[Sca-cooks] olives and candied carrots

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> Le Menagier de Paris (Janet Hinson, trans.)
> "Take, around All Saints Day (November 1), large turnips, and peel them 

Uh, Doc-- the part with the walnuts is PART of this recipe-- it's all 
one big layered preserve. Meant to mention that to you when I saw the 
recipe parsed that way on the medievalcookery page.

By the way, that medieval cookery page is wonderful, esp. the food 
index. Thanks for putting it up.

Here's the complete preserve recipe:


THIS IS THE WAY TO MAKE COMPOTE. Note that you must start by St. John's 
Day which is the twenty-fourth day of June.

First, take five hundred new walnuts, and be sure that neither the shell 
nor the kernel are yet formed and that the shell is also neither too 
hard nor too tender, and peel them all round, and then pierce them 
through or in a cross. And then put them to soak in water from the Seine 
or a spring, and change it every day: and they must soak ten to twelve 
days and they will become black and when you chew one you will not be 
able to taste any bitterness; and then put them on to boil in sweet 
water and let them boil just for the length of time it takes to say a 
Miserere, and until you see that there are none which are too hard or 
too soft. Then empty the water, and put them to drain on a screen, and 
then boil a sixth of honey or as much as they need to be all covered, 
and the honey should be strained and skimmed: and when it is cooled down 
to just warm, add your walnuts and leave them two or three days, and 
then put them to drain, and take as much of your honey as they can soak 
in, and put the honey on the fire and make it come to a good boil and 
skim it, and take it off the fire: and put in each hole in your walnuts 
a clove in one side and a little snip of ginger in the other, and then 
put them in the honey when it is lukewarm. And stir it two or three 
times a day, and at the end of three days take them out: and gather up 
the honey, and if there is not enough, add to it and boil and skim and 
boil, then put your walnuts in it; and thus each week for a month. And 
then leave them in an earthenware pot or a cask, and stir once a week.

Take, around All Saints Day (November 1), large turnips, and peel them 
and chop them in quarters, and then put on to cook in water: and when 
they are partially cooked, take them out and put them in cold water to 
make them tender, and then let them drain; and take honey and do the 
same as with the walnuts, and be careful not to over-cook your turnips.

Item, on All Saints, take carrots as many as you wish, and when they are 
well cleaned and chopped in pieces, cook them like the turnips. (Carrots 
are red roots which are sold at the Halles in baskets, and each basket 
costs one blanc.)

Item, take choke-pears and cut them in four quarters, and cook them like 
the turnips, and do not peel them; and do with them neither more nor 
less than with the turnips.

Item, when gourds are in season, take those which are neither too hard 
nor too tender, and peel them and remove the seeds and cut into 
quarters, and do the same to them as to the turnips.

Item, when peaches are in season, take the hardest and peel them and cut 
them up.

Item, around St. Andrew's Day, take roots of parsley and fennel, and 
scrape them, and chop them into small pieces, and split the fennel and 
remove the hard part, and do not do this to the parsley, and prepare 
them exactly the same way as told above, neither more nor less.

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"The toad beneath the harrow knows/exactly where each tooth-point goes,
The butterfly upon the road/Preaches contentment to that toad." 
			- Rudyard Kipling