hrj

I'm pretty sure it's the continuing smoke in the air that's causing my constant dull headache. It feels similar to the constant low-grade headaches I used to have from poor sleep, but with louder tinnitus. I periodically take analgesics but don't know that they help.

* * *

I have a lot of cookbooks, most of them historic. And given that I'm not doing SCA cooking any more, it would be nice to be getting some use out of them. So when I was staring at some lovely eggplants from the garden and thinking about lamb, my mind turned to a cookbook I hadn't yet used: Scheherazade's Feast: Foods of the Medieval Arab World by several members of the Salloum family. This isn't a scholarly edition of a historic text, but more of a coffee-table book that gives a background for medieval Arabic culinary literature, a discussion of various aspects of culture and cuisine, and then a careful selection of recipes in translation and modern adaptation. And when I thought "lamb and eggplant" I said to myself, "I bet that book has something relevant!"

Sure enough, the dish titled "Stuffed Eggplant" was just what I was looking for. I further adapted the recipe to see if I could use mostly ingredients I already had, and the major place I compromised with in minor changes of the spices. This is all from memory, since I made the dish almost a month ago (which is 10 years in normal time-passage).

Prepare dried chickpeas by soaking them for a couple days and then coarsely grinding them. The recipe called for both cubed lamb (for the broth) and ground lamb (for the stuffing) which I somehow didn't clearly notice in advance, and since I couldn't get ground lamb easily I just ground my own. Saute lamb in oil with onions then add water to cover, add salt, ground coriander seed, and a cinnamon stick and cook into a broth.

At this point I had to pull the lamb out of the broth with a slotted spoon to use it in the stuffing (the original recipe calls for cooking it similarly before preparing the stuffing, so all it meant was there was less meat in the broth). Mix the lamb and ground chickpeas with cumin, pepper, spice mixture, saffron and cinnamon.

Prepare the eggplants by slicing the top off then carefully hollowing it out. Stuff with the stuffing. Close the hole at the top (I had some smaller Japanese-style eggplant as well, so I slice off small rounds to use as a "plug" then held it in place with toothppicks.) Place the eggplant in the broth and  simmer for about 40 minutes, periodically moving the eggplant to keep them from sticking to the pot.

Serve sliced into rounds with the sauce spooned over them.

Notes: I had more stuffing than I could use, so I just dumped it into the broth while it cooked. So my broth may have thickened more than intended because of the chicklpeas. It was very tasty. A bit heavy as a sole dish (which is how I tend to cook for myself) and would have worked better as "one slice per diner with other stuff on the side." The eggplant held up fairly well to the cooking, and by the time the "plugs" had dissolved, the stuffing had firmed up a little and didn't leak out. Would I cook it again? Not sure. The recipe was a bit fussy and complex compared to how I usually cook on my own.

* * *

The biggest ongoing project in the last month has been setting up the new, independent channel for my podcast (The Lesbian HIstoric Motif Podcast). My current podcast group/host will be going away and I wanted to make sure to keep all my older shows available. So of course I went a little overboard and re-mastered the shows to have a new intro/outro that explains the context and removes direct references to the host/group. The transfer also gave me a chance to standardize my show notes, since I needed a new version of everything for the new site. I got all that set up before announcing the move (at the beginning of September) and the rest of the month has been actually setting up the new account and starting to upload all the older shows.  (Which also involves lots of revisions to the related blog entries.) I'm doing one month's episodes every day and am slightly more than halfway done.

Starting in November, I'll be releasing the show in parallel on both channels so I have two months to really talk up making the switch. Then in January I'll both be releasing only through the new site, but I'll also implement some format changes. I'll be going to 2 shows per month (rather than a weekly show), not counting the 4 fiction episodes. The essay shows will be essentially unchanged, but I'll be combining the interviews, book rec shows, industry news, etc into the "On the Shelf" episodes. This takes a lot of the pressure off needing to have an interview *every* month, though it's still my goal. It also means I can be more casual about asking my guests to mention book recs since it won't be a separate show.

After the backlog is transferred, I've promised myself to do some more formal setup of social media promotion of the existing material, not only for the podcast but for the blog.

Brainstorming for squibs may regularly involve browsing through my research folders and saying, "Hey I think I could throw something together easily on that." In this case, my eyes fell on a class handout I'd made for teaching basic techniques of medieval hearth cookery, centered around a variety of basic recipes involving eggs.

The topic of hearth cookery is another idea for the future -- it's a very different rhythm than using a stove, so there are some interesting philosophical aspects to it. But for now, this is just the recipes.

People who are new to medieval and Renaissance cookery (or who haven't thought about it much at all) often have peculiar notions of how "weird" the food must be. I enjoy coming across recipes that highlight the continuity of foodways in western culture, although I'd never want to give the mistaken impression that historic cuisine was "just like" modern food. This assortment of egg-based dishes falls more toward the "just like" end of the scale, and is somewhat misleading in terms of representing the whole. But they do go some way to debunking the notion that all medieval food is "weird and strange".

De Ovis

This first item is from a very early source, and one that frames a great deal of its information in terms of being a "health manual" rather than a culinary treatise. (The intertwining of the genres of "health manual" and "culinary treatise" continues well into the Renaissance.) This is from a treatise by the 6th century Byzantine physician Anthimus, written for Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths (and including a fair number of snarky digs at Gothic cuisine in relation to the much more enlightened tastes of the Byzantines). I didn't use this in my cookery class, but it includes one of the most perfect descriptions of how to soft-cook an egg in the entire history of culinary literature.

De ouis gallinarum quantum plus quis uoluerit praesumat, sorbilia tamen, et sale modicum mittendum, et si ieiunus quis accipiat quanta potuerit, ad uirtutem proficit corporis melius quam alter cibus et sanis hominibus et infirmis; ita tamen fiant, ut in tepida aqua mittantur uel maxime in frigida, et sic coquantur lento foco, aut in carbonibus paulatim calefiat illa aqua: sic penetrat intus. Nam si in feruenti aqua missa fuerint, albumen coagulat et mediolum illud tarde sentit; et deuenit intermperatum, et qui sic acceperit nocetur. Nam sicut superius dixi, si ita fuerint facta, bene conueniunt. Et tamen semper cocus agitet cum spatula. Tamen recentiora oua meliora sunt.

You can eat as many hens’ eggs as you want, but they should be runny, and taken with a little salt. If someone who is hungry eats as many eggs as he can, they are of more benefit to the body than any other food, both in the case of sick and healthy people. Prepare eggs in the following way: make sure that they are put in warm water, or preferably cold water, and then cook them over a low flame; let the water warm up gradually on the charcoal, for in this way the heat penetrates inside the eggs. If, however, they have been put in boiling water, the white congeals and the yolk is warmed only gradually, and so the eggs become unevenly cooked, and whoever eats them is harmed. But if they are prepared in the manner I described above, they are most agreeable. The cook should stir the water constantly with a spoon. The fresher the eggs, the better.

* * *

Anthimus doesn't offer any guidance for how long to cook the eggs to achieve the desired "runny" state. Folklore (which is to say, I read it somewhere and can't be bothered to try to track down a citation at the moment) suggests that for short, but fixed, cooking times, cooks sometimes used the recitation of specific prayers as a way of providing a consistent timing mechanism. I.e., cook for a certain number of Paters or Aves.

* * *

The rest of these recipes are all from a collection published as "Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks", being a combined edition of two major variants of a particular text tradition (with lots of notes on other versions with variants). In terms of the most commonly available English-language medieval culinary texts, this collection stands around the point when a knowledgeable cook with no special familiarity with Middle English can easily make sense of the recipes. (A century earlier, the collection of texts published as "The Forme of Cury", show a progression of variants of a basic text over time that start from "pretty much a foreign language" to "I think I can puzzle this out".)

Payn perdeux (French Toast)

Take fayre 3olkys of Eyroun, & trye hem fro the whyte, & draw hem thorw a straynoure, & take Salt and caste ther-to; than take fayre brede, & kytte it as trounde3 rounde; than take fayre Boter that is claryfiyd, or ellys fayre Freysshe grece, & putte it on a potte, & make it hote; than take & wete wyl thin trounde3 in the 3olkys, & putte hem in the panne, an so frye hem vppe; but ware of cleuyng to the panne; & whan it is fryid, ley hem on a dysshe, & ley Sugre y-nowe ther-on, & thanne serue it forht.

Or in modernized form:

[ETA: Obviously the original and modernized versions are slightly different texts. Not sure how I missed that. I've added the second version.]

Version 1: (This was what I had posted originally and is a variant of the above.) Take fair yolks of eggs and try [separate] them from the white and draw them through a strainer. And then take salt and cast thereto. And then take manchet bread or pain-de-main [i.e., fine white bread] and cut it in slices. And then take fair butter and clarify it, or else take fresh grease and put it in a fair pan and make it hot. And then wet thy bread well there in the yolks of eggs. And then lay it on the butter in the pan when the butter is all hot. And then when it is fried enough, take sugar enough and cast there-to when it is in the dish. And so serve it forth. [Note: "fair" in recipes like this should be understood as "clean" or in the case of ingredients, perhaps "purified". What this specification suggests about unspecified defaults is left as an exercise for the reader.]

Version 2: (This is a more faithful version of the original that is posted above.) Take fair yolks of eggs and try [separate] them from the white and draw them through a strainer. And then take salt and cast thereto. Then take fair bread and cut it in slices. Then take fair butter that is clarified, or else fair fresh grease and put it in a pot and make it hot. Then take and wet well your slices in the yolks and put them in the pan and so fry them up. But beware of cleaving [sticking] to the pan. And when it is fried, lay them on a dish and lay sugar enough there-on and then serve it forth.

• Separate your egg yolks and beat them.
• Add a small pinch of salt to the eggs.
• Slice good white bread.
• Heat a little clarified butter or grease in a frying pan.
• Dip a slice of bread in the egg yolk on both sides and fry it on both sides in the pan.
• Put it on your dish and sprinkle with sugar.
• Repeat until your egg yolk is all used up.

Eyron en poche (poached eggs)

Take Eyroun, breke hem, an sethe hem in hot Water; than take hem Vppe as hole as thou may; than take flowre, an melle with Mylke, & caste ther-to Sugre or Hony, & a lytel pouder Gyngere, an boyle alle y-fere, & coloure with Safroun; an ley thin Eyroun in dysshys, & caste the Sewe a-boue, & caste on pouder y-now. Blawnche pouder ys best.

Poached Eggs – Take eggs, break them, and seethe them in hot water. Then take them up as whole as thou may. Then take flour and mix with milk, and cast there-to sugar or honey and a little powdered ginger, and boil all together and color it with saffron. And lay thine eggs in dishes and cast the sauce over it, and cast on enough [spice] powder. Blanche powder is best.

• Bring a pot of water to a simmer and carefully break an egg into it.
• Cook the egg to your desired hardness.
• Make a thin paste with flour and milk (maybe 1 Tbsp flour to ½ cup milk, or as you will).
• Add sugar or honey to taste (maybe 1 Tbsp)
• Add ginger (maybe ¼ - ½ tsp) and a pinch of saffron.
• Heat the sauce over a gentle heat, stirring regularly, until it thickens.
• Remove the egg from the water with a slotted spoon and place it in your dish and pour a little of the sauce over it.
• Sprinkle with a sweet spice powder.

("Blanche powder" was a popular spice mixture involving what we would think of as "dessert spices" combined with sugar. So for quick-and-dirty, cinnamnon sugar can substitute.)

Hannony (omelette with onions)

Take an draw the Whyte & the yolkys of the Eyroun thorw a straynoure; than take Oynonys, & schreded hem smal; than take fayre Buter or grece, & vnnethe kyuer the panne ther-with, an frye the Oynonys, & than caste the Eyroun in the panne, & breke they Eyrouns & the Oynonys to-gegere; an than lat hem frye t-gederys a litelwhyle; than take hem vp, an serue forth alle to-broke to-gederys on a fayre dyssche.

Take and draw the white and the yolks of the eggs through a strainer. [The purpose of "draw through a strainer" seems to be equivalent here to a modern instruction to beat the eggs.] Then take onions and shred them small. Then take fair butter or grease and cover the pan there-with and fry the onions. And then cast the eggs in the pan and break the eggs and the onions together. And then let them fry together a little while. Then take them up and serve forth all to-broke together on a fair dish.

• Beat your eggs, the white and yolk together. (This is an opportunity to use up whites from other dishes.)
• Mince onion small.
• Saute the onion in butter or grease in a frying pan.
• When the onion is cooked, add the beaten eggs and stir together until the eggs are cooked.

Creme boiled (egg custard)

Take mylke, and boile hit; And then take yolkes of eyren, and try hem fro the white, and drawe hem thorgh a streynour, and cast hem into the mylke; and then sette hit on the fire, and hete hit hote, and lete not boyle; and stirre it wel til hit be som-what thik; And caste thereto sugar and salte; and kut then faire paynmain soppes, and caste the sopes there-en, And serue it in maner of potage.

Cream Boiled (egg custard) – Take milk and boil it. And then take yolks of eggs and try [separate] them from the white and draw them through a strainer. And cast them into the milk. And then set it on the fire and heat it hot and let [it] not boil. And stir it well til it be somewhat thick. And cast there-to sugar and salt. And cut then fair pain-de-main [fine white bread] sops. And cast the sops there-on. And serve it in the manner of pottage.

• Heat milk (better to aim for a simmer than a full boil). About half a cup or less per egg yolk should be right.
• Separate an egg yolk from the white and beat it.
• Add the yolk to the milk.
• Cook it over a low heat so that it doesn’t boil, stirring constantly, until it thickens.
• Add sugar to taste (maybe 1-2 Tbsp per ½ c milk or as you will) and a pinch of salt.
• Slice bread and put it in your bowl.
• Pour the custard over the bread.

(Posted early because I'll be on the road all day Tuesday.)

I’ve written previously about some of my food-related research for the Alpennian books. It might be fun (some distant day in the future) to bring together all the food references in the books (when there are more of them) with recipes and whatnot. In the meantime, I decided last fall that I should come up with at least a couple of Alpennian dishes that I could serve on the occasion of readings and whatnot, just for fun. I haven’t had a chance previously, but when I was brainstorming for offerings to entice people to my Kaffee Klatch at Sasquan this Friday, I realized this was the perfect opportunity.

Not all food items are equally suited to transporting to a convention (or throwing together in someone else’s kitchen—which is what I had in mind originally), but the sorts of light snacks one serves visitors are ideal, and I had a reference to Jeanne serving Antuniet “almond cake” which seemed promising enough. The book reference mentions slices, so I had in mind something more classically cake-like, but my 18th c. French cookbooks turned up something more suited to my needs.

From The Art of French Cookery

Almond Cake – Gâteau d’Almandes

Beat a pound of almonds, add a quarter of a pound of sugar, a little confected orange flowers, and half a glass of cream; have puft paste sufficient for a cake; give it a half turn more; roll it to the thickness of a crown; cut it round of the proper size; put the paste on it, and cover it with another round of puft paste; nick it across; finish the edge of the cover, put it into a quick oven; when baked; sift sugar over and serve.

Another Almond Cake - Gâteau Pithiviera

Prepare the almonds as in the foregoing recipe add a pound of sifted sugar, a little lemon peel minced, half a pound of butter; put in by degrees six eggs, have puft paste as in the above article; proceed and finish in the same manner. It may be made into small ones.

* * *

One of the reasons I chose this version is because it can be made primarily using commercial shortcuts, i.e., almond paste and frozen puff pastry sheets. So here’s my quick-and-dirty version.

Take ca. 25 g candied Seville orange peel and mince finely
Mix with ca. 250 g commercial almond paste (not marzipan, but almond paste)
Take one package of commercial puff pastry sheets (2 sheets, each folded in thirds) and thaw per directions.
Cut each sheet into thirds on the folds, and then each third into a dozen small rectangles (2x6)
On a lightly floured board, roll each piece out either into a square or an elongated rectangle so that it’s about half the thickness of the original.
Place a flattened knob of the almond paste mixture on the pastry and fold over either into a triangle or square shape. (I originally thought of cutting them into rounds, but this would have been more work and wasteful.)
Bake at 400F for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

This has the advantage over a loaf cake of coming in bite-size pieces, although the disadvantage of being somewhat fragile. (We’ll see how well they’ve survived!) As you can see, I simplified the filling slightly and drew from both versions (orange peel rather than orange flowers or lemon peel, in part because I have a large quantity of home-made candied orange peel lying around). Someday I’ll try a version where I’ve done the fancy finishes around the edge and nicking the top.

I'll post pix from the Kaffee Klatch when they're served!

Every once in a while I get the urge for fresh fish, and having a local Ranch 99 market (Asian specialty grocery store) it's all a matter of finding a day when I can purchase and cook the fish on the same day. Saturday the mackerel looked good, so when I got it home I started looking for interesting recipes and found this in Sally Grainger's Cooking Apicius:

Apicius 9.10.5 Sauce for tuna or mackerel

This sauce can be used as a marinade, then the ish can be cooked in it and finally a little can be poured over the tuna.

1/3 tsp lovage seeds
1/2 tsp celery seed
generous freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp fresh mint
1 tsp fresh rue
1 tbsp date syrup
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
50 ml sweet white wine
mackerel fillets

For the sauce, I didn't feel like cracking a bottle of wine just for the marinade, so it was a bit thicker than it would have been otherwise. And in addition to the date syrup and honey I added a splash of saba (reduced grape juice, i.e., must). The mint, rue, and lovage seeds all came out of my garden and the saba and vinegar were Gifts from the Estates of Friends. The folks at the fish counter gutted the mackerel but nothing more. I pulled out the spine and ribs (which came out cleanly) leaving a single fillet, which I covered with the sauce, in a foil-lined pan. After a couple hours, I baked it at 350 for 15 minutes, as specified by Grainger, then served it over a bed of tofu noodles (definitely NOT a traditional Roman method).

Results: Absolutely delicious. There wasn't quite enough of the sauce (which there might have been, if I'd added the wine), but by dint of picking up some noodles and some fish with every bite, it worked out. I ate it in combination with some sorrel soup, fresh from the garden (sorrel and onion sauteed in butter, heated with chicken broth and pureed with a stick-blender, then thickened with an egg yolk and some cream).

(For previous posts in this series, see items tagged with 'messisbugo'.)

The boundaries between the 3rd through 5th courses are necessarily somewhat fuzzier, given that 3 of the menus only have 3 courses and only one has the full 5 numbered courses. But if we take the contents of the menus with more numbered courses as defining the cut-offs, then the template for the Third Course is what remains.

But even this approach leaves some very sloppy edges. The 1548 menu (as mentioned previously) includes in the Second Course two oyster dishes that the majority rule would properly place in the Third and Fifth Courses. And then the 1524 and 1540 menus seem to have a reprise of the non-fowl parts of the Second Course as part of the Third Course. (The 1524 menu, which had the extra fish dishes in the Second Course also reprises these in the Third Course.) The 1524 menu also has placed several fruit dishes in the Fourth Course that the other menus all place in the Third.  So this chapter will analyze what appears to be the common template for the Third Course even when specific dishes in specific menus are listed elsewhere. The “reprise of the Second Course” dishes are going to be treated separately as a sort of “Course 2b” as the majority rule identifies them as excluded from the standard Third Course template.

The 1548 menu gives us a clue to the basic theme of the Third Course when it explicitly labels it “Fruits and Others”.  Overall, the dishes here are somewhat lighter and have almost no focus on meat (with the sole exception of the oyster dishes). In contrast to the Second Course, we again see a clear set of common dishes across all or most of the menus.

Second Course Reprise

Roast Suckling Quadruped (2 menus)

The 1524 menu, which had stuffed lamb and kid breast in the Second Course, reprises it with whole stuffed roast kid. The 1540 menu, which had whole stuffed roast kid in the Second Course, reprises it with roast suckling pig.

Roast (Veal) Loin (2 menus)

These might better be considered “displaced” dishes, as the 1524 and 1540 menus were the only two that had no roast loin dish in the Second Course.

Sauce (2 menus)

Mustard is listed separately in the 1540 menu while Peacock Sauce has its own line item in the 1524 menu but follows the listing for roast peacock (see below).

Other Dishes (1 menu)

The 1524 menu, which has been noted previously as the most extensive and elaborate,  also includes roast peacock (with the aforementioned peacock sauce), hare in black broth, and three fish dishes: small fishes, stuffed lobsters, and fish gelatin. These “reprise” dishes constitute all but one of the items listed for the Third Course in the 1524 menu, so in terms of conceptual structure it really is more of a duplicate Second Course. That is, this menu has five numbered courses, not because it adds an extra at the end, but because it duplicates one in the middle.

The True Third Course

Fruits

Olives (6 of 6 menus)

Fresh grapes (5 of 6 menus)

Note that the 6th menu is the one where grapes were put on the table in the First Course and explicitly noted to be left on the table for the rest of the meal. So we can count grapes as being present for this course in 6 of 6 menus.

Guaste pears (5 of 6 menus)

Two types of pears are listed: Guaste and Caroele. I don’t know the difference.  In 3 menus, these are cooked into pies or pastries.

Caroelle pears (2 of 6 menus)

These are listed simply, in one case accompanied by “paradise apples”. All of the menus have at least one pear dish.

Apples (1 of 6 menus)

Little apple tarts

Oyster Dishes

5 of 6 menus have some sort of oyster dish. Interestingly, the exception is the 1524 menu which is the only one with non-oyster seafood dishes. I’m sure there’s some sort of story behind this.

Oyster Pies/Pastries (4 of 6 menus)

Fried Oysters (2 of 6 menus)

In both cases, a sauces is also mentioned.

Other

A Decorative Dish (3 of 6 menus)

These are grouped, not by material, but because the dish is  clearly intended as a visual decoration. One is custard-filled pastry in the shape of a fleur-de-lys. One is described as “various arms, German-style, fried with sugar”. And one is an Italian jelly with a mantle and laurel leaves.

Jellies (1 of 6 menus)

In addition to the above decorative jelly, there is a “French jelly”.

Pastry (2 of 6 menus)

Pastries of wafer dough and “guanti” which are hand-shaped fried pastries.

Marzipan (2 of 6 menus)

In one case listed only as “marzipan pastries”, in the other a detailed description “tegole of beans of faux royal pastry, fried, filled with marzipan” which would be baffling except that it is included in the detailed recipes and is apparently little marzipan “beans” enclosed in a fried pastry “pod”.

Misc. (1 of 6 menus)

Three of the remaining dishes occur in the same menu: pistachios and pine nuts, butter pats stamped with armorial designs, and “tall farate(?) without skin on them” whatever that might be. Another menu has "Fennel and other fruits in vinegar"

Summary

So if I were going to design a basic Third Course template, it would be something like this:

• Olives


• Grapes


• Pears in pastry


• An oyster pastry or fried oysters


• A visually decorative dish, either of pastry or jelly

The full listings are complicated here by my attempt to show not only the dishes listed in the Third Course, but also to indicate dishes listed elsewhere that fall under this template, and to indicate which items listed as Third Course seem to belong under other templates. Because of this, there are a couple places where I’ve moved one of the dishes from the original order given, in order indicate these groupings.

15?0 (order altered slightly for thematic groupings)

• Olives, 10 plates.


• Fresh grapes, 10 plates.


• Caroele pears and paradise apples, 10 plates.


• 10 large oyster pies in 10 plates.


• 200 fried oysters, covered in cameline sauce, in 10 plates.

Listed here, but belonging thematically to the Course 4 template

• Cheese, 10 plates.


• Butter vermicelli with rose water and sugar, with fine sugar on top in 10 plates.


• Clotted cream [lattemele], 20 plates.


• Clouds and wafers, 20 plates.

1524
Course 2b

• 20 suckling kids stuffed and roasted, in 20 little plates.


• 20 loins in cavezzi in 20 little plates.


• 20 spit-roasted peacocks in 20 little plates.


• Hare in black broth in 20 little plates.


• Small fishes, 20 little plates.


• Stuffed lobsters, 20 little plates.


• Fish gelatin, 20 little plates.


• Peacock sauce, 20 little plates.

Course 3

• Olives, 20 little plates.

Listed in Course 4 but thematically included here

• 20 little apple tarts in 20 little plates.


• Marzipan pastries, 20 little plates.


• Guaste pears and apples in large pies, 20 little plates.


• 100 caroelle pears in 20 little plates.

1536

• 10 tall farate [?] without skin on them, with fine sugar, in 10 plates.


• 40 oyster pasties in 10 plates.


• 90 pasties of wafer dough in 10 plates.


• Fresh grapes, 10 plates.


• Olives, 10 plates.


• Peeled pistachios and pine nuts, 10 plates.


• Guaste pears in 10 plates.


• Washed butter stamped with various arms, with candied cinnamon on top, 10 plates.

1537

• 350 fried oysters, covered in strong sauce on 14 plates.


• French jelly in 14 plates.


• 14 large fleur-de-lys in 14 plates. (That is, a fleur-de-lys shaped pastry filled with custard)


• 14 large pastries filled with guaste pears in 14 plates.


• 140 tegole [lit. “tiles”] of beans of faux royal pastry, fried, filled with marzipan in 14 plates.


• Guanti in 14 plates. (a fried pastry shaped like a hand or glove)


• Fresh grapes, 14 plates.


• Olives, 14 plates.

1540 (order altered slightly for thematic groupings)
Course 2b

• 12 suckling pigs, roasted, in 12 little plates.


• 12 veal loins cavezzi in 12 little plates.


• Mustard in 12 little plates.

Course 3

• Large pies of currants and guaste pears in 12 little plates.


• Various arms, German-style, fried with sugar, in 12 little plates.


• 12 large oyster pastries in 12 little plates.


• Olives in 12 little plates.


• Fresh grapes in little plates.

1548
Listed in the Second Course, but belonging thematically here

• 7 large oyster pies in 7 plates.

Course 3

• Italian jelly with a mantle and laurel leaves, 7 plates.


• Olives, 7 plates.


• Fresh grapes, 7 plates.


• Guaste pears with candied aniseseed on 7 plates.


• Fennel and other fruits in vinegar, 7 plates.

Listed here, but belonging thematically to the Course 4 template

• Faux junket with sugar, almonds, and rosewater in place of clotted cream, 7 plates.


• Small and large wafers, 140 in 7 plates.

(For previous posts in this series, see items tagged with 'messisbugo'.)

No, you haven’t missed parts 11-13. Those are scheduled to cover the other numbered courses and I’d already set up the file templates with those labels. But I decided to add one more overview discussion concerning how the various dishes were served to the diners. You may have noticed that each dish provides serving amounts indicating the number or quantity of food and the number of plates it’s served in. For example: “80 thrushes, 120 polpette, 80 turtledoves, together on 20 little plates” from which we may calculate that each of the 20 plates contained 4 thrushes, 6 polpette, and 4 turtledoves. Or “80 large fried kid livers with yellow sauce, 10 pounds in 20 little plates” from which we calculated each plate to have contained 4 kids livers comprising half a pound total. But how does this relate to the number of diners? Did each diner get their own thrush and turtledove? Perhaps. The per-plate count of items ranges from one each for larger items (e.g., capons, ducks), 2-4 for smaller items (pheasants, turtledoves, tomaselle) and 6-10 of small items such as pastries. And in general the total number of smaller items will be a multiple of the total number of diners (or at least of ordinary diners).

The number of diners (including the host(s) and guest(s) of honor) is enumerated for each menu. And each menu will tend to have a default number of plates of each dish served. A typical example is: “A dinner that was given by the magnificent Messer Girolamo Giliolo for the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord Duke of Ferrara and other Gentlemen and Ladies, who numbered 38 at the first Table.” That is, counting the host and guest of honor, there were 40 diners. (The reference to the “first table” suggests that there may have been other tables, but the menus only seem to be describing what happens at the “first” table.) The default number of plates per dish in this case is 10.

In general, the default intent seems to have been to have one plate per 4 diners. The complication in this arithmetic is that sometimes this only works if you don’t include the host(s) and guest(s) of honor in the count of diners. In most cases, they do seem to have been included. It isn’t clear to me whether this represents two different styles of serving (one where the hosts/GoH’s may have been served something different that isn’t specified -- though this would seem a bit odd for the type of document we’re examining) or whether they hosts/GoH’s quantities simply weren’t included in the totals listed (though this would seem odd if the intent were to document quantities of food served).

After going through each menu in detail, I’ll synthesize the results into a generic serving template.

15?0

44 diners (1 host, 3 guests of honor, 40 “ordinary” guests); not counting the confection and collation courses, 30 dishes in 4 courses

10 plates for each dish (i.e., 4 diners per plate counting only “ordinary” guests) except:

• 40 marzipan biscuits


• both salads specified as “one per person”


• 20 plates of partridges


• 20 plates each of clotted cream and “clouds and wafers”

Items per plate range from 1-6 but there isn’t a clear focus around a “typical count” that matches the number of diners, though the plurality revolves around 40 -- the number of “ordinary guests”.

1524

78 diners (2 hosts, 2 guests of honor, 74 “ordinary” guests); not counting the confection and collation courses, 44 dishes in 6 courses

20 plates (i.e., 4 diners per plate) for each dish except:

• 37 plates of each salad


• 12 plates of crab (this is a “presentation” dish with a motto gilded on the back of each crab)

This time the diners per plate comes out neatly to 4 including the hosts and GoH’s with a couple servings to spare. The exception is the salads where the count matches one for every two ordinary guest. Items per plate range from 1-4 in most cases with 80 total items being typical. Odd exceptions are 25 pheasants in 20 plates, 30 capons in 20 plates.

1536

40 diners (1 host, 1 guest of honor, 38 “ordinary” guests); not counting the confection and collation courses, 36 dishes in 5 courses

10 plates  (i.e., 4 diners per plate) for each dish except:

• 32 each of salads


• 20 plates of turtledoves


• 30 cups hippocras

At 10 plates and 4 diners per plate, the hosts and GoH’s are covered in the serving count as well as the ordinary guests. The salads, on the other hand are insufficient for each ordinary guest to have their own and too many for them to be shared in pairs of diners. Foot items per plate range from 1-4 generally with a plurality having a total of 40 items, matching the total diner count. In addition to the odd number of salads, the 30 cups of hippocras don’t match any obvious diner grouping.

1537

55 diners 1 host, 3 guests of honor, 51 “ordinary” guests); not counting the confection and collation courses, 33 dishes in 5 courses

14 plates (i.e., 4 diners per plate) for each dish except:

• 32 each of salads

• 51 plates each of wafers and clotted cream

Food items per plate range from 1-4 generally, with 4 being the most common number for a total of 56 items. (This would appear to cover all diners, including host/GoH’s.) The most plentiful food items were fried oysters (25 per plate) and plain oysters (cooking method unspecified, 1000 total in 14 plates which comes to almost 20 per diner!) Note that once again the number of salads is too large to suggest they were intended as multi-diner servings, but too small for each diner to have their own. The very specific number of wafer and cream servings matches the “ordinary guests”.

1540

48 diners (1 host, 1 guest of honor, 46 “ordinary” guests); not counting the confection and collation courses, 31 dishes in 4 courses

12 plates (i.e., 4 diners per plate) for each dish except:

• 24 plates of each salad (i.e., one for every 2 diners)


• 46 [plates, presumably] of capon livers and sausages

The plate-count is sufficient to cover diners in all categories. Food items per plate range from 1-4 though in this menu the total count is not always given (e.g., “whole stuffed roasted kids in 12 plates” where we may presume one per plate but it’s not explicit).

1548

30 diners (1 host, 2 guests of honor, 27 “ordinary” guests); not counting the confection and collation courses, 34 dishes in 4 courses

We get a clue to a possibly uncounted category of diners from one of the non-food activities: “While they were eating the confections, my Consort sent two baskets with 27 packets of scented flowers, some real and some faux, one for the Most Illustrious Lord Duke, and one for the Most Illustrious Lord Prince, which their Lordships distributed among the dinner guests.” This reaffirms the notion of “ordinary guests” as being a key number and introduces for the first time the question of whether (in general) the host(s)’ wives should be included in the diner counts (even though never mentioned in the description).

7 plates (i.e., 4 diners per plate) for each dish except for:

• 16 plates each of both salads (note that this would be sufficient for 2 diners per serving even including host/GoH)


• 20 plates of (total of 400) oysters with oranges

Items per plate range from 1-4 with the majority involving a single larger item on each plate, though there are several items were 28 are specified. Exceptions to this pattern include 30 tomaselle (along with 28 chickens) on 7 plates, 35 small flaky flans in 7 plates.

Summary

The total number of guests ranges from 30 to 78. There is only a slight correlation between this number and the total number of dishes served or the number of courses, though there is a rule of thumb that the greater the number of courses, the greater the overall dish count. (Keep in mind that “number of courses” here includes the “pre-course” not just the numbered courses.)

• 4 courses: 30, 31, 34 dishes


• 5 courses: 33, 36 dishes


• 6 courses 44 dishes

The 6-course dinner also has the largest guest count, but this would seem to be a feature of elaborateness of the banquet, not that a greater number of distinct dishes was needed to provide a greater amount of food. (That is, this dinner featured a greater amount of food per person, not just a greater amount overall.)

If we may generalize by a majority rule: dishes are normally served in plates that serve 4 diners each. One consistent exception is the salads, where each salad (remember there are normally two) may be intended to serve either one or two diners. (In two menus, the salad count falls between these two and I have no idea what’s going on.)

Without getting to too detailed a level, here are some typical quantities of food per (4-person) plate:

Fowl

• Capon 1


• Duck 1


• Partridges 2-4


• Pheasant 1-2


• Peacock 1


• Pigeon 4


• Quail, thrush, turtledove 4

Quadruped

• Hare or rabbit 1


• Roast kid, lamb, or suckling pig 1


• Veal or unspecified loin 1


• Veal breast 1

Processed Meats

• Sausages (various types, some sliced) 1


• Small “meatball” types dishes such as tomaselle and polpette 4-6

Oysters

• Oysters, fried 20-25


• Oysters, unspecified 50+/-

Pies and Pastries

• Small pastries 4-10


• Large pies, tarts, tortes (various contents) 1

Confectionary and “Desserts”

• Confections 1 lb


• Marmalade boxes 2-4 (sometimes with different specified contents)


• Fruit (oranges, pears) 3-5


• Wafers 20+

(For previous posts in this series, see items tagged with 'messisbugo'.)

We now enter the home stretch by circling back to the “numbered courses”. To review: after the diners finish with the course that was on the table when they were seated (if I’m interpreting correctly), we enter a sequence of courses that in most of the menus are numbered “first, second, third, etc.” although there are exceptions to this labeling system. (For the 1537 menu where the courses start numbering from the “pre-course” I’m treating them as renumbered from 1 after the pre-course.)

Of the six Carnival menus, three have three numbered courses, two have four courses, and one has five courses. When the specific dishes are matched up across the various menus, it makes sense to discuss five groupings, though specific dish groups may be combined into a single course in some cases, and more rarely may be shifted in position in the meal from what appears to be the majority case. The general distribution of dish types and their appearance in the six menus looks something like this:

Course 1: Multiple fowl dishes, a liver dish, a quadruped dish, frequently a fresh fruit dish, and other dishes with no general pattern -- This appears as the First Course in all six menus.

Course 2: Multiple fowl dishes (in most cases), a roast of a young quadruped (veal, kid, lamb or suckling pig), a sauce, a flan or torte (in most cases), in a few menus there are other dishes with no general pattern -- This appears as the Second Course in all six menus. However one menu includes dishes in this course that more commonly appear in the Third and Fifth (that is, they’re displaced from the majority position).

Course 3: Oyster pies or fried oysters, olives, fresh grapes, pears and sometimes also apples in pies, a decorative dish in jelly or pastry, a dish focusing on nuts (in various forms) -- This appears as the Third Course in most of the menus, but the 1524 menu places most of this group of dishes in the Fourth Course and instead has a Third Course that recapitulates some of the Second Course with the addition of fish. (If I were relabeling the courses to match up conceptually, I’d call this recapitulation “Course 2B” and then identify the oyster pies through nuts as “Course 3”.)

Course 4: Wafers (often with “clouds”, whatever that might signify), in some cases cheese and a pasta dish, in some cases clotted cream, and in isolated cases other dishes with no general pattern -- These appear as the Fourth Course in three menus, in reduced form as part of the Third Course in two menus, and is entirely absent in the 1540 menu.

Course 5: Oysters, sliced oranges with pepper -- This is a separate Fifth Course in one menu, appears as part of the Fourth Course in two menus, and is entirely absent in two menus. In the 1548 menu, these dishes appear but as part of the Second Course.

So that’s the basic overall structure. But the specific dishes within those themes may differ, and there are some dish types that only occur in a single menu or perhaps two and so don’t seem to be part of an overall template. In looking at the courses in detail, my general format will be to match up dishes across the menus that seem to be variants of the same template slot, group them according to the general topics given above (with “miscellaneous” coming last), and then to discuss them in decreasing order of the number of menus that dish-group appears in. In some cases, if one or more menus seem to duplicate a template slot, I may discuss the duplicates along with the “main” grouping. In previous discussions, I’ve give the original text first, but in this group of discussions I’ll add it at the end.

(For previous posts in this series, see items tagged with 'messisbugo'.)

As you may remember from the last post, we get a view into what else was going on at these banquets (besides eating) from the 1548 menu which describes a “flower game” that comes after the confectionary course and before the collation. The 1548 menu has a great deal more discussion of the non-food activities in general. I skipped over some text in this menu that appeared before the description of the initial table setting, so let’s back up a little and look at this one event, placing the text in what appears to be the chronological order of the events, rather than the order of the text.

“Now it should be known that in Banquets during Carnival some party was always given before, or a tournament, or a game of caleselle or whatever[1], or a combat with pikes/staffs, or a castle, or there might be the party of the Pig [?] or other similar things, which in order to expedite things I did not want to relate.”

[Note 1: per Florio: “apish, minike or iugling trickes.  Also a kind of paste meate.  Also a kind of sport or game used at Shrovetide in Italie.  Also certain round balles made of baked earth very brittle, which in that play they use to cast one at another, and breake very suddenly.”]

This is a general statement of what sorts of events were held, though no specific physical activity is describef for this banquet. But we are then told the following:

“First a Comedy was recited in the hall, where there was a very beautiful little stage set representing Venice.  The comedy was titled “The Night,” written by Maestro Girolamo Parabosco of Bologna, which was very pleasing, comical, and well performed with its musical pieces.  And there were the appropriate and necessary interludes [intermezzi]. [2] The comedy began at hour 24 [meaning midnight?] and finished at half-past three at night.  And when the Comedy was finished the table was prepared with the materials described below, that is:”

[Note 2: My note, not the translator’s. My impression is that “interludes” would normally be performed during the meal itself, though that isn’t clear in this description.]

And then we get the description of the table setting, the “pre-course”, the three numbered courses, an the confectionary course. Now we have the flower game:

“While they were eating the confections, my Consort sent two baskets with 27 packets of scented flowers, some real and some faux, one for the Most Illustrious Lord Duke, and one for the Most Illustrious Lord Prince, which their Lordships distributed among the dinner guests.

While we were playing this flower game, the Hall was rinsed, emptied and swept, and then they went to dance, and danced until nine o’clock. At 9 there was a collation...”

(The collation course will be described in the next installment.)

“Then everyone went to his own house fully satisfied.”

You may notice that this is somewhat startling in the details of the timing: We begin at midnight (if correctly interpreted) with a dramatic presentation that lasts for three hours. And if there were a tournament or physical game before that, presumably it would have been during daylight hours, so we may imagine the activities beginning at the very lease in mid-afternoon if not before. Then at half past three in the morning, the table is prepared for an extensive meal. If the dancing lasts until 9:00, presumably in the morning, then we may imagine perhaps that the main banquet lasted for several hours, followed by a couple hours of dancing. At 9am the guests are served a very light refreshment (the collation) and then go home, presumably straight to their beds!

To provide a comparison, there are similarly detailed descriptions of the non-food entertainments for an even more elaborate non-Carnival menu by Messisbugo for a high state dinner in January of 1529. To summarize greatly, the order of the day consisted of:

• In the grand hall there was a performance of a comedy by Ludovico Ariosto


• Then the guests left the hall for other rooms where they were entertained with music and conversation while the tables were set up and spread (with three tablecloths) in the grand hall. In this description, it is made clear that what I am calling the “pre-course” is placed on the table before the guests come in.


• The guests come into the hall, wash their hands in scented water, and sit, partaking of the dishes already on the table.


• The first course is served.


• There is a musical performance.


• The second course is served.


• There is a musical performance.


• The third course is served.


• A musical dialog is performed.


• The fourth course is served.


• There is a musical performance. (The performances are all described in terms of the voices and instruments and sometimes a named performer of note.)


• The fifth course is served.


• There is a musical performance.


• Somewhat differently from the Carnival menus, at this point the tables are cleared and the first tablecloth is removed.  Napkins, knives, salt cellars, and bread are provided, along with decorations representing Hercules defeating the Hydra.


• The sixth course is served.


• There is a musical performance.


• The seventh course is served.


• There is an entertainment involving clowns.


• The eighth course is served.


• There is a musical performance while the tables are cleared and the second tablecloth is removed. Then the decorative figures are returned to the tables.


• Scented water for handwashing is provided.


• The confectionary course is presented, along with fresh napkins and knives, and scented toothpicks.


• There is a musical performance.


• Doorprizes are brought in and distributed while other music plays, then the guests adjourned to another room while the tables were taken away and the grand hall was cleaned.


• The guests return to the grand hall to dance.


• A collation is served.


• The guests return to dancing until dawn.

So while this event was far more elaborate and extensive, it helps show the general structure and rhythm of the entertainments, which are mentioned much more briefly and ambiguously in the Carnival menus.

The next installment will discuss the contents of the “collation” which, as we have seen above, is intended as a light repast to restore the guests after (or in the middle of) the dancing.

 

(For previous posts in this series, see items tagged with 'messisbugo'.)

As I mentioned in the last installment, the contents of the numbered courses and their relationship to each other is complicated. But before I skip over to the removal (with the promise to come back to the numbered  courses in detail), I thought I should lay out the general structure.  There are 3-5 numbered courses. Of the 6 menus, 3 have 3 courses, 2 have 4 courses[1], and 1 has 5 courses. There are certain dishes that are either universal or nearly so across all the menus in a particular course, other dishes where a general category-slot seems to be near-universal, and then the option for other dishes with greater variability. When the corresponding dishes are examined, it appears that the larger set of courses is not due to an additional set of templates, but rather to repetitions of the existing templates, especially from the 2nd and 3rd courses. That is, a 5-course banquet follows a template more along the lines of “course 1, course 2a, course 2b, course 2c, course 3”.

And that’s about as much as I want to get into until I do the detailed analysis. Now on to the Removal.

[1] As mentioned previously, in one case the “pre-course” is labeled as the first course, for a total of 5 numbered courses in that menu, but they only count for 4 “numbered courses” in terms of the abstract structure.

One of the two large groceries most convenient to my house is a "Ranch 99" which, for those of you not resident in one of the four states the chain appears in, specializes in groceries for Chinese cuisine (and a number of other SE Asian cultures). One feature that definitely distinguishes it from your average American chain grocery is the variety and selection of animal species featured in the meat department. (This is where I got the whole kid that I roasted last year at the WAT cooks' play-date.) I've had a mind to start working my way through the non-chicken poultry offerings, so for the picnic dinner at yesterday's Crosston Dance Ball, I picked up a partridge. It did not -- alas -- come with feet attached (although you can get chicken and duck in that form) but did come with head affixed. This was part of the attraction: a major aspect of the esthetics of medieval roast birds in art is that they are served with feet and head intact.

There are plenty of recipes for roast partridge in 14-15th c. European cookbooks but they are all quite simple.  See e.g., Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks p. 78:

• Partrich rosted. Take a partrich, and sle him in the nape of the hede with a fethur; dight him, larde him, and roste him as thon doest a ffesaunte in the same wise. And serue him forth; then sauce him with wyne, pouder of ginger and salt, and sette hit in a dissh on the fuyre til hit boyle; then cast powder ginger, anell, thereon, And kutte him so; or elles ete him with sugur and Mustard.

Relevant to this is the directions immediately preceding for roasting pheasant:

• ffesaunte rosted … kutte away … the legges by the kne and putte the kneys in at the vente, and roste him ….

Since the market had already taken care of the slaying and dighting, and this was a domestically raised bird so there was enough subcutaneous fat that it didn't need larding, I simply tucked the ends of the legs into the vent as directed for the pheasant (I had to wedge the end of the bone into the hollow of the pelvis for them to stay -- this made the legs splay out a bit). I dusted the outside with a little saffron salt and then roasted at 350F for 60 minutes on a rack. Because I was being a little lazy and had a small jar of honey-mustard sitting around, I went with the "sugur and Mustard" sauce.

Several of us were having an impromptu shared meal at the Ball so I carved the bird up into a dozen or so tasting portions and served with mustard or plain as requested. Everyone declared it quite tasty and definitely not "just like chicken". I found the taste pleasantly a bit stronger than chicken and vaguely reminiscent of duck, but in a much milder way. The roasting time may have been longer than necessary and the wings and drumsticks were turning a little on the dry side.

My imagination is contemplating the concept of a medieval dinner with as great a variety of bird species as I can lay my hands on.