Subject: Pre-1600 flower dishes

From: [email-masked] (Michael McKay)
Date: 10 Mar 1994 21:51:22 GMT

A friend of mine is planning on hosting a feast in July called
the "Feast of Flowers" and she wants me to cater it with pre-1600
dishes that employ flowers. Can any of you give me some recipes or sources?
Thank you.

---

From: [email-masked] (Heather Rose Jones)
Date: 11 Mar 1994 05:12:42 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>dishes that employ flowers. Can any of you give me some recipes or sources?

Look for a recipie called "Sambocade". In its original form (many later
corrupted versions appear) it was a fritter of elder flowers. If you can find, 
it, there is a facsimile reprint (probably by the "English Experience"
series, but I'm missing some of the title pages) of a 1653 book entitled
"A Book of Fruits and Flowers" that has some relevant recipies -- although
later than your target period. The collection "A Fifteenth Century Cookry
Boke" has the following recipie:

Roseye

Take Almaunde Mylke and flowre of Rys, & Sugre, an Safroun,
an boyle hem y-fere; than take Red Rosys, and grynd fayre in a
morter with Almaunde mylke; than take Loches, an toyle hem with
Flowre, an frye hem, & ley him in dysshys; than take gode pouder,
and do in the Sewe, & caste the Sewe a-bouyn the lochys, & serve forth.

In other words, make a sauce of almond milk and rose petals thickened
with rice flour, and pour it over fried fish.

The same source has sauces/puddings (in the modern sense) flavored with
primroses, hawthorn flowers, or violets. Check it out.

Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glavryn

---

From: [email-masked] (David J. Szent-Gyorgyi)
Date: 14 Mar 1994 05:45:28 GMT

Michael McKay ([email-masked]) wrote:
: 	A friend of mine is planning on hosting a feast in July called
: the "Feast of Flowers" and she wants me to cater it with pre-1600
: dishes that employ flowers. Can any of you give me some recipes or sources?
: Thank you.

The recipe below is taken from George Lang's THE CUISINE OF HUNGARY. It
is one of seven English-language translations for recipes provided in
the history of Hungarian cuisine at the front of the book. The recipes
are taken from an early sixteenth-century manuscript now in the
Szechenyi Library in Budapest, and from THE BOOK OF MIHALYI
SZENT-BENEDEKI (1601). Unfortunately, the primary sources aren't
provided.

Forgive me for posting a recipe without the primary source; I don't
have it. I'm willing to trust Lang's experience and background. He's a
professional restaurateur, and was born in Hungary. If you're
interested in the history of Hungarian food, you must read this book,
which is full of historical information -- Lang spends 150 pages on the
culinary history of Hungary and on profiles of the gastronomic regions
of the country!

I'll be a while tracking down the medieval manuscripts and books listed
in the bibliography; I'm looking for enough recipes to hold a period
Hungarian feast, complete with documentation for each dish.

Here's the recipe:

ROSE DOUGHNUT

"Make a batter of egg, flour and as much whey as necessary for right
consistency. Take a fully developed white or red rose with some of the
stem; wash it, and put it into a clean bowl to drain. (Make sure that
there are no bugs inside flower.) Dip it into the light batter, and
stand it up in plenty of hot butter to fry. Shake it every now and then
to make sure its petals will stand apart as they did on the rosebush.
If you add some rosewater to the batter, so much the better. Flavor
with cane honey."

Lang asks whether this recipe was a "poetic variation of the
zucchini-flower fritter they must have learned from the Italians some
generations ago."

If you quote the recipe, note that accents aigus should be used over
the two E's in "Szechenyi" and over the A in "Mihalyi."

Best of luck with the feast!

			  ,   ,  ,
Dave Szent-Gyorgyi/Kolozsvari Arpad, to his SCA friends

---                                                            ,   ,  ,
Dave Szent-Gyorgyi                                         Kolozsvari Arpad
[email-masked]     border of Bhakail & Hartshorn-dale, East Kingdom, SCA
"We HAVE to teach the net               On a field Sable, a trident between
 to handle diacriticals!"                     two hippocampi respectant Or.