Subject: Re: Medieval Recipe

From: [email-masked] (Meadhbhni)
Date: 16 Jan 1995 09:02:21 -0500

The best book I have found for Medieval recipes is: Pleyn Delit.  One of
the recipes in there that is fun for kids to make (and not exactly a
recreation of the actual recipe but a good adaptation.
Sausage Hedgehogs

2 lbs ground pork
2 tsp. ginger (ground ginger is OK)
1 tsp each salt, sugar
2 oz. almonds, blanched and slivered (i use store bought slivered almonds)

Mix pork and spices and form balls about 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter;
then elongate the balls a little, into ovals (shape like a large walnut).
Insert the almond slivers into the "hedgehogs" in a pattern suggesting
quills.  Use at least 8 small spines for each ball to achieve the proper
effect.  Bake on a cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes
or until a good shade of medium brown.  To reheat (if needed), put in a
hot oven for only a few minutes.  Drain on paper toweling for a minute or
two before serving.  

These are a lot of fun to make and most people really like them.  If you
need the original recipe in old english let me know and i will e-mail it
to you.  Again, the book this recipe is in is: Pleyn Delit by Constance
Hiatt and Sharon Butler.  The book is still in print.

Maddie

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From: [email-masked] (Mike Zdancewicz)
Date: 16 Jan 1995 05:19:02 GMT

My 6th grade daughter has a school project and she needs a medieval 
recipe. The medieval period is the same as the time called the Middle 
Ages, ranging from about 500 ad till 1500 ad, in Europe mainly.

Anyone know where I could look to find something like this? This 
newsgroup seemed to be the best place to start.

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From: [email-masked] (Par Leijonhufvud labtek)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 17:09:32 GMT

My faorite (starter) book on the subject is The Medieval Cookbook, by 
Maggie Black (Brittish Museum Press, 1992, ISBN 0-7141-0556-2). Not only 
does it have the recipies in the original and translation (etc.), but 
also a lot of information om mediaval cooking and food.

/P{r Leijonhufvud
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Name:   Paer K.G. Leijonhufvud          Oh, *practice*. I don't mind 
Email:  [email-masked]   *practising*. So long as we
Voice:  +46-(0)8-758 8459               don't have to do it for real...

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From: [email-masked] (Mark Sieving)
Date: 16 Jan 1995 06:34:40 GMT

Mike Zdancewicz ([email-masked]) wrote:
: My 6th grade daughter has a school project and she needs a medieval 
: recipe. The medieval period is the same as the time called the Middle 
: Ages, ranging from about 500 ad till 1500 ad, in Europe mainly.

: Anyone know where I could look to find something like this? This 
: newsgroup seemed to be the best place to start.

Does your daughter need a totally authentic recipe (i.e. something in 
Middle English) or a medieval *style* recipe that someone could actually 
prepare?  Actual medieval recipes are hard to follow.  Besides the 
language problem, they tend to leave out such things as the amount of 
ingredients to use.

A good book to look for is _Fabulous Feasts_; unfortunately I can't 
remember the author's name.  This one has good usable recipes, but 
doesn't cite any original sources.  _Seven Hundred Years if English 
Cooking_ by Arabella Boxer has both the original text of several recipes 
and Boxer's modern adaptation.   

--
==========================
Mark Sieving
[email-masked]    OR
[email-masked]

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From: Kylie Knox <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Jan 1995 01:06:52 GMT

>Ages, ranging from about 500 ad till 1500 ad, in Europe mainly.

I'm not sure whether you need something you can actually cook, or just
examples. But anyway here are a couple of recipes which a friend sent me
>from  Oxford. I'm not sure you could cook them, seeing that there are no
quantities mentioned (and the larks recipes seems strangely not to
mention larks!).
Good luck.

- From A Book of Cookerie, in The Good Huswifes Iewell (wherein is to be
found
most excellend and rare Deuifes for conceites in Cookery), 1596).

To boile Larkes
Take sweet Bread, & strain it into a pipkin, and put in a peece of
Butter, and
skyne it as cleane as yee can, and put in speenage & endiue, and cut it a
little, and so let it boyle, and put in Pepper, Cloues and Mace, Cynamon
and
Ginger, and a little vergious, and when you serue them up, lay soppes in
the
dish.

To make fine Cakes
Take fine flowre and good Damaske water you must haue no other liquor but
that,
then take sweet butter, two or three yolkes of egges and a good quantity
of
Suger, and a fewe cloues, and mace, as your Cookes mouth shall serve him,
and a
lyttle saffron, and a little Gods good about a sponfull if you put in too
much
they shall arise, cutte them in squares lyke unto trenchers, and pricke
them
well, and let your ouen be well swept and lay them uppon papers and so
set them
into the ouen, do not burne them if they be three or foure dayes olde
they bee
the better.

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From: [email-masked] (Patricia Reynolds)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 22:34:20 +0000

> newsgroup seemed to be the best place to start.
Maggie Black's _Food and Cooking in Mediveval Britain_ (English Heritage,
1985) includes:
Salat:
'Take parsel, sawge, garlec, chibollas, oynons, leek, borage,
myntes, porrectes, fenel, lave and waisshe hem clene.  Pike hem,
pluk hem small with thyn hond and myng hem well with rawe oile.
Lay on vynegar and salt and serve if forth.

Take all (or some) of spring oniions, leeks, baby onions, large onions
fennel, garlic, purslane, parsley, sage, borage, mint, watercress, rue
and rosemary.  Wash, prepare and slice the vegetables thinly.  Shred
the herbs by hand.  Mix with enough olive or walnut oil to moisten,
sprinkle with white wine vinegar and salt, and serve immediately.

This slim book includes a lot about kitchens and food, in a readable
text.
-- 
Patricia Reynolds
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 14:50:11 GMT

Mike Zdancewicz <[email-masked]> wrote:
>recipe....

Yes, this newsgroup is probably the best place to start.  However, can
you put some parameters on the request?  Asking for "a medieval recipe"
here is like going to rec.music and asking "does anybody know a good song?"

For example, how soon does she need the recipe?  Does she (or you) need
to MAKE the recipe, or just study it?  If the former, does she need
something that can be conveniently carried in to school?  If so, how
long will it have to sit unrefrigerated before consumption? Should it be 
a single, main dish, or nibblables that come naturally in individual
portions?  Should it be vegetarian?  Is it part of a massive potluck,
and if so have you been asked to bring a "main dish", "vegetable side",
"dessert", etc., to use modern ways of breaking down a meal?  How much
time and labor are you/she willing to put into cooking it?  Do you have
access to weird ingredients like galingale and rabbit?  And, do you want
to be given specific recipes or pointers to books containing lots of
them?

--
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           [email-masked]
                                          (or [email-masked])
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University

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From: [email-masked] (Jack Campin)
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 1995 12:07:37 GMT

[email-masked] (Stephen Bloch) wrote:
> Asking for "a medieval recipe" here is like going to rec.music and asking
> "does anybody know a good song?"  For example [...] how long will it have
> to sit unrefrigerated before consumption?

Which raises a question I haven't seen asked here before: what do we know
about microbial food poisoning before, say, the late 19th century?
Incidence; whether it was recognized; whether traditional cuisines ever
consciously tried to to minimize it instead of just hitting on preservative
techniques by accident.

(Surely a _serious_ historical reenacter ought to experience mediaeval
 parasite infestations too?...)

> Do you have access to weird ingredients like galingale and rabbit?

Both of which I can get within a 5-minute walk of my front door.
Now Graham crackers and Knox gelatin, _that's_ weird for you.

-- 
-- Jack Campin  --  Room 1.36, Dept. of Computing & EE, Heriot-Watt University,
   Riccarton, Edinburgh EH14 4AS   WWW: http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~jack/jack.html
   Internet: [email-masked]  Phone: 031 449 5111 ext 4195  Fax: 031 451 3431
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