[Sca-cooks] Make Fayre Paste (was: Medieval History Magazine...)

[david friedman]

Edouard Halidai  (Daniel Myers) wrote:

>Below are the relevant recipes from Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery 
>Books.  In them I can find references to pre-baking the coffin, to 
>coloring it with saffron and egg yolks, and to putting a top crust 
>on it, but I do not see any notes about the thickness of the coffin 
>walls, whether they were edible, or the ingredients or methods used 
>for making them.
>
>Are there any other sources or recipes mentioned to document their 
>methods?  I am concerned that the "hot liquid fat poured into flour" 
>way of making a crust is a (relatively) modern one that arose from a 
>faulty source or assumption and is unintentionally being promoted as 
>period without supporting evidence (e.g. probably period because 
>it's very rustic looking - thick and inedible).

(recipes snipped)

As far as I know, none of the pie recipes in Two Fifteenth-Century 
Cookery Books tells you anything about how to make the pastry. The 
only recipes I remember which do tell you are for pasty-types things 
(at least, that is my guess about what they are) that are going to be 
fried, and I am not sure how much of a guide that is to what pastry 
you would use for something that is going to be baked. Here is one of 
those recipes:

Ryschewys Closed and Fried. Take figs, and grind them small in a 
mortar with a little oil, and grind with them cloves and maces; and 
then take it up into a vessel, and cast thereto pines, saunders and 
raisons of corinth and minced dates, powdered pepper, canel, salt, 
saffron; then take fine paste of flour and water, sugar, saffron and 
salt, and make fair cakes thereof; then roll thine stuff in thine 
hand and couch it in the cakes and cut it, and fold them in ryshews, 
and fry them up in oil; and serve forth hot. [spelling modernized]

Elizabeth/Betty Cook