SC - Re: A Paste of Pippins

[Elise Fleming]

This is what I got from a friend who does Irish Viking stuff in the 
950-1200 period (mostly)

Charles ragnar
- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 23:14:21 +1100
From: Andrea Willett <willetta at mail.austasia.net>
To: Charles McCathie - Neville <charlesn at sunrise.srl.rmit.edu.au>
Subject: Re: SC - Irish cuisine (fwd)

Hello Charles!

> These folk would really appreciate a reply - I thought i recalled you 
> providing a couple of pointers on living-history. (If there aren't any, 
> sorry to waste the time)
> 
(snip)
> 
> Subject: SC - Irish cuisine
> 
(snip)
> 
> No, unfortunatley there does not seem to be any existing manuscripts.
> perhaps one will show up. There is some anecdotal evidence, however. If
> anyone has newer information, please, please share it.
(snip)

To the best of my knowledge this is correct. The post I made in response to
John Brattan's query about Viking recipes on Living History Net was based
on plant and animal remains from the digs in Dublin and from what I know of
Viking cooking utensils. You can post it to SCA cooks in my name if you
think they will find it useful. For what it's worth here it is.

Subject: Recipes from Viking-Age Ireland?

There is hardly any (practically none) WRITTEN evidence for Viking food
that I know
of. The oldest cookbook that I have seen is "An early 13th century
northern-European cookbook" by Rudolph Grewe in Proceedings - Current
Research in Culinary History: Sources, Topics and Methods, 1985. A lot of
the recipes in this book rely on almond milk however and this is most
likely to have come into common usage in northern kitchens from the
middle-east during or after the Crusades.

Analysis of soil samples from Viking/Norman Dublin (which is my main
geographical area of interest) indicate that of the meat that was eaten 90%
was from mature cattle (beef not veal), 7% from young pigs and the
remaining 3% from sheep or goats. Horse was also occasionally eaten as were
dogs, cats, deer, seals and whales. They have identified the remains of
crushed hens eggs so they must have had chooks. Of the fish bones they have
identified cod and ling. "In the general urban debris shells of cockle and
mussel were common, with oyster and scallop more scarcely represented.
Limpet and periwinkle were very rare, but this perhaps reflects the fact
that there was no rocky coast nearby." 

Grains and pulses identified include oats, barley, rye, wheat and peas.
Fruits and nuts: hazelnuts, hawthorn, fig, strawberry, walnut, apple, sour
cherry, plum, sloe, rosehip, blackberry, raspberry, elder, rowan,
frochan/bilberry and grape. Other edible plants include wild celery,
Brassica sp. (turnip, cabbage, etc.), rape (now renamed canola for
political correctness), black mustard, wild carrot, fennel, radish and
nettle.

To the poultry and game one could reasonably add rabbit, hare, turtle,
goose, duck (wild if possible), partridge and quail. Grouse would be lovely
but it doesn't exist in Australia, I tried to locate some for the Scottish
lunch at the Conference. Avoid pheasant (It originated in Asia and I don't
know how early it came west), turkey (American) and Guinea fowl (African).
Fish and shellfish I don't know well enough to advise about additions to
the original list with the possible exceptions of trout (preferably brown
trout), salmon and herring.

Regarding grains and pulses: Do not use white bread or flour for your
meals. Sifting the flour would have been too much effort for anyone but the
household of a king or major chiefton. You can come up with quite tasty
wholemeal pastry recipes if you try. I came up with a very yummy recipe for
"Haw Tarts" which used a thin pastry of wholemeal flour with the addition
of ground and chopped hazelnuts to hold a thick strained syrup of hawthorn
berries and honey. The name got a good laugh too. Pity hawthorn berries
aren't commercially available, I'd like to use it at the Conference. Keep a
look out in peoples paddocks for some of the rare fruits and greens like
haws, elderberries, rosehips (from wild not garden roses) and stinging
nettle tops as they make interesting additions to meals and help distance
you from "B-B-Q chook and roast lamb syndrome". The fig and grape mentioned
above are imports and were found in a 13th century layer so they are
probably not suitable for your group. "Conspiuous absentees" from among the
Dublin finds were said to be coriander, and hops. Oh, and only use dried
peas never fresh.

The above list is not exhaustive for Dublin or any other Viking site. Soil
samples actually tested were only a very small proportion of what was
excavated and what was available in the area where your club is set could
be very different from what I can prove for mine. Are you in the
Scandinavian homelands? Have you emigrated west? East? Are you raiding
along the Italian coast looking to sack Rome? Local ingredients available
would be different in each case and certain non-local foods may have been
available in much more limited quantities as imports. As a general rule of
thumb, the bulkier an import and/or the farther it has to travel the rarer
and more expensive it would have been and therefore the more frugal you
should be in its use.

On cooking methods what can one say? Roast meat on a spit or bake it in an
oven? I don't know if that was quite as common a cooking method as people
seem to think except among the upper classes. Meat in a stew can be made to
stretch a lot farther that roast. What social class do you portray? Bread
might have been baked on a bakestone beside the fire or in a dedicated
baker's oven, I don't know. Boiled meat we can prove. There was mention of
oxen being boiled in one of the sagas and boiled pickled pork or silverside
is VERY yummy. Stews would certainly be very common. Roll the meat in flour
and brown it and the vegetables in a frypan before you stew them. I don't
know if this is period (there is not enough evidence to tell one way or the
other) but it will improve the flavor of your stew immeasurably, so will
leaving the bones in (in a muslin bag if you wish to remove them at the
last minute). If you wish to thicken it use bread or egg. Pies? I don't
know. A self-supporting pie along the lines of a Melton Mowbray pork pie is
feasible but there is no evidence of anything resembling a pie dish. There
have been several of those "frying-pan" things found so obviously they
fried things. Whether they were used for meat, omelets or griddle cakes I
don't know. Pickled, dried and salted meats and fish would also have been
common, don't miss out on the ham and soused fish.

Apart from that all I can add is that you take ingredients and utensils you
know/think you know that they had and work forward.  You take the recipes
and ingredients that are synonomous with their cuisine today and subtract
modern and late period ingredients and work backwards. Somewhere in the
middle you reach your own interpretation of what you think they might have
eaten. As I said earlier, there are no extant "Viking" recipies. As long as
you USE what information is available no-one really has any right to say
that your version is any more valid than theirs. We all do the best we can.
Just keep in mind that it is an interpretation based on what you know at
the time. If someone comes up with additional EVIDENCE be prepared to
change your mind. It's so very easy to get set in our ways once we've made
a decision on something.

Andrea Willett
willetta at mail.austasia.net


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