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Gamblng-Snaks-art - 10/14/18

"Medieval 'Snacks' for an Informal Evening of Drinking and Gambling" by Conal O'hAirt, OL.

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Medieval 'Snacks' for an Informal Evening

of Drinking and Gambling

by Conal O'hAirt, OL

(This is not a formal meal. This is what I am working on, a less formal meal. Would you expect to have fun eating with the guy in the center? Other than his awesome hat, he looks like a bit of a 'stiff'.)

To go with my demonstration entry I decided I needed to have some "snacks". It may not have been the same concept that we think of when we hear the word 'snack' but there were probably occasions where we could easily apply our modern term to their food choices.

In my opinion foods that would fit my setting would be foods that could easily be eaten without a formal place setting at a table or without utensils. (What we think of as finger foods.) Or things that could have been liberated from the kitchens without much effort. Foods that could have been prepared and on hand in the kitchen that did not require being made fresh for this occasion. Foods that could be eaten cold. Foods that might fit the modern definition of 'leftovers' from the formal meal of the master of the house.

The four items making up the entry are:

1. Bratwursts – a fresh sausage boiled then fried,

2. Heathen cakes – a small bread dough wrapped baked 'hand pie' with a savory meat and apple filling,

3. Pickled vegetables – Carrots, radishes and onions pickled with a homemade vinegar

4. Sweet and Savory Stuffed eggs.

Rounding out the table, but not part of the four dishes of the actual entry, I have some Emmental cheese (I did not make the cheese.), a coarse homemade mustard and bread. And a variety of drink choices, a cherry wine (more like a cider than a wine), two versions of a small mead recipe and a cherry mead (now referred to as a melomel)

Two of these dishes, the heathen cakes and the pickled vegetables come from the same source. (Ein Bucj von guter spise 1350). The Bratwurst is inspired by a 16^th century German cookbook, Das Kuchbuch der Sadina Welserin 1533, but is not an exact copy of that recipe. For the Stuffed eggs I looked at multiple recipes from many different cultures and came up with a recipe of my own inspired by the variations of those recipes using ingredients that would have been common to the area.

I have two paintings showing what I feel is the right kind of social setting, informal and unplanned, and there is a variety of foods pictured.

Both paintings are by the same artist….

The Egg Dance 1552 Aersen, Pieter b. 1508 Amsterdam d 1575 Amsterdam

Oil on Canvas, 84 x172 cm

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The first is titled "The Egg Dance". This cannot be a formal setting. The man at the table with the pottery cup looks like he is deep in his cups and the items scattered across the floor make me think 'this is a party'. If you study the painting the food items you find are sausages (hanging by the fire), bread and cheese (possibly Brie, on the table), two possible wafers (on the table) and an egg, onions and mussel shells (all scattered on the floor) and possibly a soup or stew in the pot hanging in the fireplace ('Grandma' holding a spoon hints at there being something cooking that needs to be stirred. I wonder if she is enjoying herself or about to scold the dancer….)

Peasants by the Hearth

1560s Oil on wood, 142,3 x 198 cm Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp

Again we see sausages (probably smoked, dry sausage), mussels, bread and cheese and a pot actively being stirred by the boy sitting by the fire. There two pots hanging over the fire, a third pot, off the fire, filled with what looks to be a creamy soup and a wistful man wishing his mug was not empty. We also have wafers, what could be three small stuffed breads on the table (looks to me like there is a bite taken out of each one too).

While both of these paintings are of a later period that the setting I am trying to portray all of these foods existed in very similar forms throughout the entire medieval period, so I feel it is reasonable to assume that similar settings could have been a common sight in the 14^th century.

Heathen Cakes

Diz heizzent heidenische kuchen. Man sol nemen einen teye und sol (den) dünne breiten und nim ein gesoten fleisch und spec gehacket und epfele und pfeffer und eyer dar in und backe daz und gives hin und versirtez niht.

These are called heathen cakes. One should take a dough and should spread it thin and take a boiled meat and chopped fatty bacon and apples and pepper and eggs therein and bake that and give out and do not damage.

- Ein Bucj von guter spise 1350 - (translation Alia Atlas, 1993)

I choose to use both chicken and pork to give me a more complex flavor. Both meats pair well with fruit so I felt that was a safe approach to take. I choose a tart apple because I personally prefer them to sweeter apples and because granny smith apples hold their shape well after baking.

Overall this is not a complex recipe. It is simple and that is what made me think it fits my needs perfectly.

Dough:

I've wrapped the filling with a normal bread dough. Unfortunately, very few medieval bread recipes have survived. Many food historians assume that bread was such a common item that no one needed a recipe to make it.

So that is what I did. I did not use a recipe.

I made a yeast starter in an open bowl in my kitchen and let that develop over a week. This allowed me to let the yeast develop a more complex flavor and gave it the opportunity to let a wild yeast floating around my kitchen join the party. There is probably enough modern commercial yeast floating around my kitchen that any wild yeast culture I tried to make would have modern strains in it anyway. The ingredients for my bread are as follows:

White wheat flour, bread flour, water, salt and my yeast starter.

Having baked well over 1000 loaves of bread personally, I simply made a dough that looked and felt right. Adding more flour or water if the dough was too dry or too wet.

The dough was kneaded by hand and left to rise for a few hours.

Filling:

· Chicken breasts

· Pork loin

· Granny Smith apples

· Bacon

· 2 eggs (large)

· Black pepper to taste

· Salt to taste

For the filling I boiled the chicken and pork (I used a 2-1- 1/2 ratio of pork-chicken-bacon) and then roasted it in the oven to give it a little roasted flavor. I chopped up the bacon and fried about a third of it and reserved the fat. I am going to assume that the recipe calls for fatty bacon because you want the fat to make the filling juicier. Mixing fried and raw bacon into the filling and adding back in the fat from the fried bacon I got all the fat and the extra flavor of the cooked bacon.

I peeled and diced the apples right before mixing them into the filling to keep them from browning. Experimentation led me to go with a 1 part apple for 2 to 3 parts meat ratio.

Then I mixed the ingredients for the filling and let it sit for about 1/2 an hour in the refrigerator to let the flavors mingle.

The after diving the dough and rolling it out into circles I placed a spoon full of the filling on each circle and folded it close, using a egg wash to help seal it. (The recipe does not mention it but I put an egg wash on the outside of half of the cakes so we can compare the different results. I think the egg washed cakes look better. But there is no significant difference in the taste.) Then I cut a few small slits in each cake to allow steam to vent.

Because the meat in the filling was pre-cooked, the baking serves mostly to cook the dough. A hot oven closer to bread baking temperatures (400°F) was what I chose to go with.

The cakes were baked until the achieved a nice golden brown color. I removed the cakes and allowed them to cool.

Comments on the Results:

1. I tried one warm so that I would be able to comment of the difference between eating them fresh from the oven and how I am serving them as an informal snack.

2. I liked them. I will add these to my list of potential event foods and may even make them for dinner at home or to take as lunch to work. I want to try freezing them to see how well the store that way.

3. This cake could have been made in advance and kept on hand until eaten throughout the day in the kitchen. They would not have been good for longer term storage as that would allow spoilage to ruin them.

4. Some of the eggs bubbled out of the dough. I would suggest removing that for aesthetic reasons.

5. I'm going to call this recipe a tasty success.

Bratwurst

If you would make Good Bratwurst

Weltt jr gútt prattwirst machen

So nempt 4 pfúnd schweinis vnnd 4 pfúnd rinderis, das last klainhacken, nempt darnach 2 pfúnd speck darúnder vnnd hackts anainander vnnd vngeferlich 3 seidlen wasser giest daran, thiet aúch saltz, pfeffer daran, wie jrs geren est, oder wan jr geren kreúter darin megt haben/ múgt jr nemen ain wenig ain salua vnnd ain wenig maseron, so habt jr gút
brattwirst.

Take four pounds of pork and four pounds of beef and chop it finely. After that mix with it two pounds of bacon and chop it together and pour approximately one quart of water on it. Also add salt and pepper thereto, however you like to eat it, or if you would like to have some good herbs, you could take some sage and some marjoram, then you have good bratwurst.

From Da Kuchbuch der Sadina Welserin German 16^th century (translation by V. Armstrong)

Who would want to make bad sausage? (that would be the wurst….)

Bratwurst is possibly my favorite type of wurst so making my own seemed a great idea. I like the flavor of black pepper so I went a little heavy on the pepper. If you are an experienced cook I would think eyeballing the measurements would be fine, exact proportions are not really needed here. Less bacon means less fat, but you take the risk of a drier sausage that way. You have to make a choice to balance good and good for you. (I'd rather have a juicy sausage that I eat less often that a dry one)

The garlic I added for flavor and the onion was added for flavor and to help keep the sausage moist because it was going to be reheated for this A&S entry.

I did not use sage for this recipe. I tried that the first time I made this and made me think 'breakfast' more than bratwurst. The recipe seems to suggest the sage is optional so I left it out.

Bratwurst History:

Bratwurst is very ancient, but few sources survived to give evidence. Greeks, Romans, Celts and Germans roasted sausages on fire. Especially the roman "lucanicae" are said to be the ancestors of the German Bratwurst.[1]

But the true history of the German kind of roasted sausage begins in the middle ages. A post-medieval document in Nürnberg with the recipe for Bratwurst is dated 1595 and was long believed to be the oldest recipe.

But in 2000 an archivist, Peter Unger, found a bill for sausage skins to be delivered to the monastery of the maidens in Arnstadt dating to 1404.[2] So the Thüringer Rostbratwurst celebrated its 600th birthday in 2004. A legend says, that in the 7th century Sorbish settlers entered Thüringen and caused the inhabitants to flee. On the road one of the refugees is said to have invented the Bratwurst.[3] The problem is, that nether the bill nor the legend give any clue to the recipe.

The historian Michael Kirschlager claimes to have found the oldest recipe in Thüringen.
Much older are the records for stalls selling Bratwürste. In 1134 a kiosk is reported in Regensburg, selling Bratwurst to the construction workers of the cathedral and of the "Steinerne Brücke" (stone bridge). In 1146 the "Wurstkuchl" (sausage kitchen) was build near the salt house directly to the city wall.[4]

In the 14th century the "Bratwurstglöcklein" (Glöcklein = little bell; named after a bell hanging from the wall of the chapel) was build in Nürnberg directly to the walls of the Moritz chapel. From the beginning it was quite famous and many people, including many celebrities, ate there. Its tradition lasted till the 20th century, when it was destroyed in WW II by bombs. But the original recipe of the "Glöcklein-Bratwurst" is still used in Nürnberg. [5]

There were and are still many different recipes for Bratwurst used in Germany, depending on the region or town you are in.

While this is a 16^th century recipe it is easy to find evidence for all of the ingredients I used throughout the entire medieval period.

U-Lead Systems, Inc.

16^th century Flemish manuscript showing the preparation of the sausage casing.

The recipe below is based on 1 pound each of the beef and pork. To make more simply multiply the ingredients to fit the size batch you want. The original recipe will make over 9 pounds of sausage, not many people want to make that much at once.

Bratwurst

· 1 pound ground beef

· 1 pound Ground pork

· 1/2 to 3/4 pound of finely chopped bacon

· 1 cup water

· 1 Tbs black pepper (coarsely ground)

· 1tsp salt

· 3 cloves minced garlic

· 1 small onion (minced)

· 1 tsp Marjoram

· 1/4 tsp sage

Mix all the ingredients thoroughly and let them sit for a while in the fridge (food safety) for a few hours for the flavors to mingle. You can make patties and fry them or you can stuff your own casings and make links. Take care when stuffing not to overfill the casing. That could case the casing to split when you cook the sausage.

In the medieval period the casings would have been stuffed by hand…… Sorry. I did not. (I have to draw the 'crazy' line somewhere. I decided that was a reasonable place.) Once stuffed though there is no real difference based on the method used to stuff them.

After filling the casings gently twist the sausage to form links, taking care to make the links as close to the same size as possible.

I recommend a two stage process for cooking. First boil the links to cook them all the way thru and then fry them to brown them and get a more pleasing look and taste.

Stuffing the casing is the only complicated part of this recipe and all that takes is the right equipment and a little practice.

Comments on the results:

1. Yum. This will definitely be part of my regular file of recipes to pull from.

2. They taste good both hot and cold. Which means they travel well. The onion helped hold extra moisture in the sausage.

3. They freeze nicely too. Some of the first batch was frozen to store it…. They were not in the freezer long. I ate them.

4. Really looking forward to grilling some of these….

5. The water could be replaced with beer and has been done so in a lot of more modern recipes but I could not find any medieval reference to doing that so I stuck with the water. I am going to try beer for a "not for A&S batch" soon. Wine seems to have been used, but not beer….. Maybe the yeast was too active in medieval beer and had an unwanted affect on the sausage…..

Pickled Vegetables:

Ein condimentlin Mal kümel und enis mit pfeffer und mit ezzige und mit honige. und mach ez gel mit saffran. und tu dar zu senf. in disem condimente maht du sulze persilien, bern und clein cumpost oder rüeben, waz du wilt.

A condiment. Flavor caraway seeds and anise with pepper and with vinegar and with honey. And make it gold with saffron. And add thereto mustard. In this condiment you may make sulze (pickled or marinated) parsley, and small preserved fruit and vegetables, or beets, which(ever) you want.

Ein Bucj von guter spise 1350 - A. Atlas translation

Personally I love pickles of all kinds. I think that they are a great snack. The sharp taste and the crunch makes them very satisfying. It's unclear how these pickles vegetables were meant to be used. The recipe describes them as a condiment but does not give any details on how they were eaten. I could to include them because preserved vegetables could have been a possible choice for a pantry raid food item.

I chose carrots, red radishes, and green onions to pickle.

The recipe does not mention cooking the vegetables. Giving it a little thought, I chose to gently boil the radishes and carrots until I could first smell the cooked carrots. I wanted a crunchy pickle and did not want to overcook them. I left the onions raw.

I managed to get some homemade vinegar. (thanks to Rhiannon filia Catell) It was part of her A&S entry at North Oaken regional A&S. Her vinegar was part of a batch of mead that turned and she chose to take advantage of that and let it continue and turn to vinegar. (I have a copy of her documentation for those that are interested.)

After boiling the carrots and radishes I let them cool enough for me to handle them and placed them and the onions into a glass jar with a clamping lid, poured the brine over the vegetables and let them sit for a few hours before placing them into my refrigerator to finish pickling

Vinegar Brine:

· 2 cups vinegar

· 3/4 cuphoney

· 1 tsp caraway seeds

· 1 tsp anise seeds

· 1 tsp mustard seeds

· 1/2 tsp ground black pepper (and a healthy pinch of whole peppercorns)

· pinch of saffron

Vegetables:

· Radishes

· Carrots

· Green Onion bulbs

This all done was on April 11^th. The vegetables floated a little in the jar so I took the jar out and shook it gently each day to make sure all the vegetables spent at least some time submerged in the vinegar brine.

Pickling with a vinegar brine is a fairly easy process. There isn't really much else to share.

Comments on the results:

1- The red color of the radishes was bleached out by the vinegar pretty quickly.

2- I choose to store the pickles in the refrigerator for food safety reasons.

3- I may try this again without cooking any of the vegetables to see what difference that makes in the end result. I may also include small cucumbers.

Stuffed Eggs:

For the stuffed eggs, I decided to take a different approach. I found seven different recipes and looked to see what ingredients they used (surprise they all had eggs) and then worked up a recipe inspired by those recipes. I found both savory stuffed eggs and sweet stuffed eggs.

Herbs and Spices:

Marjoram, cloves, saffron, parsley, mint, cinnamon, salt, black pepper, cilantro, spikenard, coriander, rue and the unhelpful and nonspecific 'good herbs', 'mild spices' and 'spices'.

Other Ingredients:

Onion juice, verjuice, murri, oil, (wheat) flour, sugar, rue, butter, raw eggs, 'old' and 'new' cheese.

All the recipes called for hard boiling the egg and removing the yolks.* then mixing the yolks and some of the above ingredients into a paste and filling the cavity from the yolk with the paste. At that point most of the recipes called for further cooking the eggs by frying them in oil, lard or butter. One recipe mentioned that ' fried, roasted and beaten eggs are so well known that nothing need be said about them.

I decided to try both the savory and the sweet.

Savory – Marjoram, savory, black pepper, white pepper and saffron with shredded Jarlsburg cheese mixed with a beaten raw egg and some onion juice. Olive oil was used to fry and to grease the baking dish they would not stick.

Sweet – cinnamon, cloves, and cane sugar mixed with cheese, ground raisins and a beaten raw egg. Butter was used here for frying and baking instead of the olive oil. The recipe called for 'cheese fat' to be added to the stuffing mixture. I thought that was probably a soft cheese so I chose to use Hüttenkäse (the German term for cottage cheese)

The eggs were cut in half and the yolks removed then mixed with the other ingredients and the cavity from the yolk was refilled with the mixtures. I tried both frying and baking for both the sweet and the savory. I liked the texture of the fried a little more than the baked but both cooking methods were good.

Once the stuffed eggs were baked or fried I sprinkled them with either salt and pepper or fine sugar (turbinado cane sugar ground with a mortar and pestle)

(Source recipes are included at the end of this document)

Comments on the Results:

1 – I liked the texture of the fried eggs, both savory and sweet more than the baked.

2- My first try at both I went cautiously with the spices. Today's versions have about half again as much. The first versions were good still but were a little on the subtle side. I would think that either version would be well received by those you are feeding.

Footnotes:

Čerpnjak Dorothea: Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Bratwurst. Eine Lieblingsspeise erobert die Welt. Leipzig 2005. (Cultural History of the Bratwurst. A favoured Dish conquers the World)

Dünnebier, Anna/ Paczensky, Gert von: Kulturgeschichte des Essens und Trinkens. München 1999. (Culutral History of Food and Drink)

[1] Čerpnjak, p. 8-12; Dünnebier, p. 53, 54, 55

[2] Čerpnjak, p. 28

[3] Čerpnjak, p. 29

[4] Čerpnjak, p. 30-31; Dünnebier, p. 126

[5] Čerpnjak, p. 30-31

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Copyright 2018 by Jim Hart. <conalohairt at gmail.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.