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Pottages-art - 10/6/19

"Stick to Your Bones: The Mighty Pottage" by Lady Emelote of Calais.

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Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous

stefan at florilegium.org

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Stick to Your Bones: The Mighty Pottage

by Lady Emelote of Calais

Introduction

The definition of Pottage, as per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a thick soup of vegetables and often meat”.1 Pottages are a way to cook food that has been used for centuries. Once humans had a pot and fire, we were cooking pottages. The interesting thing about Pottages in Tudor times is that it was cooked by the poor, middle class, nobility and royalty. Pottage was a mainstay for everyone’s diet and very important. Important enough that recipes were included in manuscripts for royalty. We can’t say for sure what the middle to poor was putting in their pottage, but we can guess based on what was available to them throughout the year.

In England, the growing season is very different to Canada. They don’t get the harsh winters we do here, so they had access to a lot more throughout the year then we do. Many cold crops such as leeks, cabbage and various greens would still be available in the winter. There would be a need to keep them covered when cold, but still edible.

I wanted to give examples of what a tenant farmer could have eaten throughout the year with 4 different pottages. I also wanted to cook these in the style of a tenant farmer, in a pot on the fire. Luckily for me my parents have a wonderful fireplace that could do the job.

The Pottages

Bacon and White Pea Pottage (Late Fall/Winter)

Recipe based on a recipe from Mary Arden’s Farm, Wilmcote, UK (Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust)

This pottage would have been possible in late fall early winter, once the pigs had been slaughtered and the pea harvest dried. Bacon is a meat possible for most tenant farmers. The bacon fat would have been

1 lb bacon

450g White Peas

1 Onion

3-4 cloves of Garlic, chopped

1-2 L of Chicken stock

Make sure to soak your beans overnight in cold water before cooking.

Warm up your pot, chop your bacon into pieces, and cook until the fat is rendered. Once rendered add onions and cook until soft, stirring frequently. When onions are almost ready, add garlic (so it won’t burn) and cook for 1 min. Add soaked beans and stir to mix everything well. Add the chicken stock and cook on the fire till done. (or 2-3 hrs).

The pottage will slowly thicken and get nice and hearty.

Caboches in Pottage (Spring)

Pleyn Delit 22 – Original recipe from the Ménagier de Paris

This recipe I tried both fire cooking and stove cooking to see what kind of flavour differences there were. This pottage which is more like a soup would be available in the winter with the stores. There is no meat, and most likely it would just be water not stock to flavour the dish. I did include spices; they may have been available to the tenant farmer, depending on how prosperous they would have been. But there are some examples at a minimum pepper would have been used.

1/2 head large green cabbage, sliced

2 onions, sliced

3 cloves garlic, sliced

3 leeks, chopped (whites only)

Salt to taste

1L Beef broth (I used salted)

tsp coriander seeds

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

2 Tbsps. Butter

Chop all your vegetables and have it ready while your pot is warming up. When warm add the butter, once melted add the onions, leeks and garlic. Cook until they translucent. Add cabbage and stir. Add broth and bring to a boil. Then simmer the mixture and add the spices. Taste to make sure it is spiced to your liking. Simmer on the fire for 1.5-2 hrs.

A Basic pottage with Potherbs (Summer)

Recipe based on a recipe from Bayleaf Farmstead – Winkhurst Tudor Kitchen – Weald and Downland Living History Museum, UK

This recipe I collected from the historians from Weald and Downland Living history museum. What I liked about this recipe is that it would have been very different food for the farmers in the summer, while everything was growing in the garden. While the cows were being milked, there would some buttermilk for the home cook, which helps make this dish quite rich and delicious.

450g Pot Barley, rinsed

2.5 cups Greens/Herbs, as much as you desire (Dandelion, Rhubarb Char, Flat leaf parsley, garlic, baby spinach, coriander)

1 L Buttermilk

3 cups Chicken Stock, as needed

2 Shallots

1 onion

Salt to taste

2 tbsp butter

Chop and fry the onion and shallots in a hot pot. Add the barley and add the buttermilk to cover. Bring to a boil, then simmer the barley until soft. Wash and chop your greens and add to the pot while the barley is simmering. Stir occasionally and add more liquid when needed (the extra chicken stock I used). Cook on the fire for 2-3 hrs.

The museum says you can serve on sops (slices of stale bread) or on its own. I prefer it on its own.

A Potage of Roysons (Fall)

Two 15th Century Cookbooks, .Cxxxvj

This was a recipe I was excited to try, since it would require a redaction and it was wholly fruit based. This could be made when the apples are harvested, or later in winter when the apples have been stored.

Take raisins and do away with the seeds; and take a part apples and do away with the core, and the peel. Mash them in a mortar, and temper them with Almond milk; and mix with rice flour. Cook until very thick and mix in Galangal powder and ground ginger, and serve.

Emelote’s Translation

5 Courtland apples, peeled, cored and large dice

1 1/2 cups raisins

1 L water

2c. Almond Milk

3 tbsp. Rice flour

2 tsp ginger

1 tsp cinnamon (I did not have galangal available)

Chop your apples and get them into the hot pot to cook down a bit, add the raisins and water. Bring to a boil. Let simmer until apples are soft and are easily mashed in the pot. (I did not use a mortar to do this – way to hard with a small mortar.) Cook about 1 hr on the fire. When almost ready, take almond milk and mix in the rice flour to form a thickening slurry. Mix into the apple/raisin mixture, add desired spices and let simmer until desired thickness.

Conclusion

What I found with fire cooking is that there is a real need to manage the fire, in the Tudor period they had a better understanding of what wood gave the best burn, temperature and time. So, they would be able to manage their fires better. I also concluded that I need to learn how to better build fires too. I find that when we redact recipes and cook on our modern stoves we are missing a lot of flavour. The wood itself give flavour to the food and makes the consistency very different. I hope to work more with fire and see what else could change with this type of cooking. I really loved the flavour the fire gave the dishes. I also was surprised on how long or short some recipes took. Cabbage was a shorter time than I expected versus the barley which was a lot longer. More like the Bacon and pea pottage.

Bibliography

About Pottages

1. The Tudor Housewife, Alison Sim

2. How to be a Tudor: A Dawn to Dusk Guide to Everyday Life, Ruth Goodman

3. The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England, Ian Mortimer

4. Spice, Jack Turner

Cookbooks referenced

1. Pleyn Delit, Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler

2. All the Kings Cooks, The Tudor kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace, Peter Bears

3. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books: About 1430-1450, Thomas Austin

4. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi

5. Cooking and Dining in Tudor & Early Stewart England, Peter Bears

6. Handout from Bayleaf Farmstead, Winkfurst Tudor Kitchen, Weald & Downland Living History Museum (Summer 2015)

7. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – Recipes from Mary Arden’s Farm - https://www.shakespeareweek.org.uk/resources/making-pea-and-bacon-pottage/

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Copyright 2017 by Erin Thornton. <Emelote.of.calais 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.