[Sca-cooks] Makke vs. maccu

[Christiane]

I was going through Cariadoc's Miscellany when I found the recipe for makke:

Makke
Form of Cury p. 41/A21
Take drawn beans and sethe them well. Take them up of the water and cast them in a mortar. Grind them all to doust till they be white as any milk, chawf a little red wine, cast thereamong in the grinding, do thereto salt, leshe it in dishes, then take onions and mince them small and sethe them in oil till they be all brown. And flourish the dish therewith. And serve it forth.
1 cup pea beans, dry
1/2 c red wine
1 t salt
2 large onions
enough oil to fry the onions
Soak the beans overnight then simmer 4-6 hours until tender. Chop up the onions fairly fine. Drain the beans, use a food processor to puree. Heat the wine and add it. Put the beans in each dish, put the fried onions over them. Broad beans (fava beans) would be more authentic than pea beans, but we have not yet tried them in this recipe.

Then there's a traditional Sicilian fava bean soup called "maccu:"

3/4 pound dried fava beans
Salt and pepper
Water
olive oil
small bunch of fennel leaves, chopped

(optional) 1 large onion, chopped, and fried

Take the dried beans and soak them overnight; drain the beans, and put them into enough water to cover them well. Simmer them about an hour and a half, until they are soft enough to mash. Mash them well with a spoon, season with the salt and pepper, and continue cooking until they are like a thick cream (add more water if you want a thinner soup). The last 20 minutes or so of cooking, sprinkle some of the fennel into the soup. Serve drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with the remaining fennel, and if you want, fried onion. You can also serve this soup over pasta.

That's one of the most basic recipe for maccu that I have seen. Other maccu recipes for St. Joseph's Day that I have seen use lentils and chickpeas in addition to favas; essentially whatever dried legumes the housewife had left in her cupboard.

The Latin for "to mash" being "macerare," which got into Italian as "maccare," I'm guessing that's where the name "maccu"/"makke" comes from ... maybe this dish probably dates back to Roman times?

Can anyone here with a copy of Apicius (Vehling translation or not) point me toward recipes in that that are similar? Lentil pottage or spicy mushy peas?

Gianotta