and snobby English-speaking folk adopted it.

Cheesecakes were raised to an art form due to the inventiveness of European cooks trying to get around the many meatless days decreed by the Church. They became sweeter as sugar became cheaper, as the sixteenth century progressed. The ‘savoury’ version appears to have become quiche early in the twentieth century (the 1920’s, if the OED is correct.)

I accept and rejoice in the fact that the English language is a constantly adapting and evolving, but I do not understand why we take up a word when we have a perfectly good one already. English does not have words that will transmit exactly the same sense as the Spanish macho or the French ennui, and the French now have le weekend, whereas once upon a time they had only Saturday and Sunday – so these seem like reasonable trades. At one time, the British at table had a bill of fare, then the Victorians changed it to menu, which is silly, because menu means little, and most Victorian bills of fare were not. The famous historic restaurant of Simpson’s on the Strand has always refused to convert its Bill of Fare into a Menu. May I make a plea for the return of the Savoury Cheesecake? Just because I feel a little ornery today – and I don’t believe we have an English-English equivalent of the (I think) American-English ornery, which is not at all the same as feeling ordinary, which is the old name for a pub, anyway.

Tart de Bry.
Take a Crust ynche depe in a trape. take zolkes of Ayren rawe & chese ruayn. & medle it & þe zolkes togyder. and do þerto powdour gyngur. sugur. safroun. and salt. do it in a trape, bake it and serue it forth.
From: The Master-Cooks of King Richard II, The Forme of Cury, c.1390

Note: ‘Bry’ appears to refer to the region where this cheese tart originated: ‘ruayn’ was apparently a soft autumn cheese. The amount of sugar is not specified in this recipe, but sugar was very expensive at the time and was used more like a spice. This was probably close what we would call a ‘savoury’ type of cheesecake today (although no such distinction between sweet and savoury dishes was made back then.)

Cheesecakes, Savoury.
Mix thoroughly a pint of well-drained curd, three ounces of butter, and the yolks of six and the whites of two eggs well-beaten. Rub them through a coarse sieve, and add a quarter of a pound of grated Parmesan, and a little salt and pepper. If preferred, the curd may be omitted, and a little cream substituted. Of course, in this case, there would be no necessity to rub the mixture through a sieve. Line some tartlet tins with good crust, fill them three-parts with the mixture, and bake in a good oven for about twenty minutes.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, c1870’s.

Quotation for the Day …

Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired; but afer all, the Scotchman would shake his head, and say, "Where's your haggis?" and the Fijan would sigh and say, "Where's your missionary?"
Mark Twain in A Tramp Abroad

Isabella goes to Paris.

June 20 ...

On this day in 1389, Queen Isabella, the wife of Charles VI of France, made a ceremonial entry into Paris. “Isabella of Bavaria” was married off to Charles when she was fifteen years old. She had by the time of this event, at the tender age of nineteen, already given him two of the twelve children she would ultimately bear him.

Royal “entries” into major cities were huge events lasting days on end – with parages, entertainments, tournaments, - and of course, feasting. The banquet which followed Isabella’s official annointing as the Queen of France was, of course, as grand and spectacular as massive wealth and power could make it. The scenario was described in detail:

“You must know, that the great table of marble, which is in this hall, and is never removed, was covered with an oaken plank, four inches thick, and the royal dinner placed thereon. Near the table, and against one of the pillars, was the king's buffet, magnificently decked out with gold and silver plate, and much envied by many who saw it. Before the king's table, and at some distance, were wooden bars with three entrances, at which were serjeants at arms, ushers, and archers, to prevent any from passing them but those who served the table; for in truth the crowd was so very great, there was no moving but with much difficulty. There were plenty of minstrels, who played away to the best of their abilities.

… There were two other tables in the hall, at which were seated upwards of five hundred ladies and damsels; but the crowd was so great, it was with difficulty they could be served with their dinner, which was plentiful and sumptuous. Of this it is not worth the trouble to give any particulars; but I must speak of some devices which were curiously arranged, and would have given the king much amusement, had those who had undertaken it been able to act their parts.

In the middle of the hall was erected a castle of wood, forty feet high, twenty feet long, and as many wide, with towers at each corner, and one larger in the middle. This castle was to represent the city of Troy the great, and the tower in the middle the palace of Ilion, from which were displayed the banners of the Trojans, such as king Priam, Hector, his other sons, and of those shut up in the place with them. The castle being on wheels, was very easily moved about. There was a pavilion likewise on wheels, on which were placed the banners of the Grecian kings, that was moved, as it were, by invisible beings, to the attack of Troy. There was also, by way of reinforcement, a large ship, well built, and able to contain one hundred men at arms, that, like the two former, was ingeniously moved by invisible wheels. Those in the ship and pavilion made a sharp attack on the castle, which was gallantly defended; but from the very great crowd, this amusement could not last long. There were so many people on all sides, several were stifled by the heat; and one table near the door of the chamber of parliament, at which a numerous company of ladies and damsels were seated, was thrown down, and the company forced to make off as well as they could.

The queen of France was near fainting, from the excessive heat, and one of the doors was forced to be thrown open to admit air. The lady of Coucy was in the same situation. The king, noticing this, ordered an end to be put to the feast, when the tables were removed, for the ladies to have more room. Wine and spices were served around, and every one retired when the king and queen went to their apartments.”

Poor young Isabella; she was already pregnant with her third child, a girl who was also to be called Isabella - the future wife of King Richard II of England. No wonder she felt a little tired and faint – it must have been an exhausting day.

It is disappointing for his readers six centuries later that the scribe did not believe that the plentiful and sumptuous feast was worth describing in detail. The story does give me an excuse to give you some recipes from the time however, for I have been neglecting the medieval era. I have chosen some dishes for Isabella from a ‘cookbook’ of the time written by the ‘master of the kitchen stores of the king’, who presumably had a lot of say in the preparation of this banquet. The book is usually referred to as Le Viander de Taillevent, it was written somewhere between 1386 and 1393, and rapidly became the culinary gospel of medieval France.

White capon soup.
Cook them in wine and water, dismember them, and fry them in lard. Crush almonds with some capon livers and dark meat, steep in your broth, and put to boil on your meat. Take ginger, cloves, galingale, long pepper and grains of paradise, and steep in vinegar. Boil well together, and thread in well beaten egg yolks. It should be well thickened.

Crayfish stew.
Take almonds, wash without blanching or peeling, and crush. Take some fine large crayfish, cook them in two parts of water and one part of wine, with a bit of vinegar if you wish, drain them, and let them cool. Remove the feet and tails from their shells and set them aside. Beat and crush the carcasses very well (like the almonds), steep everything in clear puree of peas, wine and verjuice, and strain together through cheesecloth. Take the crayfish feet and tails, fry them in a bit of butter, dry them like fried loach, and boil them in a pan or fine clean pot. Take ginger, a bit of cinnamon, a bit of grains of paradise, a bit less cloves than grains, and a bit of long pepper, steep in a bit of wine and verjuice, and add sugar generously. Boil everything together and salt lightly. If you wish to add fried fish do so. It should be thick enough to cover your meat.

Large and small crisps.
Cook the large crisps in some hot lard in a syrup pot or brass casserole. Make them from egg whites and fine flour beaten together. It should not be too thick. Have a deep wooden bowl, put some batter in the bowl, and shake the hand inside the pan above the hot lard [pouring batter into the lard]. Keep them from browning too much.
Cook the small crisps in an iron pan. Beat egg yolks and whites with some fine flour. It should be a little stiffer than the batter for large crisps. Have a little fire (as long as it is hot). Take your wooden bowl pierced at the bottom, and put some batter in it. When everything is ready, pour [a thread of batter from the hole in the bowl] and form it into the shape of a small buckle (or larger), with a kind of tongue of the same batter through the buckle. Let them cook in the lard until they are plump.

Monday’s Story.

Chocolate Alternatives.

Quotation for the Day.

Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing. Walt Kelly (1913-1973).

Mock Food No. 3

April 16

The very strict dietary rules decreed for hundreds of years by the Christian Church were a very powerful inspiration for fake food. At some times in history almost half the days of the year were ‘fish’ days. There were multiple and overlapping reasons for this. The prevailing idea was that ‘flesh’ food stimulated bodily heat and lust, whereas fish, which came from the water was cooling, including cooling to the passions. The fact that fish do not have an observable sex life enhanced the belief that it was more suitable for times of religious observance when distracting thoughts were best kept to a minimum – and for those in religious orders, that meant all the time.

There were economic and political reasons too: encouraging fish consumption preserved livestock on the land, and encouraging the fishing industry meant the availability of a large cohort of men with sailing experience who could then be sent on voyages of discovery or used to supply the Navy.

The proscriptions led to the invention of some wonderful fish dishes, and some artful substitutes for meat, but the best fake food was invented for Lent. During Lent, all animal products were forbidden. Essentially it was a vegan diet, although the word was not coined until very recent times.

No milk, no butter, no eggs. What to do?

Make almond milk, that was step number one. Huge amounts of it were made in medieval times, and the mind boggles at the work involved in pounding vast quantities of almonds without the assistance of food processors – but kitchen labour was cheap in those days, I suppose.

Eggs? No problem. The following recipe is taken from the Harleian MS (circa 1430). It is difficult to follow, but essentially says to ‘blow’ the eggs (pinhole each end and … blow the contents out) then re-fill it with a ground almond mixture, half of which is coloured yellow with saffron (and cinnamon) and placed in the middle to mimic the yolk.

Eyroun in lentyn [Eggs in Lent].
Take Eyroun, & blow owt þat ys with-ynne atte oþer ende; þan waysshe þe schulle clene in warme Water; þan take gode mylke of Almaundys, & sette it on þe fyre; þan take a fayre canvas, & pore þe mylke þer-on, & lat renne owt þe water; þen take it owt on þe cloþe, & gader it to-gedere with a platere; þen putte sugre y-now þer-to; þan take þe halvyndele, & colour it with Safroun, a lytil, & do þer-to pouder Canelle; þan take & do of þe whyte in the neþer ende of þe schulle, & in þe myddel þe ȝolk, & fylle it vppe with þe whyte; but noȝt to fulle, for goyng ouer; þan sette it in þe fyre & roste it, & serue forth.

Butter? Almonds again to the rescue. The following recipe is from a Neopolitan recipe collection, Cuoco Napoletano, via Terence Scully’s excellent translation.

Butiro Contrafata.
Get a pound and a half of blanched, well ground almonds; get half a beaker of good rosewater and strain the almonds - if that rosewater is not enough, use however much you need so that the amount of almonds can be strained; then, so the almond milk will bind well, get a little starch, a little saffron if you want, and fine sugar, and lay this mixture into a mold as if were butter; like that it is good to eat.
[Scully, Terence. Cuoco Napoletano. The Neapolitan Recipe Collection: A Critical Edition and English Translation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000].

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mock Food No. 4

Quotation for the Day …

Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from Romeo and Juliet.

Mock Food No. 2

April 15 ...

The feedback yesterday convinced me that the rationale behind the mock chicken pie made from pork and potatoes was indeed because chicken was a luxury meat ‘back then’ – compared to ordinary every-day pork. The second part of the conundrum remains however – was it intended to fool the family (or guests)? If they were fooled, did the cook have the last laugh silently, or did she reveal the trick after receiving the praise?

Today’s choices cause no such dilemma. They are foods intended purely for fun, and as they come from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they demonstrate for just how long we have been playing with our food.

The first one is from The Form of Cury, the first known English cookery manuscript which was compiled by the Master Cooks of King Richard II right at the end of the fourteenth century. It is for ‘Golden Apples’ – meat balls made with a ‘farsur’ or ‘farce’ of ground meat, which are then ‘gilded’ with egg and saffron (or parsley if you want Green Apples). See if you can make out the instructions, now that you have some clues. I will post a ‘translation’ at the end of the week.

Pomme dorryse.
Farsur to make pomme doryse and oþere þynges. Take þe lire of Pork rawe. and grynde it smale. medle it up wiþ powdre fort, safroun, and salt, and do þerto Raisouns of Coraunce, make balles þerof. and wete it wele in white of ayrenn. & do it to seeþ in boillyng water. take hem up and put hem on a spyt. rost hem wel and take parsel ygronde and wryng it up with ayren & a party of flour. and lat erne aboute þe spyt. And if þou wilt, take for parsel safroun, and serue it forth.

The second is another favorite that kept popping up for centuries under various spellings. It is for ‘yrchouns’ or ‘hirchones’ – that is, ‘urchins’ or ‘hedgehogs’ – made with spiced ground pork stuffed into pigs’ maws (stomachs) to form fat sausage shapes which were then stuck all over with ‘spines’ made from blanched almonds cut ‘small and sharp’, or in some recipes from small ‘prikkes’ of pastry. The recipe I give you is from the early fifteenth century Harleian manuscript: another source actually suggests making ‘hirchones’ with the maw (stomach) of ‘one great swine’ and five or six maws of (smaller) ‘pigges’- the idea being, apparently, to have a happy little hedgehog family on the table to delight the guests. If you cant get any pigs’s maws at the butcher this week, make them as you would a meatloaf and they will be fine.

Yrchouns
Take Piggis mawys and skalde them wel; take groundyn Pork and knede it with Spicerye, with pouder Gyngere, and Salt and Sugre; do it on the mawe, but fille it nowt to fulle, then sewe them with a fayre threde and putte them in a Spete and men don piggys. Take blaunchid Almoundys and kerf them long, smal and scharpe, and frye them in grece and sugre. Take a ltytle prycke and pryckke the yrchons. An putte in the holes the Almoundys, every hole half, and lech fro sometimes. Ley them then to the fyre; when they be rostid, dore them, sum with Whete Flowre and mylke of Almoundys, sum grene, sume blake with Blode, and lat them nowt browne to moche; and serve forth.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mock Food No. 3

Quotation for the Day …

A clever cook, can make....good meat of a whetstone.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536)

Happy Birthday to Charles.

February 7

Today is the birthday of Charles Dickens (in 1812). This wonderful story-teller’s works are rich with images of food – not surprising for a man who had been a hungry boy forced to work in a boot-blacking factory at the age of twelve. Food quotations alone from his stories could give us fodder for this blog as long as I will be writing it, so my problem today was – which one to choose?

Gravy is under-represented in food writing, methinks. One day I might attempt the definitive book on gravy (and custard? England’s two main sauces, and who needs any more when they are done to perfection in one of their infinite varieties?)

Mrs. Todger, in Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewitt, runs a boarding house. The job has taken its toll on her good looks, and she explains why:

“Presiding over an establishment like this makes sad havoc with the features… The gravy alone is enough to add twenty years to one's age, I do assure you… The anxiety of that one item, my dears, keeps the mind continually upon the stretch. There is no such passion in human nature as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen”.

Mrs. Todger was quite right to take gravy seriously. The preparation has a seriously long heritage, and the word an obscure etymology – two good reasons for reverence. The OED hazards a guess that the word derives from a mis-reading of the Old French word grané, meaning ‘grain’, meaning ‘anything used in cooking’ – which is as obscure and brave an explanation that one would wish. If grané refers to grain as in flour as in thickening for meat juices, then we have arrived at ‘English’ gravy, in which case it is a perfect explanation, for English gravy is a different dish from French ‘gravy’ which is merely ‘jus’.

There are recipes for gravy in the earliest English cookbook, the Form of Cury, written about 1390. It consists of the rabbit broth, thickened with ground almonds, not flour, and spiced with sugar and saffron.

Connynges in Grauey.
Take Connynges..and drawe hem with a gode broth with almandes blanched and brayed, do therinne suger and powdor gynger.

By the nineteenth century, when Charles Dickens was considering gravy, ‘when properly done’ it was an incredibly labour-intensive process. I blame progress and its accompanying serious dearth of servants for the decline of good gravy and the invention of boxed gravy powders.

Miss Eliza Acton devotes a complete chapter to Gravies, and I give you an extract from it, to show how serious gravy can really be:

GRAVIES are not often required either in great variety, or in abundant quantities, when only a moderate table is kept, and a clever cook will manage to supply, at a trifling cost, all that is generally needed for plain family dinners; while an unskilful or extravagant one will render them sources of unbounded expense. But however small the proportions in which they are made, their quality should be particularly attended to, and they should be well adapted in flavour to the dishes they are to accompany. For some, at high degree of savour is desirable; but for fricassees, and other preparations of delicate white meats, this should be avoided, and a soft, smooth sauce of refined flavour-Should be used in preference to any of more piquant relish.

To deepen the colour of gravies, the thick mushroom pressings of Chapter V., or a little soy (when its flavour is admissible), or cavice, or Harvey's sauce may be added to it; and for some dishes, a glass of claret, or of port wine.

Vermicelli, or rasped cocoa-nut, lightly, and very gently browned in a small quantity of butter, will both thicken and enrich them, if about an ounce of either to the pint of gravy be stewed gently in it from half an hour to an hour, and then strained out.

She decries gravy which is over-thickened and greasy:

“ … gravies, which should not, however, be too much thickened, particularly with the unwholesome mixture of flour and butter, so commonly used for the purpose. Arrow-root, or rice-flour, or common flour gradually browned in a slow oven, are much better suited to a delicate stomach. No particle of fat should ever be perceptible upon them when they are sent to table … ”

She gives a number of recipes, starting with:

A RICH ENGLISH BROWN GRAVY.
Brown lightly and carefully from four to six ounces of lean ham, thickly sliced and cut into large dice; lift these out, and put them into the pan in which the gravy is to be made; next, fry lightly also, a couple of pounds of neck of beef, dredged moderately with flour, and slightly with pepper; put this when it is done over the bam; and then brown gently, and add to them one not large common onion. Pour over these ingredients a quart of boiling water, or of weak but well-flavoured broth, bring the whole slowly to a boil, clear off the scum with great care, throw in a saltspoonful of salt, four cloves, a blade of mace, twenty corns of pepper, a bunch of savoury herbs, a carrot, and a few slices of celery: these last two may be fried or not, as is most convenient. Boil the gravy very softly until it is reduced to little more than a pint; strain, and set it by until the fat can be taken from it. Heat it anew, add more salt if needed, and a little mushroom catsup, cayenne-vinegar, or whatever flavouring it may require for the dish with which it is to be served: it will seldom need any thickening. A dozen small mushrooms prepared as for pickling, may be added to it at first with advantage. Half this quantity of gravy will be sufficient for a single tureen, and the economist can diminish a little the proportion of meat when it is thought too much.

At risk of drowning you in gravy recipes and wearying you of the gravy word, in order to briefly indicate the range of gravy offerings in the Dickensian era, I give you a small selection:

ORANGE GRAVY, FOR WILD FOWL.
Boil for about ten minutes, in half a pint of rich and highly-flavoured brown gravy, or espagnole, half the rind of an orange, pared as thin as possible, and a small strip of lemon-rind, with a bit of sugar the size of a hazel-nut. Strain it off, add to it a quarter pint of port or claret, the juice of half a lemon, and a tablespoonful of orange-juice; season it with cayenne, and serve it as hot as possible.
Gravy, ½ pint; ½ the rind of an orange; lemon-peel, 1 small strip; sugar, size of hazel-nut: 10 minutes. Juice of ½ a lemon: orange-juice, 1 tablespoonful; cayenne.
[Miss Acton, Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845]

GRAVY TO MAKE MUTTON EAT LIKE VENISON.
Pick a very stale woodcock or snipe, cut it in pieces (but first take out the bag from the entrails), and simmer with as much unseasoned meat-gravy as you will want. Strain it, and serve in the dish ; but if the mutton be not long kept, it will not acquire the venison flavour.
[Murray's modern cookery book. Modern domestic cookery, by a lady 1851]

BROWN GRAVY FOR LENT.
Melt a piece of butter about the size of an egg, in a sauce-pan, shake in a little flour, and brown it by degrees, stir in half a pint of water, and half a pint of ale, or small beer which is not bitter, an onion, a piece of lemon-peel, two cloves, a blade of mace, some whole pepper, a spoonful of mushroom pickle, a spoonful of ketchup, and an anchovy; boil altogether a quarter of an hour, and strain it. It is an excellent sauce for various dishes.
[The practical cook, English and foreign, by J. Bregion and A. Miller, 1845]

On Dickens …

There have been previous stories in this blog on dinner with Dickens, the Dolly Varden Cake inspired by one of his characters, and also one on the menu book authored by his wife.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pork Pie, without the Pork.

Quotation for the Day …

Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea. Charles Dickens, in Barnaby Rudge

Fruit with Meat.

Today, September 12^th ….

I am in transit today, on my way home from England and the Symposium. I may not get chance to post for another two whole days, unless the wireless connection at Narita airport (12 hour stopover - I wonder how much I can see in that time?) is hassle-free.

My musings on the “there is nothing really new, culinarily speaking, under the sun” theme of yesterday got me thinking of other recipes that serve as examples. Here are a couple of my favourites – a fourteenth century German recipe for chicken and quinces or pears, and a seventeenth century French recipe for turkey with raspberries. Any modern chefs care to adapt these and let us know about it?

Ein gut spise (A good food)
[Chicken and Quinces or Pears]
Take hens. Roast them, not very well. Tear them apart, into morsels, and let them boil in only fat and water. And take a crust of bread and ginger and a little pepper and anise. Grind that with vinegar and with the same strength as it. And take four roasted quinces and the condiment thereto of the hens. Let it boil well therewith, so that it even becomes thick. If you do not have quinces, then take roasted pears and make it with them. And give out and do not oversalt.
[Ein Buch von guter spise; about 1350; trans.by Alia Atlas]

Turkie with Raspis.
When it is dressed, take up the brisket, and take out the flesh, which you shall mince with suet and some little of Veal-flesh, which you shall mince together with yolks of Eggs & young Pigeons, & all being well seasoned, you shall fill your Turkie with it,and shall season it with Salt, Peper, beaten Cloves and Capers, then you shall spit ti, and turn it very softly; When it is almost rosted, take it up, and put it into an Earthen pan with good Broath, Mushrums, and a bundle of Herbs which you shall make with Parsley, thime, and Chibols tied together; for to thicken the sauce, take a little Lard sliced, pass it in the pan, and when it is melted, take it out and mix a little flower with it, which you shall make very brown, and shall allay it with a little Broath and some Vinegar; then put it into your Earthen pan with some Lemon juice and serve. If it be in the Raspis season, you shall put a handfull of them over it, if not, some Pomegranate.
[The French Cook; la Varenne; 1653]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mumbled or Scrambled.

Quotation for the Day …

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel's immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way. Ralph Crawshaw

Life with Dates.

Today, June 12^th …

Today is the feast day of Saint Onuphrius, who, like the rest of the Saints I have featured in this blog, is only on my radar on account of a food connection. Saint Onophrius was a hermit, as Saints are wont to be, and lived during the 4^th Century in Egypt. He lived entirely, it is said, on dates. He could have made a worse choice (athough there may not have been too many choices in 4^th C Egypt) – because dates are not only nutritious (high fibre, high carb, almost zero fat, and lots of vitamins and minerals etc etc etc), they are delicious.

The date palm is native to North Africa and the Middle East, and is one of the oldest food plants cultivated by humans. It appears that we have been growing it for at least 7000 years in one of the world’s most challenging environments – the hot dry desert. The plant must have developed some spectacular survival mechanisms to have been so successful, and in a truly amazing example of time-warp gardening, a botanist in Israel has managed to germinate a 2000 year-old seed from a Judean date tree that was thought to be extinct. Perhaps one day we might be able to eat dates with a direct link to biblical times, which would be an amazing example of time-warp eating!

There is an old saying that there are as many ways of using dates as there are days in the year, and I don’t doubt that is true. They were certainly known and enjoyed by Europeans in the 13^th century, no doubt thanks to returning crusaders. They were enjoyed only by the wealthy of course, who must have relished their sweetness in the centuries before sugar became cheap. I have chosen two medieval recipes for you featuring dates, either of which would be perfect for today.

The first is from an Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century, translated Charles Perry, and is for a sort of date and nut paste or cake that would be excellent on a cheese platter.

A Sweet of Dates and Honey.
Take Shaddâkh dates. Clean them of their pits and pound a ratl of them in a mortar. Then dilute with water in a tinjir on a gentle fire. Add the same amount of skimmed honey. Stir it until it binds together and throw in a good amount of peeled almonds and walnuts. Put in some oil so it doesn't burn and to bind firmly. Pour it over a greased salâya (stone work surface). With it you make qursas (round cakes). Cut it with a knife in big or little pieces.

The second is a Lenten tart from the first English cookbook, the Forme of Cury (about 1390). As a Lenten dish it contains no milk or eggs. The instructions are strange to us today, but it seems that a thick ‘custard’ of almond milk and rice flour is made and allowed to set, then cut into pieces and layered with cut up figs and dates in the pastry ‘coffin’, and finally more almond milk is poured in before it is baked.

For To Make Flownys [flans] In Lente.
Tak god Flowr and mak a Past and tak god mylk of Almandys and flowr of rys other amydoun and boyle hem togeder' that they be wel chariaud wan yt is boylid thykke take yt up and ley yt on a feyr' bord so that yt be cold and wan the Cofyns ben makyd tak a party of and do upon the coffyns and kerf hem in Schiveris and do hem in god mylk of Almandys and Figys and Datys and kerf yt in fowr partyis and do yt to bake and serve yt forth.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pleasure and Health.

Quotation for the Day …

The first of all considerations is that our meals shall be fun as well as fuel. Andre Simon.

The Paris Markets.

Today, March 12th …

The wonderful markets of Paris have a long history. They had already been trading for perhaps centuries when legislation was enacted on this day in 1322 specifying the hours at which they were to open.

Less than three decades later the population of Paris was halved in the space of about a year by bubonic plague, but at the time it was a thriving metropolis of about a quarter of a million people packed into an area of a few square miles – a huge city by medieval standards.

In 1393 in Paris a wealthy older man wrote a housekeeping manual to help his young wife (he was probably in his 60’s, she about 15) to learn how to manage a household. There is much in Le Menagier de Paris about the various markets. The author advises his wife where she should go for particular goods, and gives her an idea of how much she should pay for various items, using as examples details of the catering for several weddings:

Arrangements for the wedding done by Master Helye in May, on a Tuesday; dinner only for twenty bowls.

… Trencher bread, three dozen of half a foot in width and four fingers tall, baked four days before and browned, or what is called in the market Corbeil bread.

In the market, trencher bread, three dozen. Pomegranates for blankmanger (a sort of fricassee), three costing ... Oranges, fifty costing … Six new cheeses and one old, and three hundred eggs.

At Pierre-au-Lait [the milk market], a sixth of full-cream milk without water added, to make the frumenty …

In the Place de Greve, a hundredweight of coal from Burgundy, thirteen sous two sacks of charcoal, ten sous.

At the Forte-de-Paris: may, green herb, violet, bread-crumbs, a quarter of white salt, a quarter of coarse salt, a hundred crayfish, a half-litre of loach, two clay pots, one of six quarts for the jelly, and the other of two quarts for the cameline.

Oranges and pomegranates are mentioned several times in the manual. They were an expensive luxury in medieval France, and the author does not specify the cost presumably because it varied with the supply. He does give a price for candied orange peel however:

For chamber-spices, that is to say, candied orange peel, one pound, ten sous. - Candied citron, one pound, twelve sous. - Red anise, one pound, eight sous. - Rose-sugar (white sugar clarified and cooked in rose-water (JP), one pound, ten sous. - White sugared almonds, three pounds, ten sous a pound. - Of hippocras, three quarts, ten sous a quart, and all will be needed.

To give an idea of the relative cost of this luxury, compare it with some everyday items:

… three shoulders of veal, four sous ... twenty capons, two Paris sous each … A thin pig, for the jelly, four Paris sous …. A half-pound of ground cinnamon, five sous. Two pounds of ground rice, two sous.

The young wife is given instructions for making candied orange peel herself, as well as advice as to where oranges may be used in what we would now call ‘savoury’ dishes.

Item, partridge must be plucked dry, and cut off the claws and head, put in boiling water, then stick with venison if you have any, or bacon, and eat with fine salt, or in cold water and rose water and a little wine, or in three parts rose water, orange juice and wine, the fourth part.

Mullet is called "migon" in Languedoc, and it is scaled like a carp, then split the length of the belly, cooked in water, with parsley on it, then cooled in its water; and then eaten with green sauce, and better with orange sauce. Item, it is good in pie.

Item, in summer, the sauce for a roast chicken is half vinegar, half rose-water, and chilled, etc. Item, orange-juice is good.

And to use the pomegranate, the ‘fricassee’:

White Soup.
Take capons, hens or chicks killed beforehand at a convenient time, either whole or in halves or quarters, and pieces of veal, and cook with bacon in water and wine: and when they are cooked, take them out, and take almonds, peel and grind them and mix with water from your fowls, that is to say the dearest, without scrapings or any bits, and strain them through a sieve; then take white ginger prepared or peeled, with grain of Paradise, prepared as above, and strain through a very fine sieve, and mix with milk of almonds. And if it is not thick enough, strain fine flour or rice, which has been boiled, and add a taste of verjuice, and add a great amount of white sugar. And when it is ready, sprinkle over it a spice known as red coriander and some seeds of the pomegranate with sugared almonds and fried almonds, placed at the bottom of each bowl.

The book is an interesting record of the role of women in the fourteenth century. The author is a man of his time and expects wifely obedience, but he seems kindly, not cruel. A touching part of his motive is that he fully expects his wife to outlive him and will therefore inevitably re-marry, and he wants her to be better prepared to run the household of her next husband.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Miss Corson Cooks.

Quotation for the Day …

You cannot sell a blemished apple in the supermarket, but you can sell a tasteless one provided it is shiny, smooth, even, uniform and bright. Elspeth Huxley.

Macaroni: with cheese?

Today, March 6th …

The American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne spent the years from 1853-1857 as United States consul in Liverpool, England. Naturally, he kept notes of his impressions of the people and the country, and on this day he ate aboard the Princeton.

These daily lunches on shipboard might answer very well the purposes of a dinner; being in fact, noonday dinners, with soup, roast mutton, mutton chops, and macaroni pudding – brandy port and sherry wines….There is a satisfaction in seeing Englishmen eat and drink, they do it so heartily, and on the whole, so wisely, - trusting so entirely that there is no harm in good beef and mutton, and a reasonable quantity of good liquor; and so these three hale old men, who had acted on this wholesome faith so long, were proofs that it is well on earth to live like earthly creatures.

‘Macaroni’ is a problem word for the OED, which finds itself unable to confidently explain its origin. It may come from the Latin for a sort of dumpling, but the Romans may have gotten it from the Greek word for barley-broth, which seems a bit convoluted. In the second half of the seventeenth century the word came to refer to a particularly foolish type of young man who affected the latest fashions and fads, especially if they were from ‘the Continent’. Co-incidentally the second half of the seventeenth century was also when macaroni, the dish, started to appear fairly regularly in cookbooks.

Macaroni did not always have its current tubular form. In early recipes it seems to be more like gnocchi, but there is an intriguing recipe in the first known English cookbook, the Form of Cury (about 1390) for a dish called ‘macrows’, which sounds similar enough to be intiguing. Macrows were made with thin sheets of dough cut into pieces, which were boiled and then served with butter and cheese – perhaps justifying it as an early version of mac n’ cheese.

Macrows.
Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh. and kerve it on peces, and cast hem on boillyng water & seeþ it wele. take chese and grate it and butter cast bynethen and above as losyns. and serue forth.

By 1769 when Elizabeth Raffald published her Experienced English Housekeeper the dish was pretty well what we would recognise today.

To dress Macaroni with Parmesan Cheese.
Boil four ounces of macaroni till it be quite tender and lay it on a sieve to drain. Then put it in a tossing pan with about a gill of good cream, a lump of butter rolled in flour, boil it five minutes. Pour it on a plate, lay all over it parmesan cheese toasted, send it to table on a water plate for it soon gets cold.

But of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne had Macaroni Pudding, not Macaroni Cheese. Here is a recipe for pudding from Mrs. Beeton, who follows it with a short description for the edification of her readers.

Sweet Macaroni Pudding.
Ingredients: 2- ½ oz. of macaroni, 2 pints of milk, the rind of ½ lemon, 3 eggs, sugar and grated nutmeg to taste, 2 tablespoonfuls of brandy.
Mode: -Put the macaroni, with a pint of the milk, into a saucepan with the lemon-peel, and let it simmer gently until the macaroni is tender; then put it into a pie-dish without the peel; mix the other pint of milk with the eggs; stir these well together, adding the sugar and brandy, and pour the mixture over the macaroni. Grate a little nutmeg over the top, and bake in a moderate oven for 1/2 hour. To make this pudding look nice, a paste should be laid round the edges of the dish, and, for variety, a layer of preserve or marmalade may be placed on the macaroni: in this case omit the brandy.

MACARONI is composed of wheaten flour, flavoured with other articles, and worked up with water into a paste, to which, by a peculiar process, a tubular or pipe form is given, in order that it may cook more readily in hot water. That of smaller diameter than macaroni (which is about the thickness of a goose-quill) is called vermicelli; and when smaller still, fidelini. The finest is made from the flour of the hard-grained Black-Sea wheat. Macaroni is the principal article of food in many parts of Italy, particularly Naples, where the best is manufactured, and from whence, also, it is exported in considerable quantities. In this country, macaroni and vermicelli are frequently used in soups.

Tomorrow’s Story …

A new potato.

A Previous Story for this Day …

Dried strawberries were the topic of the day.

Quotation for the Day …

Fettucini alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults. Mitch Hedberg.

Tuesday Fritters.

Today, February 7th …

This day in 1665 was a Tuesday - Shrove Tuesday to be exact - and Samuel Pepys recorded his dinner in his diary:

“Up, and to my office, where busy all morning. At noon, at dinner, it being Shrove Tuesday, had some very good fritters.”

In the Christian calendar Shrove Tuesday is the last day before the beginning of Lent, when the faithful abstain from fleshly things for 40 days. It is the day to feast before saying “Farewell to Meat” (Carne Vale) and to use up the last of the eggs and milk and butter in a frenzy of fritter and pancake-making (hence “Pancake Tuesday”).

What is the difference between fritters and pancakes? Not much really. Both start with a batter of flour, milk, and eggs. A pancake is made by frying a small amount in a pan to form a thin cake (a pan cake – get it?), which becomes French if you call it a crêpe. This simple pancake is usually served with butter, or sugar or lemon or orange juice. It may, however, be filled by rolling it or folding it around something. If something is dipped in the raw batter and then fried, it becomes a fritter. Of course, not all fritters and pancakes abide strictly by this rule, but you get the general idea.

A religious excuse is not necessary to enjoy pancakes and fritters. They have been made and enjoyed since time immemorial in countries and cultures where the basic ingredients are found. They are easy to make and fun to eat - unless you have fallen victim to the campaigns of the world-wide Food Police who would have us banned from anything requiring f..ing.

Here is selection from across the ages, just to prove their versatility.

For to make Fruturs.[Apple fritters with saffron and ginger]
Nym flowre and eyryn and grynd peper and safroun and mak therto a batour and par aplyn and kyt hem to brode penys and kest hem theryn and fry hem in the batour wyth fresch grees and serve it forthe.
[From: The Form of Cury, 1390.]

Samacays. [Curd cheese fritters]
Take vellyd cruddys or they be pressyd; do hem yn a cloth. Wryng out the whey. Do hem in a mortar; grynd hem well with paryd floure & temyr hem with eyryn & creme of cow mylke, & make thereof a rennyng bature. Than have white grece in a panne: loke hit be hote. Take up the bature with a saucer & let hit renne in the grece; draw thy hond backward that hit may renne abrode. Then fry hem ryte well & somdell hard reschelyng & serve hit forth in disches, & strew on white sygure.
[From: An Ordinance of Pottage, by Constance B Hieatt; from a 15th C manuscript]

To make Fritters of Spinnedge [Spinach].
Take a good deale of Spinnedge, and washe it cleane, then boyle it in faire water, and when it is boyled, then take it forth and let the water runne from it, then chop it with the backe of a knife, and then put in some egges and grated Bread, and season it with suger, sinamon, ginger, and pepper, dates minced fine, and currans, and rowle them like a ball, and dippe them in Butter made of Ale and flower.
[From: The Good Housewife's Jewell by Thomas Dawson 1596]

To make Fritters.
Take halfe a pint of Sack, a pint of Ale, some Ale-yeast, nine Eggs, yolks and whites, beat them very well, the Egg first, then altogether, put in some Ginger, and Salt, and fine flower, then let it stand an houre or two; then shred in the Apples; when you are ready to fry them, your suet must be all Beef-suet, or halfe Beef, and halfe Hoggs-suet
tryed out of the leafe.
[From: The Compleat Cook, 1658]

P.S. This year Shrove Tuesday falls on February 20th, so you have time to practice. If the ones given above do not suit you, here are the links to other suitable recipes for fritters and pancakes featured in previous stories.

How Water Pancakes are made by poor People (1750)

Apple Fritters (1869)

Salsify Fritters (1870’s)

Kidney Fritters (1870’s)

Pets de putain (Farts of a Whore) – which are fritters by a funnier name. (1653)

Pink Pancakes (1797)

To make Raspberry Fritters (1769)

Bacon Froise (1695) – which is somewhere between an omelette and a pancake.

Australian Pancakes (1971) – an Englishman’s view.

Crêpes Suzette – the mystery.

Tomorrow’s Story …

First, Kill your Pig.

A Previous Story for this Day …

One of the cookbooks of Ambrose Heath was featured on this day.

Quotation for the Day …

I will here say nothing of the fact that some fast in such a way that they nonetheless drink themselves full; some fast by by eating fish and other foods so lavishly that they would come much nearer to fasting if they ate meat, eggs and butter, and by so doing would obtain far better results from their fasting. For such fasting is not fasting, but a mockery of fasting and of God. Martin Luther.