Strawberye

 

Original Source:

Two Fifteenth Century Cookery-Books: Harleian MS 279 (1430) & Harleian MS 4016 (1450)

Strawberye. Take Strawberys & waysshe hem in tyme of yere in gode red wune; than strayne thorwe a clothe, & do hem in a pott with gode almaunde milk, a-lay it with Amyndoun other with the flower or Rys,  & make it chargeaunt, and lat it boyle, and do ther in Roysonys of coraunce, safron, pepir, sugre grete plente, pouder gyngere, canel, galynhale, pounte it with vynegre, & a lytle whyte grece to put therto: coloure it with alkenade, & droppe it a-bowte, plante it with the graynes of pome-garnad, & than serve it forth.

Strawberry. Take strawberries and wash them when in season with good red wine, then strain them through a cloth and do them in a pot with good almond milk. Bind it with amidon or with rice flour and make it stiff, and let it boil, and put in currants, saffron, pepper, a lot of sugar, powdered ginger, cinnamon, galingale. Finish it with vinegar and a little white grease added. Colour it with alkanet and place in a bowl, sprinkle with pomegranate seeds and serve it forth.

 

My Redaction:
Allergens: nuts – can swap for rice milk.

250g               Strawberries
100ml             Red Wine
200ml             Almond Milk
3 Tbsp            Cornflour
1 1/3 C            Sugar
½ tsp              Red Wine Vinegar
1 tsp               Powder Douce

Clean and hull the strawberries. Steep the strawberries in red wine for at least 15 minutes, then drain and discard the wine. Puree the strawberries.

Put the strawberry pulp into a saucepan with the almond milk, cornflour, sugar and spices. Bring to the boil and let simmer for a couple of minutes. Pull it off the heat when the mixture starts to bind and thicken. Add the vinegar and pour the pudding into serving dishes.

Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled.

Changes Made:

Book of Hours, 1485 -1490
MS 38126

I did not have time to strain and remove the seeds from the strawberries but I don't think you really need too do this step. If you would like to do this step, go for it, but it isn't really necessary to do so. 

I have removed the “white grease” which would have been butter or lard, to make this dairy free as well as removing the alkanet. Alkanet is normally used as a dye, and the recipe is already bright enough coloured as is that you would not need to use alkanet. If you would like it to be redder or pink, I would just add a couple of drops of food dye, as it is also a little more accessible.  

I also removed the currants from the original recipe, but you can keep these in. I prefer to have a consistent texture, but if you would like to add the currants, you can. I have done both, but for this version, I did it without. I also did not have pomegranate seeds on hand for decorating the dish.

Spice blend: I have used my Powder Douce as it already contained around half of the mentioned spices. My spice blend is a mix of ginger, sugar, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. I do not have galangal, and I omitted the saffron and pepper. Saffron was normally used as a status spice and added to many dishes as a more “Hey I can afford this so we will add it to everything”. I don't think this would be an unreasonable substitute in period. 

 

Notes:

Amidon: Amidon is French for starch. I chose cornstarch as it is what I had on hand, though the recipe does say that you can use rice flour. This is just a thickening agent.

You can use frozen strawberries if berries are out of season. You just need to defrost and strain and discard the liquid before steeping in the wine. I have done this recipe with both fresh and frozen berries as in winter fresh berries can get very expensive.

Gloves (or Chickpea Pancakes)

 

Original Source:

Libro della Cocina

De guanti, cioé ravioli.

Togli ceci bianci, ben immolli in l’acqua; lessali bene, poi cavati dell’acqua tritali forte e mestali con la detta acqua, e colali: e di quella acqua colata distempera la farina come tu vorrai: e friggasi a lento fuoco con lardo o oglio, e mettivi su del mele.

Alt ramente. Distempera la farina con l’ova fa’ di poi guanti o altro, come tu vuoli: poni a cocere bene in la padella con lardo caldo o oglio.

Gloves, That is Ravioli.

Take white chickpeas, well softened in water; boil them well, then take them out of the water, minced finely and mix them with said water, and strain them; and with this strained water dilute the flour as you like and fry it on a low fire with lard and oil, and put some honey on top.

Another preparation. Dilute the flour with eggs, then make some gloves or other shapes as you like; set them to cook well in a pan with hot lard or oil.  

My Redaction:
Allergens: none.

330g      Chickpea Flour
450ml  Water
pinch    Salt
Oil for frying.

Heat oil in a pan over low heat.

Mix the batter of chickpea flour, water and salt to form a thin batter. Add flour or water until desired consistence is reached.

Pour the batter into the pan to size (around ¼ cup at a time) and cook on one side until bubbles start to form all over and the top of the pancake looks dry. Then flip and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Continue until all the batter is used.

Top with honey and serve or serve with honey on the side.

Changes Made:

The use of chickpea flour instead of making my own as per the recipe. As with most of the recipes I adapt, I’m attempting to go for simple, easy and affordable recipes that most people can make without breaking the budget. Chickpea flour can be bought at the supermarket for about $3-4 a bag for 330g.

Instead of mixing in a bowl, I put the ingredients into a large squeezy bottle and just shook together (and if any flour was stuck at the bottom, I used a chopstick to break up and mix). I would then add water or flour till at the right consistency. I would then squeeze to desired size. This reduced a lot of messy bowls and spills and was able to get more consistent sizing.

I have served this with honey, as per the recipes, as well as Strawberye, using it more like an accompanying dish then as a main dish.

 

Notes:
Chickpea Flour

Chickpea Flour: photo from AlexanderVanLoon

There are at least three types of chickpea flour I have seen in the markets.

Chickpea flour: is a general term for flour made from chickpeas. Most often if it is not specified as Besan or Gram, chickpea flour is made from white chickpeas.

Besan Flour: a flour made from split brown chickpeas, or chana del. This is commonly used in Indian cuisine and is good for fritters or savoury dishes.

Gram Flour: this is another name for besan flour.

Garbanzo Bean Flour: flour made from whole white or brown chickpeas.

 

For this recipe, you would ideally use Garbanzo Bean flour, though I have made this with Besan Flour, as that was what was available.  

 

Spice Blends

 

Spice mixes were fairly common in Medieval Europe but not all spice mixes were the same. It was assumed that the chefs had their own blends, and they would use those and were guarded secrets – just like the 11 secret herbs and spices of KFC…. oh wait…. we know what those are now. There would be substantial variations due to availability of ingredients, the regions they are in, budgets and even the cooks own personal tastes.

The two spice mixes I have and use the most are Fine Powder and Powder Douce. Whilst they have mostly the same ingredients, there are minor variations and which recipes use what powder. I tend to use Douce (Sweet) powder more for tarts like Apple or Pear, while Fine for a more savoury pie, like the Parsnip Pies in an earlier post. 

Fine Powder

Original Source

Le Menagier de Paris

Fine Powder of Spices. Take an ounce and a drachma of white ginger, a quarter ounce of hand-picked cinnamon, half a quarter-ounce each of grains and cloves, and a quarter-ounce of rock sugar and grind into a powder.

 

My Redaction

3 Tbsp    Ground Ginger
2 Tbsp    Sugar
1.5 tsp    Ground Cinnamon
1 tsp       Ground Cloves
1 tsp       Grains of Paradise

Take the grains of paradise (if whole), and place into a mortar and pestle, or a spice grinder if you have one, and crush the grains until you have a course powder, or to a similar coarseness like cracked black peppercorns.

Put all the spices into a jar and shake to combine. Use as required as per recipes.

 

 

Powder Douce (aka Duke’s Powder)

Le Menagier de Paris

Hippocras. To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter-ounce of very fine cinnamon, hand-picked by tasting it, an ounce of very fine meche ginger and an ounce of grains of paradise, a sixth of an ounce of nutmeg and galingale together, and pound it all together. And when you want to make hippocras, take a good half-ounce or more of this powder and two quarter-ounces of sugar, and mix them together, and a quart of wine as measured in Paris.

And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together make “Duke’s Powder”.

 

My Redaction

3 Tbsp        Ground Ginger
2 Tbsp        Sugar
1.5 Tbsp     Ground Cinnamon
1 tsp           Ground Cloves
1 tsp           Nutmeg

Take all the ingredients and place into a jar and shake well to combine. Use as required as per recipe.

 

Comments

The Powder Douce I have had in my house made up for many years, since I first started in the SCA as a university student. Until recently I was unable to come across Grains of Paradise as per the original hippocras recipe, so was only using what spices I had at home/what I could find in the supermarket.

 

 

Parsnip Pies

 

Original Source:

Le Menagier de Paris (1393)

Chervis. The earliest appearing from the ground and freshly pulled, harvested in January, February, etc., are the best; and the freshest are known by the fact that they break off, and the old ones when pulled from the ground bend. You must clean them and removed the bad parts as with turnips, then you must wash them thoroughly in warm water, then parboil a little, the put them to dry on a towel. Then flour them, then fry then arrange nicely on little plates and put sugar on them.

Item, if you wish to make pies with them, you must prepare them as above up to the frying, and then put them in pastry, breaking the longest in two pieces, and instead of the sugar mentioned above, you should put figs chopped small and grapes.

 

My Redaction:
Allergens: Gluten, wheat (if using Gluten pastry)

2                            Parsnips, extra large
¼ Cup                   Dried Figs, finely chopped
¼ Cup                   Raisins
½ tsp                     Fine Spice Powder
10 Sheets              Puff Pastry

Preheat oven to 180*C.

Peel parsnips and remove the woody core. Dice and place into a pot of boiling water and cook until tender. Drain and let the parsnips cool and dry slightly. Place on to a paper towel if you would like to help remove moisture.

Once the parsnips are dried/less moist, add the diced figs, raisins and the fine powder. Mix until the fine powder is evenly coating the mixture.

Using pastry cutting rings (or egg rings if you don’t have) cut a base and top for each pastry and place into a greased mini muffin/cupcake tray. Fill with mixture and top with the cut pastry, pressing tops and sides together.

Place into preheated oven and cook pastries until golden. Remove and serve warm. 10 sheets of puff pastry made around 50 mini pies.  

Changes Made:

These were made for a finger food service for Bal D’Argent, one of Lochac’s social dance events for the year. The dish can be made to be one large pie, but these worked as small individual pies.

I was asked to make a Gluten free, dairy free, allium free, vegetarian something. And since we also had a vegan, I was also trying to accommodate them. I used two types of Gluten Free puff pastry, one I was able to source from Woolworths, but is slightly smaller than regular puff pastry, the other thanks to a friend who is gluten free, i was pointed into the direction of one of the local IGA supermarkets which stocked the pastry in the picture. This pastry is free from: Wheat, Dairy, Soy Allergens, Yeast, Egg & Nuts, Fructose friendly and vegan friendly.

When cooked, the puff pastry from Woolworths actually puffs up really nicely. The pastry that is vegan friendly is flakier (which I can see in the first picture – the pies marked with a circle are the vegan pastry).

I used dried figs as they are out of season currently, but I don’t think this made too much of a difference to the recipe.

These can be served cold, but after two people tried, it was recommended to serve warm (and its winter and cold, some something warming would be nice). These were made ahead and then reheated under the grill (turned off) as the oven was being used for another dish.

 

Suppliers (not sponsored, but here for me to find later):

Harris Farm: Parsnips from the Imperfect Picks vegetables section gave some MASSIVE parsnips for like $7/kg.

Woolworths:
Angas Park Soft n’ Juice Figs 250g https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/229894/angas-park-soft-n-juicy-figs-soft-n-juicy
Simply Wize Gluten Free Puff Pastry Sheets: https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/763094/simply-wize-pastry-puff-gluten-free
Woolworths Raisins 375g https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/726364/woolworths-raisins

Gluten Free Bakery (IGA Sometimes):
https://www.glutenfreebakery.net/products/puff-pastry/savoury-puff-pastry/
This company also has a sweet puff pastry, that after talking to the supplier, the sweet puff pastry is more like a shortcrust pastry so can be used for recipes that require a short crust pastry.

Fine Spice Powder: See recipe page on Spice Powder mixes on my blog. This mix was ground ginger, sugar, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground grains of paradise. 

 

Syrup of Lavender (Halhâl)

iStock: English Lavender

According to Culpepper “lavender is of a special good use for all the griefs and pains of the head and brain that proceed of a cold cause, as the apoplexy, falling-sickness, the dropsy or sluggish malady, cramps, convulsion palsies and often faintings. It strengthens the stomach, and frees the liver and the spleen from obstructions, provokes women’s courses and expels the dead child and afterbirth. The flowers of Lavender steeped in wine, helps them to make water that are stopped, or are troubled with the wind or colic.”

Hildegard von Bingen says that lavender was considered a hot and dry herb in relation to humoral theory. When Spike Lavender was cooked in wine or water it would supposedly lessen the pain in the liver and lungs and the stuffiness in the chest. As well as making one’s thinking and disposition pure. 

Main Components/Ingredients

Lavender: Lavender had a number of medicinal applications as well as household uses. It could be used against pains in the heart, fainting spells, and sleeplessness; it was applied to the forehead for headache and included in antidotes. It was used internally as well as externally, and a decoction was drunk for epilepsy and kidney ailments and as a preventative for apoplexy. 

Honey: honey is a naturally occurring food with superb health benefits that are still used today. Honey has been used for centuries as a therapeutic antioxidant and used to treat cough, fever, asthma, wound healing, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, antiviral and as an antidiabetic.

 

Original Source

Syrup of Lavender

Take a ratl of lavender and cook it in enough water to cover it until its substance comes out. Then take the clear part of it and add it to a ratl of honey. Cook all this until it takes the form of a syrup.

Drink an ûqiya and a half of this with hot water..

It’s advantages are in cleaning the brain and the stomach, it lightens the body and dries up the black bile gently but contracts the breath, and it is filling. To regulate, drink with a cheering drink or cheering water.

~ The Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook, 13^th Century

Ratl; 468g/1lb
ûqiya: 39g/7 tsp

Redaction 1 (November 2024, to exact measures in recipe)

Take 468g of dried lavender and cook it in 1.5L of water until it begins to have its substance come out. Then take the clean part (filter) and add it to 486g of white sugar. Cook all this until it takes the form of a syrup. 

Bottle and use within 7-10 days. 

Redaction 2 (April 2025, smaller measures)

Take 100g of dried lavender and 1 L of water and bring to the boil in a pot on the stove. Boil for about 5 minutes or so. 

Filter/strain out the liquid and take out the lavender. Squeeze if you would like (I did not and it yielded 350mls of liquid). 

Take 500g of sugar and ½ cup water and on a low heat, dissolve the sugar in the water and bring to a gentle boil. Add the lavender water and bring to the boil and cook until desired syrup consistency (about 5 minutes). 

Cool and bottle. Serve within 7-10 days. Makes approx. 600mls. 

 

Changes Made

I used dried lavender due to the availability of the ingredient and substituted white sugar for honey due to the cost of honey (and I had plenty of white sugar in the house). Like the Syrup of Roses I made the original recipe to the original measures and again I was worried that I would not have a pot large enough (the largest pot was being used at the time to make the syrup of roses). Thankfully the lavender does not float as much as the roses did and I was able to use less water, though next time I would add more water to infuse the flavour, as I put 1L of water into the pot and only got about ⅓ back. 

NOTE:
Notes on the original source:

The version of the Anonymous Andalusian used is an English translation of the text by Charles Perry, working from the original Arabic, a printed copy of the Arabic and its translation into Spanish, and assisted by an English translation by various persons translating collaboratively the text from Spanish to English.

Originally, the book was compiled by a scribe in the 1400s and includes recipes that are copied from older works that go back until the 1200s.

The book’s title was orginially: Kitab al tabij fi-l-Maghrib wa-l-Andalus fi `asr al-Muwahhidin, li-mu'allif mayhul (or majhul).

Meaning:

The Book of Cooking in Maghreb and Andalus in the era of Almohads, by an unknown author.

It is commonly known in English today as: The Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook.

 

 

References

Abbas A, Ghozy S, Minh L, Hashan M, Soliman A, Van N, et al. Honey in bronchial asthma: from folk tales to scientifc facts. J Med Food. 2019;22(6):543–50.

Ahmed S, Sulaiman S, Baig A, Ibrahim M, Liaqat S, Fatima S, et al. Honey as a potential natural antioxidant medicine: an insight into its molecular mechanisms of action. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2018;2018:1–19.

Culpepper, N. (1653), Complete Herbal & English Physician, Applewood Books, Bedford, MA

Manuscrito Anonimo (13th c. Andalusian.) An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the Thirteenth Century, a translation by Charles Perry of the Arabic edition of Ambrosio Huici Miranda with the assistance of an English translation by Elise Fleming, Stephen Bloch, Habib ibn al-Andalusi and Janet Hinson of the Spanish translation by Ambrosio Huici Miranda, published in full in the 5th edition of volume II of the cookbook collection.

Measuring the Medieval Islamic Economy, Western Social Science,  Weights and Measures, Various Sources, https://medievalislamiceconomy.uwo.ca/measures/Weights-Measures-Various-Sources.xlsx

Von Bingen, H. (1151/1158), Throop, P. (1998 - Translation) Hildegard von Bingen's Physica: The Complete English Translation of her Classic Work on Health and Healing