Medievl-Pasta-art

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Medievl-Pasta-art - 10/24/00

"Medieval Pasta!" by Lady Jehanne de Huguenin.

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NOTICE -

This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set

of files, called Stefan's Florilegium.

These files are available on the Internet at:

http://www.florilegium.org

While the author will likely give permission for this work to be

reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first

or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.

Thank you,

Mark S. Harris

AKA: Stefan li Rous

stefan at florilegium.org

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Originally published in August, AS 34 in "Storm Tidings", the newsletter for the Shire of Adamastor in Cape Town, South Africa.

(http://users.iafrica.com/m/me/melisant/stidings.htm)

Medieval Pasta!

by Lady Jehanne de Huguenin

The Cooks' Guild had much amusement at the last event with pasta

construction. Most medieval pasta dishes specify a "foyle of dough" made

from flour and water; we added egg, which does occur in a few recipes

(Constance Hieatt mentions one from the Anglo-Norman cookery manuscript).

You could use a standard broad commercial noodle or lasagne. Most medieval

pasta dishes seem to be exclusively cheese dishes, with a few possibilities

for meat and vegetable ravioli. See below for a series of recipes from The

Form of Curye, a 14th century English cookbook. Makerouns and Losyns were

the dishes we made for the event.

Makerouns

Take and makke a thynne foyle of dowh, and kerve it on peces, and cast hym

on boillyng water & seeþ it wele. Take chese and grate it, and butter

imelte, caste bynethen and above as losyns; and serve forth.

Take and make a thin foil of dough, and cut it in pieces, and cast them

into boiling water, and seethe it well. Take cheese and grate it, and melt

butter, put [them] beneath and above as you do with losyns [i.e. layer with

the pasta], and serve.

· Constructing this dish can be a bit tricky with timing, since you don’t

reheat the pasta with the cheese and butter, and thus need to work fairly

quickly.

· Boil the pasta until it’s cooked; immediately drain and layer with grated

cheese and melted butter, and serve immediately. The heat of the

recently-cooked pasta does melt the cheese.

· You should use a hard cheese such as cheddar, as the recipe specifies

grating it; you can vary the proportions of cheese to butter to noodles to

taste, depending on how rich/fatty you want the dish to be.

· Do add salt to the boiling water, although the recipe doesn’t specify

this; the addition of salt was often assumed, judging by the fact that

Platina warns us not to over-salt without ever telling us to salt in the

first place.

Losyns

Take good broth and do in an erthen pot. Take flour of pandemayne and make

þereof past with water, and make þerof thynne foyles as paper with a

roller; drye it harde and seeþ it in broth. Take chese ruayn grated and lay

it in disshes with powdour douce, and lay theron loseyns isolde as hoole as

thou myst, and above powdour and chese; and so twyse or thryse, & serve it

forth.

Take good broth and put into an earthen pot. Take [high-quality white]

flour and make of it a paste with water, and make of it thin foils like

paper, with a roller; dry it hard and boil it in broth. Take autumn cheese,

grated, and lay it in dishes with sweet spice powder, and lay onto it

lozenges as whole as you can, and above them [lay] powder and cheese, and

repeat the layers twice or thrice, and serve it.

· Like the first recipe, this needs to be assembled and served with speed

to allow the cheese to melt on the hot pasta without reheating.

· "Loysns" means lozenges, referring to the shape of the pasta; you can cut

your sheet of dough into diamond shapes if making it fresh.

· It makes a huge difference to the flavour to cook the pasta in broth;

either a home-made meat or vegetable stock, or one of the commercial cube

variety.

· "Poudre douce" is literally sweet powder; a mixture of sugar and the less

piquant spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.

· The lozenges of pasta are layered with grated cheese and spices; again,

the cheese should be grating texture, but an autumn cheese is semi-soft -

harder than Brie or Camembert, but not as hard as cheddar. I’d probably go

for mozarella; Hieatt & Butler suggest Pont l’Eveque.

Ravieles

Take wete chese and grynde hit smal, & medle hit wyt eyren & saffron and a

god quantite of buttur. Make a thin foile of dowe & close hem þerin as

turteletes, & cast hem in boylyng watur, & sethe hem þerin. Take hot burrur

meltede & chese ygratede, & ley þi ravioles in dissches; & ley þi hote

buttur wyt gratede chese bineþe & aboue, & cast þereon powdur douce.

Take [sweet or white] cheese and grind it small, and mix it with eggs and

saffron and a good quantity of butter. Make a thin foil of dough and

enclose [the filling] in them as you do with tartelettes, and put them into

boiling water and boil them. Take hot melted butter and grated cheese, and

lay the ravioles in dishes, and lay the hot butter with grated cheese below

and above them, and sprinkle with sweet powder.

· I haven’t tried this recipe; it seems to be a fairly straightforward

cheese ravioli, boiled and then served with grated cheese and butter.

Tartlettes are a similar filled pasta dish with a pork and currant filling.

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Copyright 1999 by Lady Jehanne de Huguenin, jessica at beattie.uct.ac.za, P O Box 443, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa.. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate 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.