ymbredaytart, Kuchnia Cooking and Food
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//-->This is a modern redaction and preparation of a 14thCentury English dish for aspecific fast-day: a cheese quiche containing herbs, onions, spices, and dried fruit.It would have been served on an “Ember Day,” one of three days1of fasting andprayer observed four times a year (one three-day fasting period each season)2inEngland since 1095.3Unlike Lent and other fast-days, which forbade both meat anddairy, Ember Day meals included recipes containing cheese, milk, and eggs. Tarts(tartes, tortes, or pasties) are commonly listed in menus of this period, such as thefeasts of King Richard II4and in “meat dinners” inLe Mènagier de Paris.5This particular recipe isverycommon throughout the SCA since it is easy tomake, can be served hot or cold, and is a tasty vegetarian protein dish. Although it isnot a complex or difficult dish to prepare, I chose to make it for this competitionbecause it is an excellent example of typical Medieval cuisine… and because I wantedto make something that the judges would find tasty and safe to eat at roomtemperature without the aid of obviously modern equipment! Plus, I think it’s fun todelve into deceptively simple recipes and really look at the ingredients.Original Recipe#173. Tart in ymbre day. Take and perboile oynouns & erbis & presse out þe water &hewe hem smale. Take grene chese & bray it in a morter, and temper it vp with ayren.Do þerto butter, safroun & salt, & raisouns courans, & a litel sugur with powdour douce,& bake it in a trap, & serue it forth. (Forme of Cury)6My TranslationParboil onions and herbs, press out the water, and mince them. Take fresh(unpressed/non-aged) cheese and grind it finely in a mortar, then blend it with an egg.Add to the mixture butter, saffron, salt, currants, and a little sugar with sweet powder,then bake it in a pie pan and serve it forth.My RedactionHerb-Onion Quiche1 C freshly made soft cheese (or ricotta or pot cheese), drained1Tart in ymbre day(made with 1 qt. whole milk, 1/2 qt. heavy cream, 2 Tb. cider vinegar, pinch salt)These three days would be Wednesday, the Friday that immediately follows, and the Saturday afterward. Pg. 505,The Compact Oxford English Dictionary,1996.2"Ember days (corruption from Lat. Quatuor Tempora, four times) are the days at the beginning of the seasonsordered by the Church as days of fast and abstinence. They were definitely arranged and prescribed for the entireChurch by Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) for the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after 13 December (S. Lucia),after Ash Wednesday, after Whitsunday, and after 14 September (Exaltation of the Cross)."Online CatholicEncyclopedia,.3Pg. 505,OED.4Feast for Richard II by the Bishop of Durham, at Durham House, London, on Sept. 23, 1387. Pg. 336,Take AThousand Eggs or More, Vol II,Cindy Renfrow, Fourth Printing, 1995.5Pg. 226-236,The Goodman of Paris,1393, edited by G.G. Coulton and Eileen Power, 1928, and Janet Hinsontranslation,6Part IV, Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (including the Forme ofCury),Edited by Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, published for The Early English Text Society by theOxford University Press, London, 1985. Please note that I’ve included the thorn (þ) from the original English text,which should be read as a “th.”paradise, cubebs, and saffron)1/4 C freshly made butter, soft(1 pt heavy cream, pinch salt)2 white onions, quartered3 large eggs, beatenpinch saffron1/4 C currants2 cloves garlic, minced1/2 bunch parsley10 leaves fresh mint8 leaves fresh sage1 tsp. fresh rosemary1/4 tsp. dittany of crete, ground in a mortar1/4 tsp. savory, ground in a mortar1/4 tsp. fennel seeds, ground in a mortar1/4 tsp. sugar, scraped from sugar loaf1/4 tsp. poudre douce(ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves, nutmeg,galangale, grains ofpie crust1 C white whole wheat flour1/2 C freshly made butter, cool1 medium egg yolkpinch saffron1/8 C cold water1. Steep the saffron in the water. Prepare a pie crust by working the butter into theflour, then adding the egg, and finally enough water to make a dough. Chill it sothat it is easier to work with, then roll it out thinly and press it into a 9” tart panand trim the crust.2. Blanch the onion quarters and whole fresh herbs, drain them, and press them in asieve to remove all excess water. Mince all together very finely with a knife on achopping block. Drain the cheese and break up the curds in a large mortar – or alarge bowl with a wooden spoon. Blend in the eggs, one at a time. Add the butterand blend that in, then add the onion-herb mixture, the garlic, the groundseasonings, and finally the currants. Mix well.3. Scrape the mixture into the prepared crust and bake at 350 degrees for roughly 35minutes. Sprinkle more poudre douce over the top in a decorative design while it isstill warm. Serves 8 people.Research & Redaction NotesIt’s always a good idea to compare similar period recipes when doing aredaction, to help “fill in the blanks” when something seems quirky. So, I found thistart in a slightly later (early 15thCentury) cookbook7:Tart on Ember-Day: Parboyle onions, and sauge, and parsel, and hew hem small, thentake gode fatte chese, and bray hit, and do therto egges, and tempur hit up therwith,7Ancient Cookery(also inCurye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (includingthe Forme of Cury,Edited by Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, published for The Early English Text Societyby the Oxford University Press, London, 1985.and do therto butter and sugur, and raisynges of corance, and pouder of ginger, and ofcannell, medel all this well togedur, and do hit in a coffyn, and bake it uncoveret, andserve hit forthe.The later recipe is virtually identical, other than requiring “fatte” cheese ratherthan “grene” cheese, and a “coffyn” rather than a “trap.” Okay, onto the research.1. Let’s look at the cheese first. “Grene” means fresh, unripe, soft cheese that has notbeen aged or pressed into a mold.8According to Terence Scully, milk needed to dealtwith in some fashion (to avoid wasting precious foodstuffs) during the warm monthswhen dairy animals were generating large amounts on a daily basis.9Besides churning it into butter and pressing it into hard rounds of cheese to beset aside and aged, one of the most common solutions to the daily gallons of milk wasto make a soft cottage-like cheese by hanging the curds in a linen bag for severalhours while the whey dripped out.10I could not find a contemporary 14thCenturysource to support this form of cheesemaking, so I will have to make due with a just-past-period source, which describes making such a soft “cheeslep bagge or Runnet.”11Therefore, the most logical cheese to use for this dish is not cheddar, havarti, orother modern “fatte,” rich, semi-firm cheeses that are commonly used in redactions ofthis recipe.I believe what the recipe refers to was something more like pot cheese or cheesecurds. A good modern substitution would be drained whole-milk cottage cheese orricotta, like that shown in an image in the 14thCenturyTacuinum Sanitatis12. Ichose to approximate the original ingredient by heating a quart of whole milk on mystove, taking it off the heat and adding a tablespoon of vinegar to it to curdle it, andthen hanging the resulting curds in cheesecloth to create a fresh cheese.132. Regarding the butter in this recipe, depending upon the season when Ember Daywas celebrated, it might have been freshly made (as opposed to stored during thewinter) but it would be definitely salted.14Therefore, I took heavy cream and churnedit in my stand mixer into fresh butter, then added a little salt. I did not handchurn thecream into butter because I don’t have a manual churn and because I don’t have thephysical arm strength to do this operation.The butter in the original recipe may have been melted (to remove salt, asexplained in footnote #11), but I doubt that it would have been added to the eggs hot(thus risk turning them into scrambled eggs!). A contemporary source,Le Mènagier89“…while it isgreene…”A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen,1636.“Keeping milk on hand in the kitchen for any length of time was of course unthinkable – at least if you wantedeventually to be able to draw upon sweet milk. Most milk was therefore destined either to be put to immediate use incooking or to be converted into its longer-lasting products, butter or cheese. Even these latter substances almostinvariably had salt added to them in order to prolong their life.” Pg. 14,The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages,Terence Scully, The Boydell Press, 1995.10Pg. 124,Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society,”Bridget Ann Henisch, Penn State Press, 1994.11Pg. 118,The English Hous-wife,Gervase Markham, 1649.12Color Plate XXXI,Tacuinum Sanitatis: The Medieval Health Handbook, George Braziller, 1996.13Basics of soft cheesemaking courtesy of "Cheese Making for the Compleat Novice" by Lady (now Dame) AoifeFinn,14“Most butter was made in the spring and summer months, and it was packed in salt to preserve it for the winter.To remove most of this salt, the butter was either washed and rubbed in fresh water or heated over the fire to clarifyas is done today.” Pg. 126, Henisch.de Paris,describes softening butter to remove salt and prepare it for cooking, so I willuse mixer-kneaded butter rather than melted butter.153. I skimmed a number of egg recipes inForme of CuryandThe Harleian MS,and Idon’t see anything more specific about the “eyren” (eggs) size or origin, other than thatthe eyren be “faire” (fresh). The eggs could have come from any number of fowl, but Ithink they would most likely have come from chicken, duck, or geese16, since those thefowl most mentioned in the other recipes. I’ve looked at several examples ofRenaissance artwork and (although this is documentation from about 100 to 200years later than this recipe) the eggs in a cook’s hand clearly look like they aremedium17. Some are white, but many are greyish-brown or even bluish in color18. Acontemporary 14thCentury piece of artwork depicts eggs that look actually large-sizedin a woman’s hands19. So, contrary to the common SCA assumption that eggs werealways smaller in period, I choose to use large-sized chicken eggs.4. “Raisouns courans”is an easy one: The OED20verifies that it refers to currants – avery common dried fruit in Medieval recipes.21. In contemporary recipes, the sameingredient is referred to as Roysonys of Coraunce22.5. Hmm. What kind of onions were used in Medieval cuisine? Let’s look at theartwork…late-period woodcuts depict what looks like both white and Spanishonions23, as opposed to modern sweet onions like Mayans or Walla Wallas. White seemto be mentioned the most in contemporary sources to this recipe24. If the recipe hadmeant leeks, I believe that would have been specified, as they are in many periodrecipes. Thus, I used white onions for this recipe.6. The recipe does not specify which herbs should be used, so how did I choose theones I did? Simple. I looked at other recipes inForme of Curyto see what used there.Recipe #107,Congur in sawse,calls for “persel, mynt, rosmarye, & a litul sawge.”Other recipes in the cookbook call for “garlek,” “whyte of lekes,” and “sauerey, tansey,veruayn, rewe, ditayn, fenel, southrenwode...”So , I believe it’s safe to theorize that the cook whose recipes inspired thiscookbook commonly used parsley, mint, rosemary, sage, garlic, leek, savory, tansy,vervain, rue, dittany of crete, fennel, and southernwood in his tartes. I choose to use15“Otherwise put your salt butter in fresh sweet water and knead and rub it there with your hands and the salt willremain in the water.” Pg. 309, Coulton and Power.16Plates 207 and 208, Braziller.17“Old Woman Poaching Eggs,” painting by Diego Valezquez, 1610.18“Kitchen Scene,” painting by Pieter Cornelisz van Ryck, 1604.19B&W plate 40, Braziller.20“(raysons of) Coraunte… (raisins of) Corinth… reduced before 1500 to coraunce, corints, currents, corans,corantes… The raisin or dried fruit prepared from a dwarf seedless variety of grape, grown in the Levant, much usedin cookery and confenctionery (1334).” pg. 377, OED.21“Dried currants, raisins, dates, and figs were fairly familiar because they were imported for winter, andparticularly for Lent…” pg. 113, Henisch.22#149, Potage Dyvers,Harleian MS. 279.23“…it is couered with very fine skinnes for the moft part of a whitifh colour… There is alfo a Spanifh kinde, whoferoot is longer than the other, but in other refpects very little different.” p. 169,The Herball, or Generall Historie ofPlantes,John Gerard, 1597.24B&W plates 134, 135, Braziller.as many fresh herbs as I could (assuming that this is a spring or summer Ember Daycelebration), which ended up being parsley, sage, mint, and rosemary.I added dried dittany of crete, savory, and fennel seeds. I ground the driedherbs in a small mortar with a pestle, and blanched the fresh herbs with the onions,as the original recipe dictates. I pressed them in a sieve to remove excess moisture,since many medieval recipes direct the cook to use a boulting cloth or fine sieve tofilter the food and ensure its commingling with other ingredients, per the HumoralTheory.257. Sugar was transported from the Far East to Europe in four forms: syrup, pressed“loaf” or cone sugar, granulated crystals, and refined “white” sugar.26The kind mostdepicted in period artwork (such as in Scappi’s 1570 series of kitchen scenes) is loafsugar. I also noted that the most common description of the use of sugar in this earlierperiod is of it being scraped or grated onto a dish as a spice directly before it isserved… which I believe means it was generally in loaf form. Therefore, I scraped sugarfor this recipe off a sugar cone I purchased from Francesco Sirene, Spicier.8. For the poudre douce, I freshly ground and blended most of the pricey spicesmentioned in other recipes inForme of Cury:freshly ground ginger, cinnamon, mace,cloves, nutmeg, galangale, grains of paradise, cubebs, and saffron.27I added sugarthat I grated from the sugar cone that I purchased from Francesco Sirene, Spicier.289. The pie crust was an interesting element to ponder and research. I immediatelychoose not to blind-bake it because 1. the recipe did not say to do so, and 2. doing sowould have overbaked the crust before the filling was properly cooked through.Is this a covered “double-crust” pastry? I don’t believe so. In fact, the recipedoes not call for a top or lid. (Note that the second, later recipe specifically calls for itto be uncovered.)Come to think of it, does this recipe include a pie crust at all?“Bake it in a trap” means that the tort should be baked in a pan or dish.Another recipe in the cookbook, #172Tartee,directs the cook to“…make a crust in atrap.”#179Sambocadesimilarly says to“make a crust in a trap..,”as does #174Tartde Bry (“Do it in a trap”).These are not all cheese fillings, by the way.Did the cook simply forget to note that there should be a pie crust? It’s possible.However, I don’t see any other tortes in this or other medieval cookbooks that containa dairy filling anddon’thave a crust. Plus, fillings without crusts tend to be rubbery. Ithink I should include a crust in this recipe!Should this be a delicate, flaky crust or a stiff, hot-water one? Recipe #175Tartde brymlentdirects the cook to“make a coffyn an ynche depe…”and #177Tartletessays to“…make a litell coffyn…”These recipes contain fish and meat fillings.2526Pg. 99, Scully.Pg. 27,Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices,Andrew Dalby, 2000.27There does not appear to be one documented recipe for this very common Medieval spice mixture. Like moderncurry and garam masala recipes, every cook likely had his (or her) own mixture. Several medieval recipes call for acombination of common “sweet” spices, as in #13. Gyngaudre. “…Put therto poudyr of pepyr, gynger, and poudyrof canell.” (pg. 39,An Ordinance of Pottage,Constance B. Hieatt, 1988.) I have chosen to use a combination ofmostly ginger and cinnamon with additional common Medieval spices that were highly valued and used in recipes todemonstrate wealth.28
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