[Sca-cooks] Noty or Notye

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Doc gave a period recipe for Noty or Notye:
>>On Jan 31, 2005, at 11:30 AM, Micheal wrote:
>>>   I once had a dish of Noty or Notye can`t remember which that was
>>>  creamy instead clear broth would anyone have the recipe. I now its in
>>>  one of the books but I can not remember which one.
>>>  Walnuts, Sausage meat, and cream, were some of the ingredients.
>>
>>Is this the one?
>>
>>Noteye. Take a gret porcyoun of Haselle leuys, & grynd in a morter as
>>smal as thou may, whyl that they be onge; take than, & draw vppe a
>>thrift Mylke of Almaundys y-blaunchyd, & temper it with Freysshe
>>brothe; wryng out clene the Ius of the leuys; take Fleysshe of Porke or
>>of Capoun, & grynd it smal, & temper it vppe with the mylke, & caste it
>>in a potte, & he Ius ther-to, do it ouer the fyre & late it boyle;
>>take flour of Rys, & a-lye it; take & caste Sugre y-now ther-to, &
>>Vynegre a quantyte, & pouder Gyngere, & Safroun it wel, & Salt; take
>>smal notys, & breke hem; take the kyrnellys, & make hem whyte, & fye
>>hem vppe in grece; plante ther-with thin mete & serue forth.
>>[Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books]

>Okay, but what type of dish is this? I'm afraid I'm not getting very 
>far in even figuring out just what sort of thing this is, even when 
>I can identify some of the ingredients, much less creating a 
>redaction of it. What are "notys"? eggs?

Nuts.

"'Nutty'. Take a great portion of hazel leaves, and grind them in a 
mortar as small as you may, while they are young [small, tender, and 
mild-flavored?]; then take and draw up a thrifty [multiple infusions 
to get the most out of the almonds?] milk of almonds, blanched, and 
mix it with fresh broth; wring out clean the juice of the leaves 
[through a cloth], take flesh of pork or of capon [probably boiled to 
make the broth], and grind it small, and mix it with the milk, and 
put it in a pot, and add the juice to it, and put it over the fire 
and let it boil. Take rice flour and thicken it; add enough sugar to 
it, and some vinegar, and powdered ginger, and plenty of saffron, and 
salt. Take small nuts and break them; take the kernels and blanch 
them, and fry them up in grease, stud your meat [dish/food] with 
them, and serve forth."

This seems to be a thick spoon-food, with a consistency something 
like oatmeal porridge, made by boiling pork or capon, mixing some of 
the broth with a rich almond milk, adding pounded meat back to the 
broth to thicken and enrich it, thickening it further with rice flour 
[by which time it should end up being thick enough to hold up the nut 
kernels you're going to stick in its surface later], plus the pressed 
juice of crushed young hazel leaves (as in, the tree hazel nuts come 
from, hence the name of the dish), and adding various flavorings and 
a final garnish of fried nut kernels.

To me, the biggest unanswered question in all of this is what effect 
the hazel leave puree will have: although we do have cattails locally 
here, I don't know if we have hazel trees, what their leaves look 
like, whether they're bright green like parsley, a muted green like 
sage, highly flavored, astringent, sour like sorrel, or what, and 
these unknowns are obviously going to make a big difference in the 
character of the final dish. I assume that, since the recipe cautions 
us to use young leaves, and since we have to pound and strain them, 
the "young" qualifier has something to do with the flavor or the 
content of some chemical (maybe tannins or some such) present in the 
leaves.

Anybody have a hazel tree in the yard, and wanna go out and taste a 
leaf or two for scientific purposes?

Adamantius
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

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