[Sca-cooks] Hennys in bruette

[r.carnegie at verizon.net]

> This one is from an English mnauscript of about 1430, Harleian MS 279, and
> appears in the second volume of Take a Thousand Eggs or More (the volume
> which has only original and modern English version, no redactions).
>
> Take the hennys, & skalde hem, & ope hem, & wasshe hem clene, & smyte hem to
> gobettys, & seethe hem with fayre pork; than take Pepyr, Gyngere, & Brede,
> ygrounde y-fere, and temper it uppe with the same brothe, or ale draft, &
> coloure it with Safroun, & seethe it to-gederys, & serve forth.
>
   Interesting.  I have the receipt in "A Noble Boke of Cookry" and made it last year for a dayboard.  It differs from the receipt in the Harlian Manuscript in some small but good ways.


   Hennes in Bruet

  To mak hennes in Breut sethe hennes and freche pork to gedure than grind pepper bred and comyne and sesson it and temper it with hennes brothe boile it and colour it with saffron salt it and serve it.

    I mention this because I made this twice.  The first time I was using it as described in Seven Hundred Years of English Cooking.  This books has a translation but no copy of the original (most of the receipts have both).  Here they called for the saffron to be boiled with every thing else, but then you lose the colour.  When I looked at the original it was apparent that the saffron should be added later (though the earlier receipt does says differently).  Adding it at the end gives the soup a very pleasing yellow colour.

    It was well excepted at the dayboard.

I remain,
Ranald de Balinhard,


R.Carnegie at verizon.net
"Argue for your limitations, and they are yours."
             R. Bach