[Sca-cooks] Frumenty recipe, finally! (Was: Congrats)

[Ruth Frey]

	Selene wrote:
>  Woo Hoo!  Give six hurrahs and twelve hip-hips, Miz Ruth is the best
 and the rest iz all dips!  We knew you could do it.

	Thankew.  Thankew verra much!  :)

	Anyway the recipe I came up with is:

	1 c. wheat berries
	3 - 4 c. water
	1 c. whole milk
	1 1/2 - 2 tsp sugar
	1/8 tsp. salt, or to taste
	pinch saffron, to taste.

	Pick over and rinse the wheat, then bring wheat
and water to a boil; reduce heat to medium, and simmer,
covered, for approx. 1 1/2 - 2 hours, depending on the type
of wheat used.  Check occasionally, and add more water as
needed.
	When the wheat kernels have broken open and are
soft, they can be removed from the heat and allowd to sit,
to improve the texture (as noted in previous posts), or
you can continue directly with fairly good results.
	Add the milk to the wheat, bring to a simmer,
and cook uncovered, stirring frequently, until the mixture
is thickened (about 20 min.) -- towards the end, you will
probably need to be stirring the stuff constantly, to keep
it from burning.
	At the end of cooking, stir in the sugar, salt, and
saffron.  I've found a brief "sit" before serving is
beneficial here, too, as it allows the color and flavor to
be gently extracted from the saffron.
	After the frumenty has sat and cooled for a few
minutes, stir to distribute the saffron, and serve warm
(though, when our tournament ran overtime on Sunday, it
ended up being served rather lukewarm, and people still liked
it).

Notes on ingredients:

	Wheat: I used a "soft white" wheat, which cooks
more quickly than the "hard red" that was my other option.
The white wheat cooked to tenderness in about 1 1/2 hours,
and absorbed a prodigous amount of water (I ended up adding
several cups' worth above and beyond the 4 cups I started out
with).  As noted in other posts, it turns out that the soft
wheat is probably closer to Period wheat than the hard, another
bonus.  I went for whole wheat berries rather than the cracked
wheat often used in book redactions; I believe the beating of the
wheat in a mortar listed in all the extant recipes refers only
to the removal of hulls, since there is no way that cracked
grain can "break" or "burst" when it's sufficiently cooked
(another universal feature of the recipes).
	Milk: I used grocery-store whole milk for a creamy,
but not too-creamy texture.  Period milk would likely have
had more cream in it, though one recipe that I didn't use as
a source (in _The Medieval Kitchen_, can't recall the authors
at the moment) cautions one to remove a lot of the cream from
the milk used, to avoid curdling of the frumenty.  So the
actual type of milk used historically is open to debate.
	Sugar: For test redactions, I used commercial white
sugar; for the final recipe, I used unrefined cane sugar, of
the type sold in solid cones at Mexican groceries.  The cane
sugar has a nice "brown sugar" flavor, and is less agressively
sweet than white sugar (I used 2 tsp. of cane sugar to get the
same effect as 1 1/2 tsp. white sugar).  I figured this would
be closest to the sugar that would have been used in Period;
refined white sugar was available, but expensive, and often
cooks had to do the refining themselves.  White sugar was
mostly prized for its color and was usually used as a topping
to show it off.  I figured that since the color of the sugar
wouldn't be seen against the colors of the wheat and saffron,
there was no reason to use the really good stuff.
	Salt: For test preps, I used regular table salt; for
the final version, I used "fleur de sel" sea salt, supposedly
one of the finest hand-harvested grades to come out of
Brittany (assuming my supplier is above-board).  No noticeable
difference in the finished product, though apparently the
snob value impressed the judges.  :)  Admittedly, fleur de
sel is such lovely white stuff, it probably would have been used
as table salt, while a less-refined grade would have been used
in the recipe itself, where appearence would be unimportant.
	Saffron: I used genuine Spanish saffron, just enough to
give the dish a faint saffron color and flavor (mostly to prove
the stuff was in there); I have no idea how much would have been
added in Period.  It might have been based on how much saffron
one had, how much one wanted to impress guests, what other food
was being served, etc.

	Some recipes also add egg yolks to thicken the dish
at the end; since that can affect the "keeping" time of the
dish negatively, and since I thought the stuff might have to
sit a while before it was eaten, I skipped that ingredient.
	Also, some recipes call for boiling water or broth
to be added at the time of serving (possibly to thin out the
frumenty a little?), but the extant recipes are not clear
if the broth/water is to be added to the frumenty, the
accompanying meat, or both.  Also, the step is not listed
in all the recipes.  Since I wasn't sure, I skipped it.
	Sadly, I didn't have the time or money to cook up
roast beef or meat to go with this, but at our potluck feast,
the frumenty went quite nicely with the roasted chicken someone
else brought.

References:

	Heiatt, Constance, _An Ordnance of Pottage_, as cited
on the godecookery.com website. (One original source recipe,
for frumenty and porpoise in Lent).
	Heiatt, Constance, et al., _Pleyn Delit_ (One original
source recipe, that helpfully mentions that either cow's milk
*or* almond milk is acceptable, thus bridging the 2 types of
recipes).
	Renfrow, Cindy, _Take a Thousand Eggs or More, vol. 2_
(4 original source recipes -- 2 for frumenty with porpoise,
2 for frumenty with venison -- from 2 different manuscripts.)

	Depending on how you count, 4 or 6 original sources.

	Sorry the citations are so brief -- I don't have the
books here at work with me, and only remember the titles and
authors at the moment (though I'm sure lots of folks here are
familiar with them).

	And that's the winning recipe.  Simple, rather time-
intensive, but tasty.  :)

			-- Ruth