[Sca-cooks] A Frumenty Question

[Stefan li Rous]

Renata asked
 >>>
Does anyone know of a sweetened frumenty recipe from before 1600? I
found one
for 1653 but I need one from the 14th century, if such exists. The early
recipes I've seen call for milk, eggs and saffron but no sugar.
<<<

Yes. Check this file in the FOOD section of the Florilegium:

frumenty-msg      (62K)  6/21/01    A period cooked grain dish, often  
barley.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/frumenty-msg.html

I have pasted two messages from this file here:
 >>>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 10:41:42 -0600
From: "Sharon R. Saroff" <sindara at pobox.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Frumenty - yet one nore question!

 >And it came to pass on 16 Mar 99,, that THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
 >
 >> Thanks, Bear!  I was wondering, after all the list's frumenty
 >> (non-sweetened) talk, if I was just reading too many trashy  
historical
 >> novels. ;)
 >>
 >> Renata
 >
 >There is a Spanish recipe for wheat which is boiled in water, then
 >cooked with almond milk, and served topped with sugar and
 >cinnamon.  Sounds like sweet frumenty to me.
 >
 >Lady Brighid ni Chiarain

I know of a Tu B'Shvat recipe called Prehito (Turkish Wheat pudding)  
that
is made from bulghur, sugar, honey, cinnamon and chopped walnuts.  It
sounds similar to frumenty to me.

Sindara


Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 14:33:00 EST
From: Gerekr at aol.com
Subject: Re:  RE: SC - Frumenty - yet one nore question!

When we were doing our research, I charted ingredients on 10 frumenty
recipes from English sources from ca. 1381 thru 2-15th.  Half of them  
(5)
included sugar.

 >From the Misc, the Ancient cookery appended to FC, the recipe on p. 81
 >From the Misc, the Noble Boke, the recipe on p. 100
 >From my own EETS 2-15th, the recipes on pp. 17, 70 & 105 (that's  
75% of
 >the recipes in that source)

I was expecting the sweetened recipes, had never run across an
unsweetened one particularly.  Are these early enough?  No particular
connection to Christmas in these sources, however.

Chimene
<<<

Hmmm. Don't I recognize the person asking the original question in  
these excerpts? :-)

In a later message, Adamantius does mention a fact to be aware of  
when looking for sugar in frumenty recipes:
 >>>
Bear in mind, of course, that because a recipe calls for the addition of
some sugar to a dish doesn't necessarily mean the final product is what
we'd call sweet. Many people add a bit of sugar to marinara sauce but
don't eat linguine for dessert.
<<<

There are probably other recipes for frumenty with added sugar in  
this file, but I didn't dig further after finding these.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****