[Sca-cooks] period uses for sage in desserts and with vegetables

[Daniel Myers]

A cookbook search turned up heaps of recipes that call for sage, but few
of them sounded much like dessert to me.  Below are some of the more
likely ones.
http://www.medievalcookery.com/search/search.html?term=sage&file=all

- Doc

-=-=-

106 To make an herb tart. Take one handful of sage, a handful of
marjoram and some lavender and rosemary, also a handful of chard, and
chop it together, take six eggs, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, raisins and
rose water and let it bake.
[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.
Armstrong, trans.)]

====

133 An herb tart. First, take a small handful of hyssop, mint, chard and
sage. There should be three times more of chard than of the other herbs,
according to how large one will make the tart. Take clarified butter and
fry the herbs named above therein, take raisins, small currants and
sugar, as much as you feel is right. Take then eight eggs, beat them
carefully into that which is described above and make a pastry shell
with an egg and bake it slowly.
[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.
Armstrong, trans.)]

====

139 A green tart. Take chard, pull it to pieces like a cabbage, put with
it parsley, sage and marjoram, chop everything together well, roast it
in fat, take five eggs and grated bread, stir it also therein, put sugar
into it and spices and make a pastry shell as for tripe and put the
herbs on top and bake it as for any other tart.
[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.
Armstrong, trans.)]

====

176 To make a good May cake. Take a pound of raisins, a pound of
currants, five small portions of May butter, a handful of hyssop, a
handful of ground ivy, some sage, about ten leaves, two times as much
mint, a handful of costmary, approximately fifteen eggs and a half pound
of sugar; the herbs finely chopped, baked for two hours. The butter must
be stirred into the herbs. For the crust, two eggs, which are prepared
as for a tart.
[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.
Armstrong, trans.)]

====

79. CAKE of eggs which is called salviate. Take some sage leaves, and
grind them quite vigorously; and take a good quantity of eggs, and beat
them and mix them with the sage; and then take a frying pan, and cast in
lard in such a manner that after melting there is a finger's breadth or
more in the frying pan; and if there is no lard, take common oil which
is sweet and very good, the same quantity; and when the lard or oil
boils, cast in the eggs with the sage, and make of them an omelet which
is well-cooked; and this omelet should be two fingers thick, or more.
And when it is well-cooked or fried, cast it on a good plate with much
sugar above and below; and this omelet should be eaten hot.
[Libre del Coch, (Spain, 1520 - Robin Carroll-Mann, trans.)]

====

Puff Fritters. Get fine flour, water, salt and sugar, and distemper this
so that it is not too stiff; then roll out the dough on a table by hand
with a bit of round wood and cut it to the size you want it to be when
shaped like fritters; fry it in good oil. With this dough you can make
pears, apples, walnuts and sprigs of cloves, of rosemary and of sage,
shaping the dough however you wish, and quickly dipping it briefly into
good hot oil; when they are cooked, color them yellow with saffron
tempered with rosewater. Note that, should you want to make the
above-mentioned things -that is, pears and so forth - make the dough as
broad as a wafer, and dip them in hot oil; or else coat a pan with oil
and put the wafer-sized dough in it, then quickly remove it and shape it
by hand like a pear or apple or whatever you like; then cook these
fritters, shaped like pears or apples or however, in fine oil another
short while.
[The Neapolitan recipe collection, (Italy, 15th c - T. Scully, trans.)]

====

Saug saraser. Tak Almandes, frye hem in oille, and bray hem, tempre hem
with almand mylke and red wyn, and ye thrudde perty shal be sugur / and
if hit be no3t thikke ynow, lie it with amydon or with flour de rys;
colour hit with alkinet, boille hit, dresse it, florissh hit aboue with
pomme-garnet, and 3if forth.
[Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, (England, 1430)]

====

To make Ghecloven Nonnen [cloven nuns]. Take eggs and hard-boil them
well. Then take off their shells and peel them and so cut them
lengthways into halves. Then take the yolks of the same eggs and grind
them up thoroughly in a mortar. But first put in there a little saffron,
cinnamon and ginger, sage, parsley. And if one wishes, one also puts
pepper and apples into it. Then grind up well everything that has been
written earlier and fill therewith the whites of the eggs whose yolks
you removed. Then you fry the eggs like this in rape oil or in butter.
And when it is fried then one strews it with cinnamon powder and with
loaf sugar mixed together onto the filling. And when you serve these
eggs to the table so lay them in the dishes with their opening upwards:
to wit, with the filling upwards.
[Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen, (Netherlands, ca. 1510 - C. van
Tets, trans.)]




> -------- Original Message --------
> From: "Sharon R. Saroff" <sindara at pobox.com>
> Date: Tue, June 10, 2014 6:42 am
> 
> I have a bumper crop of sage in my garden.  Actually I also have a 
> lot of fennel leaves and lemon balm, but the sage is really taking 
> off this year.  I would like period recipes for use of sage in 
> desserts other than fritters and with vegetables.
> 
> Thank you in advance,
> 
> Sindara