SC - The first fish recipe

[Kerri Canepa]

I was looking through _To the King's Taste_ when I ran across a most intriguing
recipe. It's Tart de Brymlent which is mostly fruit with salmon in it. Hm....
Looked it up in Forme of Curye to make sure I had the right one.

Tart de Brymlent
Take fyges and raysons and waisshe hem in wyne, and grinde hem smale with apples
and peres clene ypiked. Take hem up and cast hem in a pot with wyne and sugar.
Take salwar salmon ysode other codlyng other haddok and bray hem smale and do
thereto white powdors and hool spices and salt and seeth it, and whanneit is
sode ynowz, take it up, and do it in a vessel, and lat it kele. Make a coffyn an
ynche depe and do the fars therein. Plant it bove with prunes and damysyns, take
the stones out, and with dates quarte rede, and pike clene, and cover the coffyn
and bake it wel and serve it forth.

Take figs and raisins and wash them in wine and grind them small with apples and
pears that have been cored. Take it up and cast it in a pot with wine and sugar.
Take (young?) salmon that has been poached* or cod or haddock and cut them small
and add white powder and whole spices and salt and simmer it, and when it is
simmered* enough, take it up and put it in a vessel and let it cool. Make a
pastry an inch deep and put the mixture in it. Put prunes and damsons (take the
pits out) on top with quartered dates without pits and cover the pastry and bake
it well and serve it forth.

*ysode or sode seems to mean "sodden" which I've interpreted to mean poached
when referring to the salmon and simmered when referring to the mixture.
Literally it probably means "wet."

For the first attempt, my apprentice and I used the following:

For the filling:
2 Bosc pears
2 Pacific Rose apples
10 dried Mission figs (about 2/3 cup)
2/3 cup raisins
2/3 cup red wine (merlot)
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp white powder (recipe from _Take a Thousand Eggs_)
1/2 tsp grains of paradise
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups finely flaked poached Coho salmon

The topping:
5 small plums cut into slices
6 dates cut into slices
6 prunes cut into slices

The coffin:
1 cup all purpose flour
water

Mixed first six ingredients together and put over medium heat. While it was
cooking, poached the salmon (we started with 1 3/4 lbs of fish) in 2 cups of
water and some salt. Let it cool and flaked it. When the fruit mixture had
completely gone soft, added the flaked salmon, the white powder, grains of
paradise, and salt. Had to add about a cup of water because the mixture was too
dry to boil. Raised the temperature so that the mixture bubbled and stirred
frequently to prevent sticking. When fish had broken up into fine bits and fruit
was mushy, took it off heat and let it cool until no longer steaming. Made the
coffin dough with flour and enough water to hold together in a ball. Kneaded
dough for about three minutes and removed a third for the cover. Rolled dough
out and placed in a 10" greased quiche pan with some dough overlapping the
edges. Spread fruit/fish mixture into pan and placed cut fruits on top. Covered
with rolled out dough, rolled edges together to seal, put four slashes in top,
and put in 350 degree F oven for 30 minutes.

Notes: For a dish with a combination of foods I wasn't sure about, it was quite
good. We figured we'd cook the fruit mixture less before we added the fish and
make sure the fish was finely flaked before adding. 

We, of course, made several guesses. We could have used more wine; we couldn't
tell there had been any put into it at all. We could have used cod (since it was
available fresh) but went with salmon although it's Pacific not Atlantic salmon.
Is there much of a taste difference? The "whole spices" could be anything and we
thought about adding cloves and cubebs but cloves can be rather overpowering if
not used carefully and we had no cubebs. We did have grains of paradise so we
used that. They gave a spicy, peppery almost taste to the mixture. We think we'd
add another 1/2 tsp of both the white powder and grains of paradise. Neither of
us had tried making a coffin and since we knew it wasn't supposed to be eaten
necessarily, we just made a flour/water dough. Kneading the dough gave us a
strong durable container that neither cracked nor leaked and we hadn't prebaked
it either. It would definitely stand on its own on a platter. Cutting the top
off could certainly be turned into a one server show since the diners would have
no idea what was inside and with the fruit laid out decoratively on top, it was
quite pretty. We had way too much sliced fruit and used all the plums but half
of the prunes and figs. We'll probably just slice the plums in half next time.

It tastes very much like modern "minced meat" filling but with just enough
salmon flavor to note the contrast. It's very good hot and okay but not exciting
at room temperature. The recipe above would probably make two 6" pans worth.
Lorna Sass translates "Brymlent" as "mid lent" and I suppose that could be
right. If so, given that medieval cooks often would substitute fish into their
meat dishes, if this was a lenten dish, I wonder what meat would have been used
for meat days? A ground pork would be delectable but beef marrow would probably
work just as well. 

As an aside, this dish could actually be considered healthy by today's
standards. There's no additional fats but that in the salmon, not much sugar or
salt, and there's lots of fruit of different types in it. A diabetic coworker
tried a taste and pronounced it good (she looked surprised too). We're only
planning to serve a 6" pan to about 8 people so portions would be pretty small
but probably worth at least one daily serving of fruit.

Kerri
Cedrin Etainnighean, OL
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