Medieval Treats

Besides sweet concoctions like dragges, medieval cooks prepared things like mincemeat and apple pie. Some cook books survive from early on, such as the Forme of Cury from the kitchens of Richard II.

For desserts, common ingredients were fruits, ginger, honey, spices and wine to sweeten things, but sweet and savory were often mixed. The Forme of Cury has a recipe for pork tartletts that includes currants. Fabulous Feasts, a collection of updated recipes from old manuscripts by Madeleine Palmer Cosman, offers a recipe for quince sauce with almonds, cloves, ginger, sugar, and wine starts with beef broth. A plum and currant tart from the same book starts with the marrow of four large beef bones! Here is one of the more intriguing combinations:

Perys Cofyns ("Pear Coffins")

This has three distinct steps: making the pears into "coffins" or "coffers" to hold the filling, cooking lentils (!) to supplement the berry filling, steaming the berries.

Step 1 — Start with 10 fresh hard pears, the juice of a lemon, and 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon. Cut the pears lengthwise, scoop out the core leaving about 1/2 inch pear wall. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake at 3508° for 5-10 minutes; do not let them get too soft. Set aside to cool.

Step 2 — Prepare the lentils. Rinse the dried lentils and place in a pot of water with a stalk of finely chopped celery, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 cup finely chopped dates, 1/2 teaspoon dried basil. Cover with beef broth. Bring to boil and cook 15-20 minutes until lentils are just tender but doubled in size.

Step 3 — Steam the berries. Rinse 1 cup raw cranberries, remove stems.* In pot with water, bring berries and 2 tablespoons sugar or honey to boil. When 1/3 of berries have popped open, remove from heat.** Cool the berries.

Put 1 tablespoon of lentil mixture into pears and top with the cranberries.

An interesting use of lentils to supplement the berry filling, but of course the lentils also include dates for additional sweetness.

As mentioned above, there were several ways to introduce sweetness into food, honey being very popular. Was sugar difficult to come by? Let's talk about then history of sugar in Medieval England tomorrow.

*The original recipe calls for "bog berries"; not being sure what was meant, Cosman substitutes New World cranberries.

**The medieval manuscript warns that the berries popping can spurt boiling water upwards, so do not lean over the pot too closely.

Dragges

When Margery Kempe (c.1373 - c.1438) dictated the story of her mystic experiences, she had no idea that someone would append a recipe to the end of it. The recipe was illegible when the manuscript was found in 1934 until multispectral-imaging technology was used to make the words clear. The reason for adding this recipe to this manuscript has caused some furrowed brows, and there are two theories. Here is a translation:

For Phlegm take –

Sugar candy, sugar plate*, sugar with

Aniseed, fennel seed, nutmeg, cinnamon,

Ginger [...] and licorice. Beat them

together in a mortar and make them in all

manner of food and drinks and dry first and last eat it.

The "For Phlegm" seems clear: this is a recipe for dragges, a sweet mixture intended to be medicinal. At one point in her life, Margery came down with the "flux"; this was probably dysentery. She was so ill that a priest was summoned to give her Last Rites because she feared she was near death. Dragges was intended to be a cure for many ills. A well-meaning scribe may have decided to add this recipe to help people avoid her illness in the future.

There is another credible theory, however, put forth in 2018 by Laura Kalas.

Dr. Kalas' argument is that the reason for the existence of this particular confection becomes clear when you look at the references to "sweetness" in her writing (and the writings of other mystics). Besides her conversations with God, she describes the sensations she experiences during her mystic episodes, which include sensations of sweetness. She asks God how she might make her love of God as swet to þe as me thynkyth þat thy loue is vn-to me ("as sweet to you as I think your love is to me"). She describes her experience with God as "sweet dalliance."

As a recipe for digestive dragges, or dragées, it is rich with sugar and spice, suggesting a wealthy site of monastic holiness and health. It thus offers a lens through which to explore the sweetness of confection and divine love in the Book. The hot spices, used to correct a cold and moist physiological constitution, are at the same time a means of stoking the hot fire of love that is played out in the Book. But the recipe imbues more than metaphorical signification. In the Middle Ages, the moral properties of food were imbricated with its ingestion. In consuming a foodstuff, one would take on some of its associated properties (the Eucharistic wafer as an obvious example). [Link to her article]

So...recipe for flux/phlegm, or reminder of the sweetness connected to spiritual revelation? In a nod to social media memes, "why not both?"

Now I'm thinking of sweet things, and since we are on the leading edge of the holiday season (some would say we are fully embroiled in it), let's look at some sweet medieval recipes for holiday entertaining...next time.

*"sugar plate" was a moldable form of sugar paste. I found an Elizabethan recipe here.

Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and His Son Badr, Part 2

This will make more sense if you read Part 1.

Shams has brought his daughter, Sit, and her son, 'Ajib, to Damascus on their quest to find his nephew, Badr, the father of 'Ajib. Badr had been landed there by the genie and efreet, and taken in by a cook who brought him into the restaurant business.

The travelers pass the cooking shop where Nur has taken over after the old cook's death. 'Ajib convinces his tutor, a eunuch, that he wants to eat there. Even though his tutor feels the place is too low class for a vizier's grandson, they eat. Badr feels drawn to 'Ajib, who tells him that they are searching for his father. When they leave, Badr feels compelled to follow them, but 'Ajib feels Badr is being creepy and hits him with a rock.

The travelers continue to Basra, arriving at Nur's abandoned palace, where Nur's widow and Badr's mother still lives. Shams introduces himself and his family, and offers to take the widow with them back to Cairo. Along the way, they stop at Damascus. 'Ajib, remorseful at the way he treated the cook with the rock, goes to the shop with his tutor. Badr is pleased to see him, and cooks him a sweet pomegranate seed dish.*

Later, with the family at dinner, 'Ajib is not hungry, and explains that he went to the bookshop. His grandfather Shams is not pleased that he went to such a lowly place, but 'Ajib exclaims that the food there was much better than what his grandmother (Badr's mother) can cook. They insist that he bring them a dish from the cookshop, and when the tutor brings home a serving of the pomegranate dish, Badr's mother recognizes the style of her son's cooking.

[This story has many variations, especially the ending; here is a blend of several.]

Shams devises a plan to unite father and son. Shams tells Sit to arrange the bedchamber the way it was the night years earlier that she and Badr slept together, and to lay out his clothing. He has his people destroy the shop and arrest Badr for leaving pepper out of the pomegranate dish. Badr objects to the ridiculous charge, so Shams has him beaten and locked in a chest and delivered to Cairo.

The chest is taken into Sit's bedroom, where he is let out by Sit, who tells him he has been in the bathroom too long. Confused by the room and seeing his old clothing, he tells her what he has been up to; she tells him those years were a dream, but he shows the scar on his forehead made by a young boy. Sit confesses the charade. Shams enters and explains it was a test to see if he really was Nur's son Badr. He is reunited with his mother and his son, and all ends well.

This tale is curious in the 1001 Nights because it is a tale within a tale. It is told to Caliph Harun al-Rashid by his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, in order to delight him and put him in a good mood so that Harun will spare Ja'far's servant who ultimately caused the murder in the tale "The Three Apples." More interesting is that Ja'far and Harun were real historical characters. We have few details about Ja'far, but Harun was quite famous, and I'll give him his due tomorrow.

*I include a pomegranate dish for the illustration, and here is the recipe.

Medieval Grains

We cannot underestimate the ubiquity of grain in the medieval diet. This was, of course, not a medieval discovery: different grains had been used for thousands of years (at least 75,000, according to this) and adapted to the climate and culture of the consumers. Grain was used three ways: turned into bread, drunk as beer, and eaten as pottage.

Finding out what grains medieval England had access to comes from a surprising source: extant thatched roofs, some of which have "roots" going back to the 14th and 15th centuries. The stalks used for thatching—in many cases preserved by fireplace soot—show the presence of bread wheat, rivet wheat, rye, barley, and oats. It was important to cultivate different varieties of grain because their different ripening times and grain yields ensured a steadier supply than cultivating a monoculture.

Bread wheat was the most common wheat grown. Rivet wheat is not grown so much today (although it is considered ideal for pasta), but it made higher quality straw for thatching. Different varieties of wheat were not differentiated in manorial harvest records, however, the word frumentum ("crops" or "grains") being used for any grains meant for consumption. But rather than discuss bread again, or beer, let's talk about pottage.

Pottage, also spelled potage (the word is from Old French pottage, meaning food cooked in a pot), is a thick soup or stew made by boiling grains and whatever vegetables were at hand. If available, meat could be added, but the base was grains in liquid boiled until it became a thick sludge or slurry (those are not culinary terms, but they seem appropriate to me based on my imagining the pottage process).

The boiling would take several hours, and in fact the pottage could be kept on the fire for days, adding liquid and ingredients over time to keep the meal going indefinitely. Upper classes could afford to add meat, but without meat this was a staple peasant dish from the 9th through 17th centuries. The constant boiling ensured it was not only safe to eat but made it easier to eat, the grains being reduced to a porridge-y consistency.

Richard II's cookbook The Forme of Cury had a few pottage recipes, including meat of course, but peasants could alter it with egg yolks, with bread crumbs, or with spices. Frumenty was made by boiling wheat grains until they burst, allowing the mixture to cool, then boiling with broth and milk or almond milk; it could be thickened with egg yolks and have sugar and spices added. Different types of pottage had names like egerdouce, brewet, the thinner ronnyng, and (what I think would be my favorite) mortrews.

The word "pottage" these days may bring to mind the story of Jacob and Esau and the "mess of pottage" given to the hungry Esau in exchange for his birthright. A "mess of pottage" is now used to denote a short term bargain that is detrimental in the long term. Technically, it was a red lentil stew. Interestingly, the knowledgeable Dioscorides warns that lentils were hard to digest and caused nightmares, sentiments that were repeated by medieval authors like the 14th century Pietro de Crescenzi.

Pietro de Crescenzi might have been wrong about lentils, but he has a place in history as the first "modern" agronomist, and it is in that context that I will tell you about him tomorrow.

Culinary Oddities of the Middle Ages

Let's start with garbage. My hometown of Rochester, NY, lays claim to the invention of the "garbage plate." I will leave it to the reader to click the link and learn about it. It might interest Rochester to know that the "garbage plate" existed in the Middle Ages. (The illustration is of a more wholesome beef stew from here.)

"Garbage" refers to, basically, kitchen scraps: the things you would normally take out of or off the food you were preparing to serve. Here is a 15th century recipe called "Garbage" (my translation):

Take garbage of chickens, as the head, the feet, the livers, and the gizzards; wash them clean, and cast them in a pot, and cast thereto fresh broth of beef or else of mutton, and let it boil; and ally it with bread, and lay on pepper and saffron, mace, cloves, and a little verjuice [juice of unripe grapes or apples] and salt, and serve as a stew.

Okay, more of a bowl than a plate, but you get the idea.

Le Ménagier de Paris ("The Parisian Household Book") from 1393 is a guide to a women's management of her household. It includes a recipe for squirrel (translation by Jane Hinson; original text here):

Squirrels are singed, gutted, trussed like rabbits, roasted or put in pastry: eat with cameline sauce or in pastry with wild duck sauce.

What could be simpler? (cameline was a sauce of cinnamon) There were different kinds of cinnamon, and we don't always know which was used in old recipes; a discussion of them can be found here.

The idea that spices were used to cover the taste of rotting meat needs to be discussed, since no spice would prevent the ill effects of consuming rotten meat! It is ridiculous to assume that techniques for preserving meat have not existed for thousands of years. Drying, smoking, salting (and in extreme northern climes simply burying in the snow) were available methods of extending the "shelf life" of meat. The salting method meant re-hydrating, and this excellent website offers a modern experiment on the process with venison. The author notes at the end that the version is still a little salty and the process was tedious, but I imagine in the Middle Ages he would have had a servant to manage the process of rehydrating, which would have resolved both those issues.

If you want a Catalan recipe for roast cat from a 1520 cookbook (which I will not print here for the sake of any readers who like cats), go here and search for recipe number 123.

One more, from a 1400s German cookbook, tells us of the health benefits of hedgehogs:

The meat of a hedgehog is good for lepers. Those who dry its intestines and grind them to a powder and eat a little of that are made to piss, even if they can not do so otherwise.

Well, since we are on the subject of hedgehog (also from Le Ménagier de Paris):

Hedgehog should have its throat cut, be singed and gutted, then trussed like a pullet, then pressed in a towel until very dry; and then roast it and eat with cameline sauce, or in pastry with wild duck sauce. Note that if the hedgehog refuses to unroll, put it in hot water, and then it will straighten itself.

These are some culinary bits and pieces that you probably have not seen before. There are numerous websites and books that cover medieval cookery. One of the most thoroughly informative is www.medievalcookery.com. I highly recommend it for its information and the erudition of its creator. There has not been an update to it in almost two years, and the contact link created a 404 error, so I do not know if the creator is still managing it regularly. Even without updates, it is a treasure trove.

As promised, next we will talk about medieval use of grains.

Vegetable Recipes

Vegetables were widely grown and consumed in the Middle Ages. Archaeological evidence suggests that meat was not usually part of the daily diet, so they must have had ways to prepare vegetables in different ways to avoid boredom. Let's look at a few.

The Middle Ages did have salads, collections of uncooked plants eaten for the flavor, but they did not have tomatoes and the types of lettuce we usually see in modern salads.

Purslane was a common ingredient, and is packed with vitamins and minerals. To this they might add primrose, mint, parsley, fennel, garlic, leeks, and the aromatics rosemary and sage, and top it with violet blossoms and rose petals.

Artichokes would be soaked in cold water that had been boiled with pepper, cinnamon, and ginger. The artichokes would then be baked with butter and vinegar and served with a sprinkling of sugar.

A recipe called "compost" was for root vegetables, and is found in the Forme of Cury, the cookbook from the kitchens of Richard II. It includes parsley roots, parsnips, carrots, radishes, turnips, a small cabbage, and a pear. A modern description of their preparation goes like this: 

Peel vegetables and chop them into bite-sized pieces. Parboil them until just tender, adding pears about halfway through cooking time. Remove from water, place on towel, sprinkle with salt, and allow to cool. Then put vegetables in large bowl and add pepper, saffron, and vinegar. Refrigerate for several hours. Then put wine and honey into a saucepan, bring to a boil, and then simmer for several minutes, removing any scum that forms on the surface. Let cool and add currants and remaining spices. Mix well and pour over vegetables. Serve cold. [link]

The illustration above is of compost from this page.

Here's a 14th century French recipe for a vegetable tart in translation [note: "bray" mans grind]:

To Make a Tart, take four handfuls of beets, two handfuls of parsley, an handful of chervil, a sprig of fennel and two handfuls of spinach, and pick them over and wash them in cold water, then cut them up very small; then bray with two sorts of cheese, to wit a hard and a medium, and then add eggs thereto, yolks and whites, and bray them in with the cheese; then put the herbs into the mortar and bray all together and also put therein some fine powder. Or instead of this have ready brayed in the mortar two heads of ginger and onto this bray your cheese, eggs and herbs and then cast old cheese scraped and grated onto the herbs and take it to the oven and then have you tart make and eat it hot. [link]

An excellent website that covers medieval cookery and links to other cookery sites can be found here. The recipes are translated and updated to make them easier to follow. Although I said we would talk about grains after today, the aforementioned website has a section on "Oddities" which I would like to share next.

Vegetables in the Middle Ages

By "vegetables" we are going to include any plant matter grown for food and not just flavoring (such as herbs and spices), because so much of what was grown for consumption in the Middle Ages was not "leafy greens." So what did they have?

Squashes and parsnips were mentioned by Pliny; the Roman cook book of Apicius has over a dozen recipes for squash. If you hollowed out certain squashes and dried the skin, they could become containers, utensils, ornamentation like masks, and even birdcages and musical instruments. Parsnips were common in European gardens until the 16th century.

Turnips were grown for consumption for thousands of years, important to the Classical and Medieval Eras, and making their way to Japan by 700CE. 

Cabbages were cultivated Before the Common Era, and were known in the Middle Ages as an inexpensive food that had an unfortunate odor when cooked and an unfortunate side effect when consumed. 

The wild pea was found all around the Mediterranean and have been eaten for millennia. Charles the Good, the Count of Flanders, wrote how the consumption of peas was a staple that staved off a famine in 1124-25.

Brussels sprouts were cultivated extensively in Brussels in the 13th century, but were known in Northern Europe since the 5th century.

Onions, garlic, fennel, shallots, leeks, carrots, beans, artichokes, lentils—all were known to the Romans and made use of in Medieval Europe.

Tomorrow I will share some vegetable recipes, and then later look at the more widely used grains.

Medieval Vegetarianism?

Modern stereotypes about medieval feasts suggest images of boars with apples in their mouths and giant turkey legs. Without adequate preservation techniques such as modern canning provides, the assumption is that fruits and vegetables would not survive the winter, but animals could be slaughtered at any time for food, and preserved by drying or with salt.

Recent research, however, has challenged the idea that meat was a significant portion of the daily diet. Early Christian thought questioned meat-eating. John Chrysostom, Origen, Jerome, and others were vegetarians. Many hermits renounced meat as part of their asceticism, and of course the Church during Lent forbids eating meat in order to make a personal sacrifice while contemplating the upcoming commemoration of the Crucifixion. The Rule of St. Benedict allowed fish and fowl, but meat from quadrupeds only to aid in illness.

Outside of strict Christian communities such as monasteries, how common was meat-eating? Here's an example: during the reign of Ine of Wessex (688 - 726), there are 11 surviving lists of what was served at feasts. They mention beef, mutton, salmon, poultry, some bread and cheese, along with honey and ale. The absence of vegetables on the lists does not necessarily mean vegetables were not present. As likely an explanation is that vegetables were so commonplace and expected that they were not worth mentioning.

There are few cookbooks from the Middle Ages, but there is a way to determine diet other than written lists of recipes: archaeology, and not just from finding the remains of trash heaps in excavated villages. There are answers in the bones.

If early medieval rulers consumed copious amounts of meat on a regular basis, that would likely be reflected in their remains. But an isotopic analysis of 2,023 skeletons from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds “found no evidence of people eating anything like this much animal protein,” says co-author Sam Leggett, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Edinburgh, in the statement. “If they were, we would find isotopic evidence of excess protein and signs of diseases like gout from the bones. But we’re just not finding that.” [link]

We are realizing that during centuries when 90-99% of the population was agrarian, the people were not just raising livestock. There must of course have been vegetables grown and used extensively, composing the largest part of the daily diet—the evidence of bones confirms it.

Let's explore a typical medieval vegetable garden next time and see what they were growing for food.

Mincemeat

With the holiday season upon us, folk are preparing to consume mincemeat pies at the conclusion of their meal. Growing up, I was told it was a dessert made from ground up fruit and spices and not to think of it as meat, and I was never tempted by it. Imagine my surprise, years later, to discover:
1. "meat" wasn't a euphemism
2. it's not a dessert, but a main dish
3. I loved it

Numbers one and three might not be a surprise or noteworthy, but number two was worth looking into. King Henry V had a mincemeat pie as a main dish for his coronation feast, and Henry VIII apparently preferred it as his Christmas supper. Its creation goes back further, however.

You might say it originated by accident. Crusaders returning home in the 12th century brought with them spices not found in western Europe before. These were tested as preservatives for meat, or ways to add flavor to dried meat. (The notion that spices were used to cover up the small of rotten meat should be dispelled. No one would eat rotten meat, and we had learned ways to preserve the meat of slaughtered animals long before this, through smoking/drying or salting.)

Cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg were the three chief spices used in the Yule dish, representing the gifts  brought by the Magi. These were added to minced (finely chopped) meat, often beef or beef tongue or lamb, as well as beef suet (the hard white fat from around the kidneys and loins). Early recipes add citrus peel and sugar, or dried and chopped apples.

Early pies were baked in an oblong shape, to represent the manger at the Nativity. Over time, the addition of sugar made them sweeter, and they began to migrate to the dessert course. At that point, they morphed into the traditional round pie shape, and then into tarts that could be easily picked up and eaten by hand.

Borromean Rings

You've seen them. Lots of times. Three circles interlinked. You find them in jewelry, and in the label of Ballantine beer. They may be used as a symbol of the Trinity, or the logo of the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians.

The name of the design comes from its use in the coat of arms of the Borromeo family. The family owns three islands in Lake Maggiore, and might have designed the rings to represent those. In any case, the design is used frequently in the Baroque palazzo and gardens built by Vitaliano Borromeo (1620-1690).

But the design goes back hundreds of years before Borromeo. We find its equivalent also in three triangles called "Odin's Triangle" or the valknut (Old Norse valr = "slain warriors" + knut = "knot"). The valknut was carved in stone pillars as far back as the 7th century.

One curious fact about the Rings is that, although we call them "interlinked" or "interwoven," they sort of aren't. In the above illustration, place your hand over the red as much as you can, and you'll see that the blue and green aren't linked. It's the same with any other two colors: no two are linked except by a third that runs through them. In this way, it is similar to a three-strand braid. Braid three ribbons together, and when you pull one out, the other two completely disengage.

And for a treat: how about some Borromean Onion Rings?

Mortrews

I have mentioned The Forme of Cury [Forms of Cooking] a few times before. It's the cookbook that gathers the best recipes from the cooks of King Richard II. If I had my choice, I'd eat Mortrews frequently!

The original recipe reads:

Mortrews. Take hennes and pork and seeþ hem togyder. Take the lyre of hennes and of þe pork and hewe it small, and grinde it al to doust; take brede ygrated and do þerto, and temper it with the self broth, and alye it with yolkes of ayren; and cast þeron powdour fort. Boile it and do þerin powdour of gynger, sugur, safroun and salt, and loke þat it be stondying; and flour it with powdour gynger.

 An excellent website has translated this as:

Mortrews. Take hens and pork and boil together. Take the liver of hens and of the pork and cut it small, and grind it to a fine powder; take grated bread and add, and mix with the broth, and mix it with egg yolks; and add powdour fort. Boil it and add ginger, sugar, saffron and salt, and make sure it's thick; and garnish with ginger.

The "powdour fort" was a mixture of ground spices.

It could be served as a soup, with more broth, or as a which stew with less broth and more bread. The name apparently comes from the fact that it is all ground up/mixed in a mortar. It sounds to me like an ideal use for leftover meat and bread. If you try it, let me know what you think.

Our Daily Bread

Bread has all the characteristics of a staple food: the plant is easy to grow, the product is relatively easy and cheap to produce, and it is adaptable to various shapes and uses. Human beings have been eating it for about 30,000 years, based on residue of starch found on tools used for pounding grain into meal.

The earliest breads were probably flatbreads, before rising or leavening agents were discovered. Some leavening would take place naturally, by airborne yeasts landing on dough left out. Pliny the Elder reported that Gauls and Iberians added the foam from beer to make bread that was lighter in texture.

The earliest known Arabic cookbook, The Book of Dishes, by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq (10th century), explains:

Wheat bread agrees with almost everybody, particular varieties made with a generous amount of yeast and salt and allowed to fully ferment and bake well. Such breads are lighter and digest faster. Jizmazaj (thin bread with tamarisk seeds) and ruqaq (very thin bread) are by comparison less nourishing and digest much faster. Bread baked in malla (pit with hot ashes and stones), tabaq (large flat pan) and any other similar varieties that do not ferment or bake well are hard to digest and cause stomach aches. Only people used to strenuous labor can eat them more often.

Bread was considered so important to people and the economy that it was heavily regulated. The Assize of Bread and Ale during the reign of Henry III (1207 - 1272) determined "proper" weight and price and quality of bread.

Bread was such an important part of daily life that the name for someone with whom you spend a lot of time, companion, comes from the Old French compaignon, "one with whom one shares bread" (from Latin com="with" and panis="bread").

The Forgotten Vegetable

In The Forme of Cury cookbook from Richard II's court, there is a recipe for "Rapes in Potage," "rapes" meaning turnips. Let me offer my translation of the recipe:

Take turnips and wash them, cut them into squares, parboil them. Take them out of the water, put them into broth and continue cooking. Mince onions and toss them with saffron and salt; add them to the pot. Sprinkle with sweet powder and serve. You can also do this [the author adds] with parsnips and skirrets.

From an 1885 German book

Turnips and parsnips we understand, but "skirrets" are mostly a mystery to modern cooks, despite a few attempts to create a revival.

The plant itself came from China, but traveled westward via trade to Europe. It became known in Germany as Zuckerwurzel ["sugar root"], and Hildegard of Bingen addressed its effects and medicinal properties in her treatise, Physica. The Dutch and Danish also call it "sugar root."

The Forme of Cury not only mentions them as a substitute for turnips, but also has a recipe for skirret fritters. In England, it was called skirwhit or skirwort which mean "white root." The whiteness and sweetness of the roots seem to be their chief attribute, praised by cooks through the ages.

The plant itself is hardy, resistant to cold and pests, and prefers moist soil—making it ideal for the English climate. The roots are best if dug up and eaten when the plant goes dormant in winter, making them a good source of food during the coldest months.

Modern attempts to work with skirret seem to disagree with the cooks of Richard II. The gardeners of Hampton Court have added this forgotten vegetable to their stock, and find that it is delicate enough that even parboiling ruins the flavor. Food historian Marc Meltonville says "Celebrate it on its own. Eat it raw or cube it up and fry it in butter with a little garlic, in an iron pan if possible." [link]

If you wish to try your hand at a long-lost root vegetable, you can order from here or here.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

"A Grete Pye" should look like this [source]

What will you do with all that turkey on Friday? Why not a "Great Pie" from the c.1450 cook book known now as Harleian MS 4016?

Grete pyes. Take faire yonge beef, And suet of a fatte beste, or of Motton, and hak all this on a borde small; and caste therto pouder of peper and salt; and whan it is small hewen, put hit in a bolle. And medle hem well; then make a faire large Cofyn, and couche som of this stuffur in. Then take Capons, Hennes, Mallardes, Connynges, and parboile hem clene; take wodekokkes, teles, grete briddes, and plom hem in a boiling pot; And then couche al this fowle in the Coffyn, And put in euerych of hem a quantite of pouder of peper and salt. Then take mary, harde yolkes of egges, Dates cutte in ij peces, reisons of coraunce, prunes, hole clowes, hole maces, Canell and saffron. But first, whan thoug hast cowched all thi foule, ley the remenaunt of thyne other stuffur of beef a-bought hem, as thou thenkest goode; and then strawe on hem this: dates, mary, and reysons, &c. And then close thi Coffyn with a lydde of the same paast, And putte hit in the oven, And late hit bake ynough; but be ware, or thou close hit, that there come no saffron nygh the brinkes there-of, for then hit wol neuer close.

My translation:

Great pies. Take fair young beef, and suet of a fat beast, or mutton, and hack it all on a chopping board; and throw in ground pepper and salt; and when it is chopped small, put it in a bowl.
And mix them well; then make a fair large coffin (crust) and put some of this stuffing in.
Then take Capons, Hens, Mallards, Rabbit, and parboil them clean; take woodcocks, teals, great birds, and submerge them in a boiling pot; and then place all this in the crust, and put in there a quantity of pepper and salt.
Then take [rosemary?], hard-boiled egg yolks, dates cut in half, currants, prunes, whole cloves, mace, cassia (a type of cinnamon) and saffron.
But first, before you stuff the poultry mixture in, put the rest of the original stuffing of beef around it, as you think good; and then strew on it this: dates, rosemary, currants, etc.
And then close the crust with a lid of the same pastry, and put it in the oven, and let it bake enough; but beware, before you close it (the crust) that you let no saffron come near the edges of the pastry, for then it will never close.

Let me know how it turns out.

Happy American Thanksgiving. 

Ginger

The European Middle Ages did not like bland food, and used spices extensively—often in combinations we would find odd or downright unappealing (although cinnamon-flavored pork tartlets are surprisingly very tasty). Among the many spices cultivated and grown in Europe was ginger.

Ginger has a long history of use for medicinal and culinary purposes. References to it indicate that it was used thousands of years ago in Southeast Asia, spreading elsewhere as trade routes were established. Ancient Rome procured it from trade with India and valued it greatly. By the Middle Ages, Arab cultures were spreading westward and carrying ginger rhizomes with them to plant and sell.

The name "ginger" [Zingiber officinale] is from the Old English gingifer, the adaptation of the Medieval Latin gingiber, from Classical Latin zinger, the Romans name for the spicy root they used in cooking and healing. (No, this is not the source of the modern term "a zinger," although relating a "zinger" to spiciness is tempting.) One author's history of ginger called it "the Alka-Seltzer of the Roman world." Ginger ale is still considered good for an upset stomach. The University of Salerno, famed for teaching medicine, claimed that a recipe for a happy old age was to "eat ginger, and you will love and be loved as in your youth."

From the 11th century, ginger became more popular as a flavoring agent, used in all sorts of medieval dishes. It became so popular that its import (it would not grow in the cold wet climates of the north, although it can be grown in well-warmed greenhouses, such as the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew) made the value (in 14th century England) of a pound of ginger equivalent to an entire sheep (1 shilling and 7 pence, if you must know).

There is a legend that Queen Elizabeth I created gingerbread men cookies as gifts for the men of her court. That is unverified, but gingerbread definitely was known to the Anglo-Saxons. A recipe for medieval gingerbread can be found here.

The Fork

17th century knife and fork

There is a point in the movie Becket (taken from the play of the same name by Jean Anouilh) that introduces the fork. King Henry II has never heard of it before, and doesn't see the point.* Forks did come to England rather late, but they were around much earlier elsewhere.

Ancient Greeks used two-tined forks as serving utensils, though not for transporting food directly to the mouth. Forks show up in the Middle East by the 7th century CE, used by aristocracy. In the 11th century, the Doge of Venice, Domenico Selvio, married a Byzantine princess, Theodora, who brought to Venice a case of forks, surprising the locals with her refusal to eat with her hands. Bishop Peter Damian of Ostia attributed her death to her "excessive delicacy."

"An Englishman named Thomas Coryate brought the first forks to England after seeing them in Italy during his travels in 1608." [link] This is not true of the "first forks," since documentary evidence of forks exists in England prior to that. This site shows examples of forks in wills and household accounts:

• The Will of John Baret of Bury St. Edmunds, 1463: "Itm J. yeve and beqwethe to Davn John Kertelynge my silvir forke for grene gyngor" [my translation: "Item: I give and bequeath to Davin John Kerteling my silver fork for green ginger."
• The Jewelhouse inventory of Henry VIII: "Item one spone wt suckett fork at the end of silver and gilt" [Note: a "suckett" fork was used to get preserves like ginger out of jars; John Baret's was probably also a suckett fork.]
• Inventory of property left by Henry VII: "Item, one Case wherein are xxi knives and a fork, the hafts being crystal and chalcedony, the ends garnished with gold"
• "Item, one Case of knives furnished with divers knives and one fork, whereof two be great hafts of silver parcel-gilt, the case covered with crimson velvet"

This is not to say that everyone in England had seen forks; only that forks were known at least to the upper classes. No doubt they were often made with expensive materials, and not accessible to everyone.

They started with two tines to prevent whatever was speared from twisting. The tines were straight, however, and some foods tended to slip off. More tines were eventually added for stability, and in the late 17th century in France we start to find curved tines meant for scooping and holding food more reliably.

Our word "fork" comes from Old English forca, meaning a pitchfork, from the Latin furca for pitchfork. The French called them forchette for "little pitchfork."

*You can see a clip here.

Scottish Independence...

...is a big topic these days. Today, in fact, Scotland is voting whether to stay in the United Kingdom or strike out on its own. If it did, it would be the 20th largest economy in the world, thanks especially to its top three imports. In order of their importance, they are oil, gas, and whiskey. Let's talk about the third one.

Lindores Whisky

Unlike wine, the fermented juice of grapes, whiskey is a distillation of fermented grain. Before the Common Era we find evidence of distillation in Babylon and Mesopotamia, originally for developing perfumes and medicines. We are not sure when and where the process was first adapted for drinking, but the Ancient Celts might have been using it to produce their version of the Latin aqua vitæ ["water of life"] for which their term was uisgebeatha or just uisge [pronounced "whiskey"].

Distillation of alcohol was done in 13th century Italy, using wine. Ramon Lull (1232 - 1315) even wrote about the process.

We think Christian monks brought the process to Ireland and Scotland between the 11th and 13th centuries, where the lack of grapes made it the best option for creating a strong alcoholic drink. The first recorded batch of Scotch whisky shows up in the Exchequer Rolls for 1494-95, granting eight measures of malt to Friar John Cor to make aqua vitæ. Friar John was a monk at Lindores Abbey in Fife. Irish whiskey was mentioned earlier: the Annals of Clonmacnoise in 1405 record the death of a chieftain from "a surfeit of aqua vitae" at Christmas.

The Dissolution of Monasteries (1536 - 1541) in Scotland by Henry VIII forced many monks into private production. Sad, because by this time Scotland was the world leader in production of whisky. Keep in mind, however, that whiskey at that time was not aged, and so was a very different drink from what we expect today.

You may also have noticed that I have spelled the word two ways. "whiskey" is the word used in Ireland and the United States; "whisky" is the spelling used in Canada, Scotland, and the rest of the world. Some U.S. brands use the e-less spelling despite this convention. "Scotch whisky" is whiskey made in Scotland. There is discussion these days about whether some Scottish distilleries would even move to England after independence in order to keep the same export policies and fees in place. We should know soon whether this will be an issue.

The Larder

In the Book of Proverbs, we find "Like a snow-cooled drink at harvest time is a trustworthy messenger to the one who sends him; he refreshes the spirit of his master." [25:13, New International Version] It is believed that the tribes, like the Greeks and Romans, used snow to cool drinks.

Packed in straw and buried deep, snow from the mountains could be preserved for a time. References in the Classical Era to cooled drinks are not matched, however, by references to cooled foods. The scale required to refrigerate food was too large, even if they had thought of it. (Actually, the Persians did think of it, digging pits filled with ice and placing food there. This method did not seem to spread elsewhere.)

The Middle Ages found different ways to work with food over time. The Middle English word larder denoted a place to store meat (and is related to the word "lard"). It would of course be in the coolest part of the house, on the side facing away from the sun and in the lowest part of the house. It also should be close to where the food was going to be prepared and cooked. (An underground root cellar was for long-term storage, different from a larder.) The larder in a large household might be run by a larderer, responsible for maintaining the meat and fish used by the kitchen.

The room might also contain a thrawl, a stone slab on which meat would be laid to keep it cooler than it would be on another surface. (This word was used in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, England.)

There were other ways to preserve food, rather than cold. Brining, hanging to dry, smoking, curing into sausage and bacon, etc. The notion that the spice trade was so important to medieval Europe because they had to cover the taste of rotten meat is silly. Preserving meat for use later does not require it to be fresh-looking and plastic-wrapped as our modern society prefers.

May Day Quiche

Baking, pulled from a neat food history site for kids

The Earl of Bradford once produced a cookbook. That makes it sound more historically interesting than it really is (apologies to the earl), because it was just a few years ago. In it, he and his co-author mention that English peasants, in the week after the vernal equinox, had the right to the milk that would normally have gone to the lord on whose land they were tenants.

With this extra milk they could make cheese and butter that would last for awhile. In that honor, I present a cheese tart recipe from the Forme of Cury book (mentioned before) assembled by the cooks of Richard II. The recipe is for "Tart de Bry" and reads like this:

Tart de Bry. Take a crust ynche depe in a trap. Take yolkes of ayren rawe & chese ruayn & medle it & þe yolkes togyder. Do þerto powdour gynger, sugur, safroun, and salt. Do it in a trap; bake it & serue it forth.

Let's see how the translation works if we stick closely to the original:

• Take a crust an inch deep in a trap [trapped in a pan/dish]
• Take yolks of eggs raw & autumn* [older; not soft] cheese & mix it and the yolks together.
• Add thereto powdered ginger, sugar, saffron, and salt.
• Put it in the trap.
• Bake it and serve it forth.

Pretty straightforward—forgetting for the moment the near-complete lack of measurements. Keep in mind that precise measurements for baking did not really exist until 20th century United States and the invention of Betty Crocker, with the intent to make baking easy for any household. Medieval cooks no doubt had their own tools and cups with which they learned to make the same dish over and over, relying on memory and experience.

We are pretty sure that the "Bry" of the title would have resembled our modern Brie, but was probably not as soft as modern Brie. Another version of this recipe gives directions to grate the cheese, so it would have to be more firm than we expect Brie to be. If you are interested in more medieval cookery, there are many websites devoted to it, especially this one.

Hope you had a happy May Day!

*ruayn was a word for cheese made from the milk from cows that grazed the autumn fields. Remember that tenants were allowed to graze their animals on common land after the harvest.

Lutefisk!

Today is an important day in Sweden: Anna's Day, celebrating all people named Anna. It is also the traditional day to start preparation of lutefisk in Sweden and Finland, so that it is ready for the traditional meal on Christmas Eve.

It is made from cod, soaked in cold water, changed daily, for five or six days, then left in cold water with lye for two days. The fish swells and takes on a gelatinous consistency. This stage also raises its pH value to 11-12, making it very caustic and downright dangerous to eat. In order to make it edible, it must be soaked in cold water for another week, changing the water daily to flush out the lye.

Why do this? The origin of the process is uncertain (see below), but the lye would make the fish unappetizing to wild animals; perhaps it was done to allow large amounts of fish to be left hanging on drying racks out in the cold air. It certainly helps preserve the fish. Treating food to make it more alkaline is also used in the preservation/preparation of corn into hominy.

Lutefisk has a history that stretches back centuries. Scholarly research claims it is first mentioned in the late 18th century; a cookbook from 1845 describes the preparation of the lye used to make lutefisk by combining limestone and birch ash in water. Historians, however, have found a reference to lutefisk by a Swedish archbishop in 1555, and that a letter from King Gustav I (1496 - 1560) mentions it in 1540.

Folklorists suggest an even earlier reference: when Vikings raided Ireland, St. Patrick had his followers make them an offering of fish—spoiled fish. The Vikings seemed not to mind, so Patrick had his people pour lye on the fish, hoping to poison the Vikings. The Vikings, against all expectation, found the fish tasty and demanded the recipe.

But let honesty prevail: the major Viking raids in Ireland happened a few hundred years after Patrick.  Still, lutefisk was probably around prior to King Gustav. The "Vikings enjoy something we think is vile" was probably an old joke at the expense of Vikings. I suppose the tale could be partially true, but Patrick was not likely to be the instigator.

So go buy some whitefish (cod or ling), start soaking it in cold water, and get some birch ash ready!