[Sca-cooks] Early Pastries WAS 13th century bread

[Christina Nevin]

	Where can I find some info on early(11-12th cen) on baking-pastries,
	specifically subleties?
	Finnebhir Moon Dancer of Vanished Woods Shire

Reading the literature of the time, especially the 'romances' is always a
good plan, though somewhat time consuming. Perhaps someone else can
recommend a couple, as it isn't my area of expertise.

The only extant texts near that era are late C.13th - Manuscript Additional
32085, and 1320 to 40 - Manuscript Royal 12.C.xii. Both aka an Anglo-Norman
Culinary Collection, collected in an article:-
"Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library
Manuscripts Additional 32085 & Royal 12.C. xii"
HIEATT, Constance & JONES, Robin F.  Speculum Issue 61/4 1986

I had a quick squiz through it and only came up with 3 vaguely related
recipes - Crosterole, and 2 Turk's head recipes (one for Lent), though the
p.878 Turk's head is spot on:

[square brackets = translator's notes]

p.875
14. Crosterole [parti-colored pastry cake]. Here is another dish, called
crosterole. Take best white flour, eggs and saffron, and make pastry,
coloring half of the pastry and leaving the other half white; then roll it
out on a table, until it is as thin as parchment and as round as a cake;
make it in Lent, as well as in other times of the year, using almond milk
[instead of eggs]; fry (the cakes) in oil.

p.876
23. Turk's head. How to make the dish called Turk's head from a fish day or
in Lent. Take choice rice and wash it and dry it; then grind it thoroughly,
mix with thickened almond milk, and put in spices and saffron, as directed
below, and sugar. Make a pastry case; then scald eels and remove the
excrement; then cut them up; and take parsley, sage, and some broth, and
grind it in a mortar, and put in saffron and mixed ground spice; then cover
[with a pastry lid] and put it in the oven, etc. ["etc" here means "and
serve it"]

25. Kuskenole [pastries with a fruit filling].
{OK, so Hieatt and Jones call them pastries. However I'm not touching this
one with a barge pole!}

26. Turks head. {This is the recipe referred to above in 23, however it uses
a pig's stomach to roast the pork, chicken and almond mixture in}

p.878
26. Turks head. A sheet of pastry [used as a case] well filled [?] with
rabbits and poultry, dates, peeled and sweetened in honey, new cheese,
cloves and cubeb; (put) sugar on top, then a generous layer of ground
pistachio nuts; the color of the ground nuts, red, yellow, and green. The
head (of hair) should be black, arranged to resemble the hair of a woman, in
a black bowl, with the face of a man set on top.

Hope this is of some help,

Al Servizio Vostro, e del Sogno
Lucrezia

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Lady Lucrezia-Isabella di Freccia   |  mka Tina Nevin
Thamesreach Shire, The Isles, Drachenwald | London, UK
thorngrove at yahoo.com | http://www.geocities.com/thorngrove
"There is no doubt that great leaders prefer hard drinkers to good
versifiers" - Aretino, 1536
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