Arthurian-Fst-art - 9/30/98
Feast menu and recipes for an Arthurian event.
NOTE: See also the files: feast-menus-msg, feasts-msg, p-menus-msg, Anglo-Saxons-msg, Arthur-bib.
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Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 19:01:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gretchen M Beck <grm+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: SC - Lunch for an Arthurian Idyll
I'm cooking the feast for an Arthurian Event next weekend, and throught
I'd post the menu now. I've got recipes for everything, but for now
I'll just post the originals (or at least such as I have with me at the
moment) without my redactions (I'll give the redactions after the feast,
so I can note any changes/problems with making them large scale). Since
Arthurian legend reached its height of popularity in France, the feast
is a 15th century French feast, with a couple of dishes from other
times/places.
1. Lunch
Chicken with various sauces
Pies of Herbs, Cheese and Eggs
Applesauce
Bread, cream cheese, and jams
Plums and Peaches
cold sage sauce, mustard sauce, and cameline sauce
A cold sage - Cook your poultry in water, then set it to cool; grind
ginger, cassia buds, grains of paradise, and cloves, and do not strain
them, then grind bread, parsley and sage with, if you wish, a little
saffron in this greenery to make it a bright green, and sieve this, and
some people add strained, hard-=cooked egg yolks steeped in vinegar; do
not boil. Break your poultry apart into halves, quarters or members,
set it out on plates with the sauce over and hard=cooked egg whites on
top. If you use hard eggs, cut them up with a knife rather than
breaking them by hand. (Note, Chiquart presents a somewhat fancier
dscription, saying to cut the egg whites like dice)
Cameline sauce - Grind ginger, a great deal of cinnamon, cloves, grains
of paradise, mace, and if you wish, long pepper, strain bread that has
been moistened in vinegar, strain everything together and salt as
necessary
(Mustard sauce I don't have the recipe for with me)
Pies of Herbs, Cheese, and Eggs
Take parsley, mint , chard, spinach, lettuce, marjoram, basil and wild
thyme, and grind everything together in a mortar, moisten with pure
water and squeeze out the juice; break large number or eggs into the
muice and add powdered ginger, cinnamon and long pepper, ad good quality
cheese, grated, and salt; beat everything together. Then make very thin
pastry to put in your dish, of the size of your dish, and then line your
dish with it/ coat the inside of the dish with pork fat, then put in
your pastry, put your dish on the coals and again coat the inside of the
pastry with pork fat. when it has melted, put your filling in your
pastry and cover it with the other dish and put fire on top as well as
underneath and let your pie dry out a little, uncover the top of the
dish and put five egg yolks and fine spice powder carefully over your
pie. then replace the dish as it was before and let it gradually cook on
a low coal fire, check often to see that it is not overcookintg. Put
sugar over the top when serving it.
Applesauce - Again, an Applesauce: to instruct the person who will be
making it, get good Barbarin apples in the amount that are to be done,
pare them properly and slice them up into fine gold or silver dishes.
He should have a fne, good clean earthenware pot, put good clean water
in it and set this to boil ovr good bright coals and set hi apple to
boil in it. He should see he has a great quantity of good sweet
almonds, depending on the amount of the apples, he has et to cook, he
should skin them, clean them wash them thoroughly and put them to be
ground in a mortat which doesn't smell at all of garlic, he should grind
them well and moisten them with the bouillon in which the apples are
cooking. When these apples are cooked through, take them out onto good
lean work tables and srain his almonds with that water and make milk
which is good and thick of them, and put it back ot boil again on bright
clean smokeles coals, with a very little salt. In the meantime, while
it is boiling, he should chop up the apples very finely with a clean
ittle knife, then after that, he should put them into his milk, and put
in a great deal of sugar depending on how much applesauce there is.
Then when the doctors aks for it, put it into find gold or silver bowl
or pans.
toodles, margaret
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 19:27:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gretchen M Beck <grm+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: SC - Dinner for an Arthurian Idyll
and here's the dinner menu. Note, most of the recipes are from either
the Viander or On Cookery, exceptions are noted:
Bread, Butter, and Larded Milk
Beef in Lamprey Sauce
Rice
A pottage of leeks with white leek sauce
Lemon salad with candied nuts
Roast Pork and Roast Lamb with sauces
A salad
Ravioli
Lion's Heads (stewed pears on pastry)
Larded Milk (Viander) Set milk to boil on th fire, get beaten egg yolks,
then take the milk down off the fire, place it on some coals and pour
the eggs into it. Should you wish it for a meat-day, take rashers of
bacon, cut them into two or three pieces and put them with the milk to
boil; and should you wish it for a fish=dayu, you should not put any
bacon in it, but add in wine or verjuice bfore it is taken down in order
to make it curdle. Then take it off the fire and put it in clean cloth
and let it drain and wrap it in two ot three layers of cloth and squeeze
it until it is a hard as bef liver, Then put it on a table and cut it
into slices the size of the palm of your hand or of three fingers;
interlard them with closes, then fry them until they are ruset coloured.
Set them our garnished with sugar.
Beef in Lamprey Sauce (chiquart) -Next, a Lamptry Sauce on loin of beef.
He who is charged with making this sauce shuld take his fat loins of
beef and should wash them carefully and mount them on good clean spits.
Then he hould take his bread and cut it in round slices and roast it on
the grill until it i thoroughly toasted, and get a good big two-handled
pot there in which to put the toasted bread. He should have a barrel of
very good red wine and if one is not enough he should get two and put
his bread into it. He should taste the beef bouillon to see that it is
good and mild, and put the necessary amount of lean bouillon into the
bead, and add in red vinegar very carefully -- and not too much, so that
if necessary he could put in more. Then he should get his powdered
cinnamon, white vinger, grains of paradise, pepper, mutmeg, galingale,
cloves, mace and all other spice, and mix them with that bread and
strain everything very well. And see that you have enough good clean
cauldrons and kettles to boil the quantity of the sauce you have made.
And those loins of beef, when they have toasted a much a they should,
take them and cut them up into decent small chunks and put them to bil
in the sauce. When everything has boiled together, set it all out in
good dishes, that is, with two chunks to a dish, and with that sauce
over top.
A pottage of leeks with almond-leek sauce
Pottage (Viander)Other lesser pottages, such as stewed chard, cabbage,
turnip greens, leeks, veal in Yellow Sauce, and plain shallot pottage,
peas, frenched bean, mashed beans, sieved beans or beans in their hall,
pork offal, brewet of pork tripe [women are experts with these and
anyone know how to do them (another recipe says to fry in oil, then
boil in broth)
White leek sauce (chiquart) - have him who is charged with them get his
leeks and chop them up small, wash them well and put them to boil. Then
have him get a good chunk of salt pork back, clean it very well and put
it with them to boil, and when they have boiled at length, take them out
and put them on good clean wooden tables, and keep the bouillon in which
they have boiled. There should be a good mortarful of white almonds,
take the bouillon in which the leeks have boiled and draw out your
almonds in it and if there is not enough of that bouillon get beef or
mutton bouillon, and watch that it is not too salty. After that set
your broth to boil. in a good clean kettle. Then take two good clean
knives and chop up your leeks, then take and grind them in a mortar,
once they are ground, put them into your broth, made of equal quantities
of almonds and water, half boiled. After they have boiled, when they
get to the dressing table, place your meat in good dishes and then put
some of that leek broth over top.
Ravoili (from the Anglo Norman Culinary collections, Constance Heitt) -
Here is another kind of dish which i called ravioli. Take fine flour
and sugar and make pasta dough, take good cheese and butter and cream
them together, then take parsley, sage, and shallots, chop them finely,
and put them in the filling, put the boiled ravioli on a bed of grated
cheese and cover them with more grated cheese and then reheat them.
Salad is the usual "throw all the green stuff you have into a bowl,
season with oil, vinegar, salt, and sugar"
Lion's Heads
Make pastry using this recipe - 2 cup flour, 3/4 cup butter, 2 egg
yolks, "enough" water, mix flour and butter as you would for biscuits,
blend in egg yolks, add enough water to make the dough the right
consistency. Color with saffron. Roll on a floured surface." Cut into
the shape of a lion's head with main. Bake and sprinkle in sugar.
Make Pear's in Confyt (2 15th century cookery books) - Take pears and
trim them clean. Take good read wine and mulberries or sandalwood and
boil the pears in it. And when they are cooked, take them out. Make a
syrup of Greek wine or Vernaccia with white powder or white sugar and
powdered ginger and put the pears in it. Boil it a little and serve it
forth.
Put a 1/2 pear on each lion's head, so it looks like a lion's profile.
Add confits for eyes, candied almonds for ears, and candied orange peel
for a tongue. Serve.
toodles, margaret
<the end>