[Sca-cooks] LIBER DE COQUINA: A brief history of flan
JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
Fri Feb 1 21:48:11 PST 2013
A recent query has got me re-visiting the Liber de Coquina, which, tucked
away in its Latin, has a number of interesting finds, such as recipes for
ravioli and what appears to be an ancestor of lasagne ("lasana"). It also
includes an innocuous enough looking recipe for... flan.
Which is actually kind of a big deal. But first, a word about flan.
The first mention of flan seems to be in Fortunatus' hagiography of Queen
Radegund, who hid her (suitably ascetic) barley bread *sub fladone* - that
is, under the *flado* (flan). In later years, "fladone" would become
"flaon", then "flan". At this point it is said to have been a flatcake ("flado" is
related to "flat"; even today one meaning of "flan" is a flat surface used
in minting).
Somewhere over time it evolved until by the late medieval period it was a
cream (or cheese) flavored shell.
This was probably an incremental process. A 13th century Arab cookbook
from Baghdad offers a recipe for *iflagun*, which is said to be a Frankish
specialty: Take flour and knead it. Let it rise. Make a round base of it,
raised on the sides. Then take an egg, break it in a terrine and put in it a
little salt, crushed pepper, ginger, anise and a little cumin. Mix all this
with the egg. Add fresh rue leaves and little bits of crushed cheese. Add
saffron to it and spread it on the base. All this must be of a good
thickness. Put in the oven.
In offering the French translation for this by Rodinson, the Belgian
scholar Liliane Plouvier, calls this post-Crusades confection a "Carolingian
flan". Plouvier is an excellent researcher, but she can be cavalier about
periods; personally my guess (that's all it is) is that it was the Arabs who
had the idea of adding cheese to the Frankish flatcake and raising the sides
(pizza-style) to contain the filling.
By the late medieval period, the sides had risen into a bowl and the flan
was common enough to be required in some cases as a rent. This may be why
books like the Viandier, the Menagier and the Enseignemenz do not even bother
to offer a plain recipe for it, only offering variations (for Lent) using
eels or fish (apparently to - ! - imitate the taste of cheese); without
bothering to offer one for plain old flan.
Now, here's this from the Liber de Coquina:
"Regarding a cup or small cake of milk, for a milk cup, take firm dough and
make a cup like bread out of small pieces [?]; and put it a little in an
oven, long enough to make it hard. Then, take milk mixed together with
beaten eggs and saffron and put it in the said cup, but not too full. And cook
properly and eat."
4. -- De copo sive de pastillo de lacte: ad copum de lacte, accipe pastam
duram et fac copum sicut panem unius pastilli; et pone in furno parum, ut
aliquantulum dure fiat. Deinde, accipe lac cum ovis batutis simul mixtis et
safranum et proice in dicto copo, sed non multum impleas. Et decoque
competenter et comede.
No, it doesn't say (even in Latin) "flan", but really: does it need to?
If that wasn't cool enough, consider this: though numerous recipes say to
put food in a pasty, none that I've seen actually say how to make the pasty
itself. This recipe, summary as it is, does: use a firm ("hard", or not
very hydrated) dough and bake it long enough to harden it.
Not much, but it's better than nothing, no?
Otherwise, it occurs to me that someone needing food for an event could
have great fun making three eras of flan: the Frankish flatcake (probably a
honey cake), the pizza-like "Carolingian flan" and the cream or cheese in a
shell late medieval version.
If you really want to have fun, you could even make the version using fish
or eels. :)
Jim Chevallier
www.chezjim.com
Newly translated from Pierre Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d'Aussy:
Eggs, Cheese and Butter in Old Regime France
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