[Sca-cooks] Just one of those weird little questions...

[Johnna Holloway]

Went looking for this recipe in the new Brears this am and I suspect 
that you came across
the Apple Moise recipe given on page 269.
He gives flesh-day and fish-day alternatives to a version that calls for 
honey and almond milk.

I went through what Brears lists in the footnotes and looked at what he 
cites in Austin and in Hieatt & Butler.
There are in fact various recipes for apple moys that contain
these alternatives spelled out in the original manuscripts.

The Laud MS 553 version for example (found in Austin Two-Fifteenth 
Century Cookery-Books) is given as:
Apple moys.—Nym appeles, seth hem, let hem kele, frete hem thorwe an her 
syue: cast it on a pot / & on a fless day cast therto goud fat broth of 
bef, & white grese, sugur & safron?, & on fissh days almand mylke, & 
oille de oliue, & sugur, & safron?: boille hit, messe hit, cast aboue 
good poudre, & ?if forth.

I know the special characters are going to give people trouble so 
examine the recipe here at:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;cc=cme;view=toc;idno=CookBk 
or
look in the actual text on pages 113-114.

A quick online search through medievalcookery.com shows a few other 
examples:

Another version is from *A Noble Boke off Cookry which is late 15th century.

*To mak an appillinose, tak appelles and sethe them and lett them kelle 
,then fret them throughe an heryn syff on fisshe dais take almonde mylk 
and oile olyf ther to. and on flesshe days tak freche brothe and whit 
grece and sugur and put them in a pot and boile it and colour it with 
saffron and cast on pouders and serue it.
http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?nob:248

Doc provides *Thomas Awkbarow's Recipes*
(England, 15th century) on his website

Appylmoes. Recipe & seth appyls, & frete þam throgh a cloth, & do þam in 
a pot, & cast þerto almond mylk with gode broth of flesh dayes, & put 
þerto gratyd brede & seth it; & put þerto whyte grece on þe flesh day & 
on þe fysh day oyle de olyfe, & do þerto sugur, & colour it with 
saferon, & strewe þerin gynger, & serof it forth.
http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?awk:75

This is an excerpt from *Forme of Cury*
(England, 1390)
The original source can be found at the Project Gutenberg website 
<http://www.gutenberg.net/>

XVII - FOR TO MAKE APPULMOS. Nym appelyn and seth hem and lat hem kele 
and make hem thorw a clothe and on flesch dayes kast therto god fat 
breyt of Bef and god wyte grees and sugar and safroun and almande mylk 
on fysch dayes oyle de olyve and gode powdres and serve it forthe.

Anyway in this case the versions are there. I suspect that in one of the 
dietaries it explains the substitution
of honey for sugar and vice versa.

BTW, We traced 15 recipes under the lemmatized heading "Applemoys" in 
the Concordance. That means there are a number of
other recipes for this dish that could be looked at; most of these won't 
be online.

Hope this helps

Johnnae

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
> snipped
> the new Brears book on Cooking and Dining in medieval England, asnipped
> Brears mentions a recipe, I forget which and it hardly matters at this 
> point, which can be prepared in different versions for flesh, fish, 
> and lent days. The meat day version includes a small amount of honey, 
> and, if I remember rightly, the fish day version sugar. I forget what 
> was significant about the Lenten version.
> My question is, apart from the obvious reality of where honey comes 
> from, has anyone run across any specific reference to honey being a 
> flesh-day, animal-type product to be avoided on other days? Again, 
> obviously that's just what it is, but every so often the logic doesn't 
> quite make sense to us, and we can't just assume that it would be 
> regarded as forbidden on fish days.
> So, does anyone have any hard facts to back this up, or are we all, 
> including Brears, just saying, well, it stands to reason...
> I had thought to look in Fast and Feast, but of course it is buried 
> under twelve million other books.
> Anybody? Anything? Many thanks!
> Adamantius
>
>