[Sca-cooks] Introducing Period Cookery was Bear's projects

[Terry Decker]

By the way I want introduce some friends to Middle Ages cooking, any menu
suggestions?
I am not eating meat is any alternative to roast pork? Fish is possible no
chicken or foal.
Thanks in advance!
Ana

Here are three easy vegetarian recipes, two Elizabethan and one from 14th 
Century France.  I've used all of them in feasts and they are not outre and 
were well received.  If you need a meat dish, I have an Elizabethan fish 
recipe that you might find appealing.  But I will need to scrounge through 
the files to find it.

Bear

Sweet Spinach Tart

A Spinnage Tart. Take a good store of Spinage, and boyl it in
a Pipkin, with White Wine, till it be soft as pap; then take it
and strain it well into a pewter dish, not leaving any part
unstrained; then put to it Rose-water, great store of Sugar and
cinamon, and boyle it till it be thick as Marmalade. Then let it
coole, and after fill your Coffin and adorn it...

Gervase Markham
The English Hous-wife, 1615

1 pound spinach (fresh or frozen) cleaned and chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup water
1/3 cup sugar (or more)
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Boil spinach in wine and 1/2 cup water until very soft.

Press through a colander or run through a food processor to
mince large pieces of spinach.

Combine sugar and 1/2 cup water in a pan and bring to a boil.
Stir in spinach and cinnamon.

Reduce heat to medium and cook until almost dry.

Put spinach into pie shell. Cool.

After cooling the tart can be adorned with fruit, powdered
sugar, crystal sugar, etc. One tester suggested sliced
hardboiled eggs.

Notes: One third cup of sugar sweetens the spinach without
being cloying. A cup of sugar would make a thicker syrup and
make the spinach closer to the marmalade of the original recipe.
One teaspoon of fresh cinnamon provides a nice bite without
being overpowering.

Fresh spinach may require additional water or wine in the first
boil. I used frozen spinach for availability and speed. I used
Malavasia wine, which is fairly strong, and cut it with water for
expedience. The spinach absorbed much of the liquid.


Sweet Potatoes

To butter Potato roots. Take the roots & bole them in water
till they bee verie soft, then peele them and slice them, then
put some rosewater to them & sugar & the pill of an orenge, &
some of the iuice of the orenge, so let them boile a good
while, then put some butter to them, & when the butter is
melted serve them. This way you may bake them, but put
them unboiled into the paste.

Elynor Fettiplace
The Receipt Book of Ladie Elynor Fettiplace, 1647

Note: Elynor Fettiplace was an Elizabethan lady who began
compiling her recipes in 1604 after many years in the kitchen.

The book was passed to her niece in 1647.

2 lbs sweet potatoes
1/2 cup water
juice of 1 orange (4-5 Tablespoons)
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon ground orange peel
1/2 cup butter

In a pan, cover the sweet potatoes with water and boil
them until very soft, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Remove the sweet potatoes from the pan. Cool slightly.
Peel and slice.

Mix the water, orange juice, sugar and orange peel in a pan
and heat stirring.

After the sugar dissolves, add the sweet potato to the
syrup, separating the slices.

Stir the mixture gently to prevent burning, turning the
sweet potato to coat the slices with the syrup. Add water
if necessary.

When the syrup has cooked down, remove the pan from
the heat and add the butter. Stir gently until the butter is
melted and blended into the sweet potatoes.

Put the sweet potatoes into a serving dish and present to
the table.

Note: Two pounds of sweet potato will fill an 8” or 9” pie
pan.


Pears in Syrup

Item, take choke-pears and cut them in four quarters, and cook them like the 
turnips, and do not peel them; and do with them neither more nor less than 
with the turnips.

Menagier de Paris, (Janet Hinson, trans.)

4 cooking pears
325 g sweet red wine
325 g water
250g honey

Choke pears are sour in taste and were likely used mostly to make perry. 
One variety is poire d'Angoisse.

Since the available pears aren't choke-pears, peel, core and cut the pears 
into quarters or eighths.

Cook the pears in the water and wine until tender (10-15 minutes).

Add the honey and cook until soft (about 10 minutes).

Remove the pears with some of the cooking liquid to a bowl and serve.

If there is time, the cooking liquid can be boiled down to a thicker syrup 
and poured over the pears.