SC - Protectorate Feast booklet (full text - long)

[Decker, Terry D.]

> As one of those who can not open this file atly interested in it, 
> 
> ..please, please......?? Could you send it in an email??
> 
> 
> Andrea M.
> deewolff at aol.com
> "Mac User"

Awright, although I've already posted the recipes.  Here's the full text you
wanted, sans the pretty fonts and formatting which disappeared when I moved
it from Rich Text to Plain Text.

Bear



The Boke of the Feast
of 
Protectorate XXIV


Barony of Namron, 7 October A.S. XXXIV



This feast has been prepared from recipes believed to originate in the
Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.  These recipes have been adapted
and prepared for your gustatory pleasure by your  kitchener and his staff.
We hope that our endeavors will meet your approval.

We would like to thank the SCA Cooks for their assistance in locating some
of these recipes, and we would especially like to thank Lord Stefan li Rous
and Stefan's Florilegium for compiling and archiving discussions which
helped researching this feast.

Baric Firehand
Kitchener



The Menu

Jumbles
Manchet
Marmalade


The First Course

Filet of Chicken in Orange Sauce
Filet of Whiting in Apple and Wine Sauce
Sweet Spinach Tarte
Sweet Potatoes


The Second Course

Roast Beef
Rice Pudding
Peascods

The Final Course

Shrewsbury Cakes



The Receipts

Jumbals

To make finer Jumbals    To make Jumbals more fine and curious than the
former, and neerer to the taste of the Macaroon, take a pound of sugar, beat
it fine.  Then take as much fine wheat flowre, and mixe them together.  Then
take two whites and one yolk of an Egge, half a quarter pound of blanched
Almonds:  then beat them very fine altogether, with half a dish of sweet
butter and a spoonfull of Rose water, and so work it with a little Cream
till it come to a very stiff paste.  Then roul them forth as you please:
and hereto you shall also, if you please, add a few dryed Anniseeds finely
rubbed, and strew then into the paste, and also Coriander seeds.

				Gervase Markham
				The English Hous-wife, 1615

1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 egg whites
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup butter
2 oz. coarsely ground blanched almonds
1/3 cup cream
1 teaspoon rosewater
1 teaspoon ground anise or coriander seed (optional)

Whip 1/2 cup sugar with egg whites to form a heavy liquid.
Sift remaining flour and sugar together.  Cut the butter in until the
mixture crumbs.
Stir egg yolk, rosewater, and cream into the crumbs.
Stir in the egg whites and sugar and the ground almonds.
Stir in the ground anise or coriander seed if desired.
Form loops, fancy knot patterns, or plain round cookies on a baking sheet
covered with baker's parchment.
Bake at 400 degress F. for 12 minutes or until the edges turn brown.
Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.

Notes:  Rather than using ground anise or coriander seed, anise or coriander
seeds can be sprinkled on the cookies before baking.

Jumbals are not as sweet as modern cookies and the spices rather than the
sugar provide most of the flavor.


Manchet

To Make Fine Manchet.    Take halfe a bushell of fine flour twise boulted,
and a gallon of faire luke warm water, almost a handful of white salt, and
almost a pint of yest, then temper these together without any more liquor,
as hard as ye can handle it: then let it lie halfe an hower, then take it
up, and make your Manchetts, and let them stande almost an hower in the
oven. Memorandum, that of every bushell of meale may be made five and
twentie caste of bread, and every loaf to way a pound besyde the chesill. 

	The Good Huswife's Handmaide for the Kitchen, 1594


5-6 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon dry active yeast
1 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the water and let the water turn
creamy (10 to 15 minutes).
Add the salt.
Stir in the flour, until the dough forms a ball.  Remove the dough to a well
floured surface and knead in the remaining flour.
Place the dough into an oiled bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place for
30 to 40 minutes.
Place the dough on a floured surface.  Divide into four parts.
Roll each piece of dough into a ball and place it  on a greased baking
sheet.
Bake at 400 degrees F. for about 45 minutes.

Note:  Other manchet recipes tell the baker to score the loaf around the
middle with a knife to let the loaf expand properly in the oven.


Marmalade

To preserve Oranges and Lymonds.    Take your Oranges and Lymonds large and
well coloured, and take a raspe of steel, and raspe the outward rind from
them.  Then lay them in water three days and three nights.  Then boyle them
tender and shift them in the boyling to take away there bitterness, and when
they bee boyled tenderly, take two-pound sugar clarified with a pint of
water, and when your syrop is made, and betwixt hot and cold, put in your
Lymonds and Oranges, and there let them bee infused all night.  The next
morning let them be boyled two or three walmes in your Syrope, let them not
boyle to long in the sugar, because the rinds will be tough.  Take your
Lymonds out and boyle your Syrope thicker, and so when it is colde, put them
up and keepe them all the yeare.

		A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, 1608

5 oranges, large lemons, or mix of the fruits (Seville or bitter oranges are
preferred)
9 cups cold water
8 cups of sugar (4 or 5 cups if sweet oranges are used).

Remove the rind with a coarse grater or peel the fruit and chop the rind.
Shred the pulp and remove the seeds.
Place the rind, pulp and water in a large saucepan.  Cover and let stand for
24 hours.
Bring to a boil and stir in the sugar until dissolved.
Remove from the heat, cover and let stand for about 24 hours.
Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for about 2 hours. 
Return to a boil for about 20 minutes.
Remove from heat and decant the marmalade into sterile jars or molds.
Refrigerate.

Notes:  I was using Valencia oranges and reduced sugar.  The marmalade took
about 4 hours before it reached the point where I was able to pour it in the
molds and even them it did not set up as solidly as commercial marmalade.


The First Course

Filet of Chicken in Orange Sauce

To boyle a Capon with Orenges after Mistres Duffelds Way.    Take a Capon
and boyle it with Veale, or with good marie bone, or what your fancy is.
Then take a good quantitie of that broth, and put it in an earthen pot by it
selfe, and put thereto a good handfull of Currans, and as manie prunes, and
a few whole maces, and some Marie, and put to this broth a good quantitiie
of white Wine or of Calarret, and so let them seeth softlye together;  Then
take your Orenges, and with a knife scrape off oll of the filthinesse of the
outside of them.  Then cut them in the middest, and wring out the juyce of
three or four of them, put the juyce into the broth with the rest of your
stuffe.  Then slice your Orenges thinne and have uppon the fire readie a
skillet of faire seething water, and put your slice Orenges into the water
and when that water is bitter, have more readie, and so change them still as
long as you can find the great bitternesse in the water, which will be five
or seven times,  or more.  If you find need:  then take them from the water,
and let that runne cleane from them:  then put close orenges into your potte
with your broth, and so let them stew together till your Capon be readie.
Then make your sops with this broth, and cast on a little Sinamon, Ginger,
and Sugar, and upon this lay your Capon, and some of your Orenges upon it,
and some of your Marie, and toward the end of the boyling of your broth, put
in a little Vergious, if you think best.

			The Good Huswives Handmaid, 1588

1 quart beef or veal stock or broth 
8 chicken breasts (or 1 capon)
1/4 cup currants (raisins)
1/4 cup prunes
2 blades of mace or 1/8 teaspoon ground mace
1/8 teaspoon ground rosemary
1/4 cup dry white wine (or claret)
1 cup orange juice
1 orange sliced thin, seeds removed
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon sugar

Place 1 cup of stock  in a sauce pan.
Put remaining stock in a pot.  Add chicken.  Bring to a low boil, reduce
heat and simmer until the chicken is done and fork tender.
Add currants, prunes, mace, rosemary, and wine to the cup of stock.  Simmer
for about 10 minutes, then add orange juice and orange slices.  Cover and
let simmer on low heat until the chicken is ready.  Add water if necessary,
to keep from cooking dry.
When the chicken is ready, remove it to a platter.
Stir the cinnamon, ginger, and sugar into the sauce.
Pour the sauce on the chicken or serve it on the side.

Notes:  I was trying for a specific effect, filets of chicken and filets of
fish, which wasn't to successful.  The chicken breast was too dry to some
people taste and the white looked strange.  I believe whole chicken or cut
up whole chicken would be best.

I would also brown the chicken before committing it to the pot for a
pleasant visual effect and I would steam rather than boil.  Gunthar suggests
that a slow braise might be effective.

Filet of Whiting in Apple and Wine Sauce

To fry Whitings.    First flay them and wash them clean and seale them, that
doon, lap them in floure and fry them in Butter and oyle. Then to serve
them, mince apples or onions and fry them, then put them into a vessel with
white wine, vergious, salt, pepper, clove and mace, and boile them together
on the Coles, and serve it upon the Whitings. 

				Richard Pynson
				The Boke of Cookery, 1500
				(as presented in Food and
Cooking in 16th Century
Britian by Peter Brears)
  
Note:  The are some questions about the authenticity of this recipe.  I
chose to use it, giving Brears the benefit of the doubt that the recipe does
exist and that the only alteration was to modernize the language. 

According to Terry Nutter, Pynson was a printer who set the Noble Boke off
Cookry, of which edition the only known copy is in the in the library of the
Marquis of Bath at Longleat House.  The Napier edition of the Noble Boke off
Cookry  does not show a recipe for whiting, but this may be a difference
between the two editions or it may be that Brears has modernized the
English, replacing a more archaic  term with "whiting."

8 filets of whiting, skin removed
1-2 cups flour
4 Tablespoons of butter
4 Tablespoons of olive oil

Rinse the whiting filets and dredge them in the flour until coated.
Heat a large frying pan on medium high heat and add oil and butter.
Fry the filets until brown.
Drain the filets and serve with the apple and wine sauce.


2 apples, peeled, cored and minced
1/3 cup white wine
1/4 teaspoon verjuice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground mace
Sweat the minced apples in a sauce pan over medium heat until very soft.
Add wine and verjuice.  Stir.
Add spices.  Stir.  
Cook together for 5 to 10 minutes.  Add water or more wine if necessary.
Serve on the whiting filets or in a bowl with them.

Notes:  The oil and butter for frying the fish needs to be very hot to keep
the filets from being oily. 

Flouring the filets, then letting them rest on a tray in the walk-in cooler
seemed to improve  the flour coating and kept the filets from getting too
soft.

I recommend using the amounts of ingredients in the sauce recipe as
approximates and that the sauce be prepared by taste. 


Sweet Spinach Tart 

A Spinnage Tart.  Take a good store of Spinage, and boyl it in a Pipkin,
with White Wine, till it be soft as pap; then take it and strain it well
into a pewter dish, not leaving any part unstrained; then put to it
Rose-water, great store of Sugar and cinamon, and boyle it till it be thick
as Marmalade.  Then let it coole, and after fill your Coffin and adorn it...

				Gervase Markham
				The English Hous-wife, 1615

1 pound spinach (fresh or frozen) cleaned and chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup water
1/3 cup sugar (or more)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Boil spinach in wine and 1/2 cup water until very soft.
Press through a colander or run through a food processor to mince large
pieces of spinach.
Combine sugar and 1/2 cup water in a pan  and bring to a boil.
Stir in spinach and cinnamon.
Reduce heat to medium and cook until almost dry.
Put spinach into pie shell.  Cool.

After cooling the tart can be adorned with fruit, powdered sugar, crystal
sugar, etc.  One tester suggested sliced hardboiled eggs.

Notes:  One third cup of sugar sweetens the spinach without being cloying.
A cup of sugar would make a thicker syrup and make the spinach closer to the
marmalade of the original recipe.

One teaspoon of fresh cinnamon provides a nice bite without being
overpowering.

Fresh spinach may require additional water or wine in the first boil.  I
used frozen spinach for availability and speed.  I used Malavasia wine,
which is fairly strong, and cut it with water for expedience.  The spinach
absorbed much of the liquid.


Elizabethan Pie Shell

Another Way.  Then make your paste with butter, fair water, and the yolkes
of two or three Egs, and so soone as ye have driven your paste, cast on a
little sugar, and rosewater, and harden your paste afore in the oven.  Then
take it out, and fill it, and set it in againe.

			The Good Huswifes Handmaid, 1588


1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup flour (approx.)
2 egg yolks
1/3 cup water
sugar

In a bowl, cut butter into 1 cup of flour, until it crumbs.
Add egg yolks and cut into mixture.  Add additional flour a Tablespoon at a
time until the moisture is absorbed into the crumbs.
Add the water and cut into mixture.  Add additional flour a Tablespoon at a
time, as needed, until the moisture is absorbed into the crumbs.
Push the crumbs into a ball, working the dough gently for a few seconds to
smooth it.
Let the dough rest for 15 to 30 minutes.
Roll out the crusts on a floured surface and transfer to pie pans.  The
recipe makes two 8 or 9 inch pie shells.
Prick the pie shells to let air vent from between the shell and the pan.
Sprinkle sugar on the shell before baking.  I used about a scant 1/4
teaspoon granulated white.

If the shell is to be filled after baking, bake the shell at 325 degrees F
for about 35 minutes or until very light brown.
If the filling needs to be baked in the shell, bake the shell at 325 degrees
F for about 10 minutes, remove, fill and continue baking as per the filling
recipe.

Notes:  This recipe makes very light, crisp pie shells.  If the dough is
worked minimally, the result is flaky and very similar to modern pie shells.
The more the dough is worked, the more the pie shell resembles a crisp or
cracker.  

By taste, salt is noticeably missing from the crust, but the sugar modifies
the taste.  A fine ground white sugar or a brown sugar might present
interesting differences.

As written, this recipe appears to be for a dessert shell, but it might also
represent an interesting contrast for a savory filling.


Sweet Potatoes

To butter Potato roots.  Take the roots & bole them in water till they bee
verie soft, then peele them and slice them, then put some rosewater to them
& sugar & the pill of an orenge, & some of the iuice of the orenge, so let
them boile a good while, then put some butter to them, & when the butter is
melted serve them. This way you may bake them, but put them unboiled into
the paste.

	Elynor Fettiplace
	The Receipt Book of Ladie Elynor Fettiplace, 1647


Note:  Elynor Fettiplace was an Elizabethan lady who began compiling her
recipes in 1604 after many years in the kitchen.  The book was passed to her
niece in 1647.


2 lbs sweet potatoes
1/2 cup water
juice of 1 orange (4-5 Tablespoons)
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon ground orange peel
1/2 cup butter
In a pan, cover the sweet potatoes with water and boil them until very soft,
about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Remove the sweet potatoes from the pan.  Cool slightly.  Peel and slice.
Mix the water, orange juice, sugar and orange peel in a pan and heat
stirring.
After the sugar dissolves, add the sweet potato to the syrup, seperating the
slices.
Stir the mixture gently to prevent burning, turning the sweet potato to coat
the slices with the syrup.  Add water if necessary.
When the syrup has cooked down, remove the pan from the heat and add the
butter.  Stir gently until the butter is melted and blended into the sweet
potatoes.
Put the sweet potatoes into a serving dish and present to the table.

Notes:  Two pounds of sweet potato will fill an 8" or 9" pie pan.

The results resemble whipped potato potatoes, if the sweet potatoes are
thoroughly boiled.


The Second Course

Roast Beef

The best bastings for meats.  Then to know the best bastings for meat, which
is sweet butter, sweet oil, barrelled butter, or fine rendered up seam, with
cinnamon, cloves and mace.  There be some that will baste only with water,
and salt, and with nothing else; yet it is but opinion, and that must be the
world's master always. 
To know when meat is enough.  Lastly to know when meat is roasted enough;
for as too much rareness is unwholesome, so too much dryness is not
nourishing. Therefore to know when it is the perfect height, and is neither
too moist nor too dry, you shall observe these signs first in your large
joints of meat; when the steam or smoke of the meat ascendeth, either
upright or else goeth from the fire, when it beginneth a little to shrink
from the spit, or when the gravy which drppeth from it is clear without
bloodiness, then is the meat enough . . .
				Gervase Markham
				The English Hous-wife, 1615

Take a beef roast.
Baste with melted butter.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper and crushed rosemary.
My opinion for the baste.
Place in a roasting pan fat-side up.  Roast 30-35 minutes per pound at 325
degree F.   Baste every half hour with melted butter.


Rice Pudding
Rice Puddings.  Take halfe a pound of Rice, and steep it in new Milk a whole
night, and in the morning drain it, and let the Milk drop away, and take a
quart of the best, sweetest, and thickest Cream, and put the Rice into it,
and boyl it a little.  Then set it to cool an hour or two, and after put in
the yolkes of half a dozen Eggs, a little Pepper, Cloves, Mace, Currants,
Dates, Sugar and Salt, and having mixt them well together, put in a great
store of Beef suet well beaten, and small shred, and so put it into the
farms, and boyl them as before shewed, and serve them after a day old.
				Gervase Markham
				The English Hous-wife, 1615

1 cup rice
3 cups milk
1 cup cream
3 egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon mace
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar (brown or white)
1/4 cup currants (raisins)
1/4 cup chopped dates
3 Tablespoons minced suet

Put the rice and milk in a pan.  Bring to a gentle boil.  Cover pan.  Reduce
heat and allow to simmer until rice is soft (about 30 minutes) and the milk
is absorbed.
Drain off any excess milk.
Add the cream.  Bring to a low boil.  Reduce heat.  Simmer for 3 to 5
minutes.  Cover and remove from heat.
While the cream is absorbed and the rice cools, mix the remaining
ingredients together in a bowl.
Stir the mixed ingredients into the rice.  Cook over low heat for about 5
minutes, until the sugar is dissolved and thoroughly blended into the rice.
Remove to a bowl.  Serve hot or cold.

Notes:  The overnight soaking of the rice in the milk appears to be for the
purpose of softening older grain, which will not cook up immediately.

Markham's instructions are to put the rice pudding into molds and serve it a
day old, presumably to allow the flavors to meld.  The dish was probably
eaten cold.

The rice pudding did not set up properly, but was chilled and served as a
very thick gruel.



Peascods 
To boyle ... peascods. Take greene sugar Pease when the pods bee but young,
and pull out the string of the backe of the podde, and picke the huske of
the stalkes ends, and as many as you can take up in your hand at three
several times, put them into the pipkin, with halfe a pound of sweete
Butter, a quarter of a pint of faire water, a little grosse Pepper, Salt,
and Oyle of Mace, and let them stue very softly until they bee very tender,
then put in the yolkes of two or three rawe egges strained with six
spoonefuls of Sacke, and as much Vinegar, put it into your Peascods and brew
them with a ladle, then dish them up.

				John Murrell 
				A Booke of cookerie, 1621

1 1/2 pounds sugar peas in pod, fresh or frozen
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/4 teaspoon peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 or 3 drops of mace oil or 1/8 teaspoon ground mace
1 egg yolk
3 teaspoon dry white wine
3 teaspoons white wine vinegar

Pull the strings from the peapods, if fresh.
Put water, butter, peppercorns, salt and mace in a large sauce pan.  Bring
to a boil.
Add the peas to the sauce pan.  Cook until tender.  Add water if necessary.
Whisk egg yolk, wine and vinegar together in a bowl.  Add to the sauce pan,
stirring continuously.
Remove peas to a bowl and serve.

Notes:  Fresh peapods should be cooked covered.  Frozen peapods cook very
quickly and should not be overcooked as the pods tend to burst.

Frozen sugar peas may not have all of the strings removed.


Shrewsbery Cake

To make Shrewsbery Cakes.  Take a quart of very fine flour, eight ounces of
fine sugar beaten and sifted twelve ounces of sweet butter, a Nutmeg grated,
two or three spoonfuls of damask rosewater, work all these together with
your hands as hard as you can for the space of half an hour, then roll it in
little round Cakes, about the thickness of three shillings one upon another,
then take a silver Cup or a glass some four or three inches over and cut the
cakes in them, then strew some flower upon white papers & lay them upon
them, and bake them in an Oven as hot as for Manchet, set up your lid till
you may tell a hundredth, then you shall see the white, if any of them rise
up clap them down with some clean thing, and if your Oven be not too hot set
up your lid again, and in a quarter of an hour they will be baked enough,
but in any case take heed your Oven be not too hot, for they must not look
brown but white, and so draw them forth & lay them one upon another till
they bee could, and you may keep them half a year the new baked are best. 

1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 Tablespoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon rosewater

Cream the sugar and butter together.
Sift the flour and nutmeg together.
Cut the flour mix into the creamed butter until it crumbs.
Add rosewater and work into the dough.
Knead the dough gently into a ball.  Remove to a lightly floured surface.
Knead gently until the dough is no longer sticky.  Add more flour if
necessary, but try to keep it at a minimum.
Roll out the dough about 3/8 inch thick.
Cut out rounds with a 3 inch diameter cookie cutter.
Continue rolling and cutting until the dough is expended.
Place the rounds on a baking sheet covered with bakers parchment.
Bake at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes.

Notes:  Shrewsbery cakes are not particularly sweet and the flavor is
produced by the nutmeg.  Old spices may require more than fresh spice.

It is easy to make these taste floury, so be gentle with the flour.