[Sca-cooks] Medieval cooking for non-cooks

[Elaine Koogler]

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Here are several recipes, from different periods.  The first is an Elizabethan
recipe, and the remainder are earlier--14th century or so.  If you have any
questions, let me know...they are all pretty simple.

A Carrot Sallad

1 # baby carrots
3 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp. chervil
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
4 tbsp. Salad oil
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1 lg. Sprig parsley

Scrub carrots and cut off green tops.  Bring water, salt, chervil to a boil in
a saucepan.  Add the carrots, cover the pot, and cook until the carrots are
tender but still crisp—about 10 minutes.
In a deep bowl, mix together the vinegar, oil and pepper. Drain the carrots,
add them to the dressing and stir them until they are nicely coated.  Cover
the bowl and marinate the carrots in the dressing for at least an hour.

Wash the parsley in cold water, shake off the moisture, and snip off the
stems.  Make a rosette of the leaves in the center of a dinner plate.  Arrange
the carrots around the parsley like a sunburst, and pour a little of the
dressing over the carrots.

Original:  Carrets boyled and eaten with vinegar, Oyle, and Pepper serve for a
special good salad to stirre up appetite, and to puyrifie blood.  –William
Vaughn, Directions for Health

Dining with William Shakespeare, Madge Lorwin.


33.  To make a syrosye.  Tak cheryes & do out the stones & grynde hem wel &
draw hem thorw a streynoure & do it in a pot. & do thereto whit gres or swete
botere & myed wastel bred, & cast thereto good wyn & sugre, & salte it & stere
it wel togedere, & dresse it in disches; & set thereyn clowe gilofre, & strew
sugre aboue.

33.  To make a syrose (cherry pottage).  Take cherries and stone them and
grind them well and draw them through a strainer and place it in a pot and add
white grease or sweet butter and good white bread and add good wine and sugre
and salt, and stir it well together, and put it into a dish and garnish (?)
with cloves and “strew sugar about”. (III.  Utilis Coquinario from Curye on
Ingysch)

Redaction:  (Serves 8)

2 1# cans Tart Red     2 1/2 tsp. sugar
     packed in water cherries
2 Tbsp. Butter     ¼ tsp. salt
3/4 Cup White bread crumbs   whole cloves
1/2 Cup sweet white wine   Caster sugar

1.  Process cherries until they form a smooth sauce.
2.   Add in butter, bread crumbs, wine, sugar, and salt, and process until
smooth.
3. Garnish with cloves, sprinkling sugar about on dish

188.  Spynoches yfryed.  Take spynoches; perboile hem in sethying water.  Take
hem vp and presse out the water and hew hem in two.  Frye hem in oile & do
thereto powdour douce, & serue vorth.

188.  Spynoches yfryed.  Take spinach, parboil them in boiling water; Take
them up and press out the water and cut them in two.  Fry them in oil and
sprinkle them with poudre douce and serve them forth. (Forme of Curye from
Curye on Inglysch)

Redaction: serves 4

1 10 oz bag Spinach    1/8 tsp. Cinnamon
2 tsp. Vegetable Oil    1/8 tsp. Cloves
1/4 tsp. Ginger     1/8 tsp. Mace

1.  Clean spinach, parboil, then drain thoroughly.
2.  Cut spinach leaves in two.
3.  Fry them in oil quickly, tossing them to keep them from cooking too
thoroughly
4.  Place in serving bowls, sprinkle with spices and toss lightly.

Confiture de noiz

Prenez avant la saint Jehan noiz nouvelles et les pelez et perciez et mectez
en eaue freshce tremper par .ix. jour, et chacun jour renoivellez l’eaue, puis
les laisser secer et emplez les pertuiz de cloz de giroffle et de gingembre et
mectez boulir en miel et illec les laissiez en conserve. – (Menagier de Paris
from Early French Cookery, Scully).

Yield—about 2 cups

Redaction—by Scully

1 cup liquid honey
10 - 15 whole cloves
2 Tbsp. finely sliced slivers of fresh ginger
8 oz whole or halved (or large pieces) walnuts

1.  Combine honey and spices over low heat.
2.  Let spices marinate in warm honey for 5 - 10 minutes.
3.  Add walnuts and bring to a boil.
4.  Cook, stirring occasionally until honey reaches soft ball stage.
5.  Spoon out walnuts (include some cloves & ginger), and set them to cool and
harden on tinfoil.
6.  Store in tightly sealed container.

I hope these work for you!  They are fairly easy, should be inexpensive and
and are quite tasty.

Kiri


Louise Smithson wrote:

Dear friends,
I could use some help with this one.
As well as being a lurker and sometime poster on this e-list I am also Deputy
MoAS of my local group.  Our Barony this year is having a pot-luck for Yule
Feast and has requested period dishes from the populace.
While this causes me no concern, it is a cause for much worry among the ramen
noodle eaters of the canton.  We are located on a University campus so much of
our membership is
A) poor, they won't be buying veal
B) at the culinary level of boil the pasta and pour over the prego.
So, I am trying to find simple medieval recipes that can introduce medieval
cooking gently to these people.  Something that they can make relatively
quickly and take to the feast while still having enough money for Ramen
noodles next month.

I started with the ubiquitous Macrowns (medieval Mac and Cheese) made with
lasagna sheets for ease.
Caboches in potage
Buttered wortes
Funges

Any other suggestions would be welcome.  Remember the cheaper and easier the
dish the better.

Thanks.

Helewyse de Birkestad
Marche of the Marshes
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