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sage-msg - 5/24/17

Medieval sage use.

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From: Sharon Palmer <ranvaig at columbus.rr.com>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] period uses for sage in desserts and with vegetables

Date: June 10, 2014 5:09:49 PM CDT

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

<<< I have a bumper crop of sage in my garden. Actually I also have a lot of fennel leaves and lemon balm, but the sage is really taking off this year. I would like period recipes for use of sage in desserts other than fritters and with vegetables. >>>

Rumpolt has many references to sage, but most of them for savory dishes, not dessert. Here are a couple for pastries with sage:

Gebackens 25. Make a batter of clean eggs and flour/ dip sage into the batter/ and let it run off/ draw into hot butter/ so it will cleanly puff up/ sprinkle them with sugar/ and give warm on a table.

Gebackens 61. Take water and sugar/ and let come to a boil together/ and let cool down a little. Take an egg yolk or two/ fair flour/ rose water/ and warm water/ that is mixed with sugar/ also put butter in it/ about a hazel nut big/ and stir the dough with fair white flour/ fry holhippen (rolled waffles) from it/ may also take sage leaves in it/ green parsley or tarragon.

But if you want to make it violet colored/ then soften turnsole in rose water/ and stir into the dough/ then it will be violet colored/ But if you want to have it brown/ then take finely ground cinnamon.

If you want to have it black/ then mix cloves with the flour/ then it will be brown/ and tastes lovely of the cloves. You can also take cloves with the clarified sugar rolled waffles/ and a little tasting Biesem??.

Ranvaig

Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 06:53:04 -0700

From: "Daniel Myers" <dmyers at medievalcookery.com>

To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] period uses for sage in desserts and with

vegetables

A cookbook search turned up heaps of recipes that call for sage, but few

of them sounded much like dessert to me. Below are some of the more

likely ones.

http://www.medievalcookery.com/search/search.html?term=sage&;file=all

- Doc

-=-=-

106 To make an herb tart. Take one handful of sage, a handful of

marjoram and some lavender and rosemary, also a handful of chard, and

chop it together, take six eggs, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, raisins and

rose water and let it bake.

[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.

Armstrong, trans.)]

====

133 An herb tart. First, take a small handful of hyssop, mint, chard and

sage. There should be three times more of chard than of the other herbs,

according to how large one will make the tart. Take clarified butter and

fry the herbs named above therein, take raisins, small currants and

sugar, as much as you feel is right. Take then eight eggs, beat them

carefully into that which is described above and make a pastry shell

with an egg and bake it slowly.

[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.

Armstrong, trans.)]

====

139 A green tart. Take chard, pull it to pieces like a cabbage, put with

it parsley, sage and marjoram, chop everything together well, roast it

in fat, take five eggs and grated bread, stir it also therein, put sugar

into it and spices and make a pastry shell as for tripe and put the

herbs on top and bake it as for any other tart.

[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.

Armstrong, trans.)]

====

176 To make a good May cake. Take a pound of raisins, a pound of

currants, five small portions of May butter, a handful of hyssop, a

handful of ground ivy, some sage, about ten leaves, two times as much

mint, a handful of costmary, approximately fifteen eggs and a half pound

of sugar; the herbs finely chopped, baked for two hours. The butter must

be stirred into the herbs. For the crust, two eggs, which are prepared

as for a tart.

[Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, (Germany, 16th century - V.

Armstrong, trans.)]

====

79. CAKE of eggs which is called salviate. Take some sage leaves, and

grind them quite vigorously; and take a good quantity of eggs, and beat

them and mix them with the sage; and then take a frying pan, and cast in

lard in such a manner that after melting there is a finger's breadth or

more in the frying pan; and if there is no lard, take common oil which

is sweet and very good, the same quantity; and when the lard or oil

boils, cast in the eggs with the sage, and make of them an omelet which

is well-cooked; and this omelet should be two fingers thick, or more.

And when it is well-cooked or fried, cast it on a good plate with much

sugar above and below; and this omelet should be eaten hot.

[Libre del Coch, (Spain, 1520 - Robin Carroll-Mann, trans.)]

====

Puff Fritters. Get fine flour, water, salt and sugar, and distemper this

so that it is not too stiff; then roll out the dough on a table by hand

with a bit of round wood and cut it to the size you want it to be when

shaped like fritters; fry it in good oil. With this dough you can make

pears, apples, walnuts and sprigs of cloves, of rosemary and of sage,

shaping the dough however you wish, and quickly dipping it briefly into

good hot oil; when they are cooked, color them yellow with saffron

tempered with rosewater. Note that, should you want to make the

above-mentioned things -that is, pears and so forth - make the dough as

broad as a wafer, and dip them in hot oil; or else coat a pan with oil

and put the wafer-sized dough in it, then quickly remove it and shape it

by hand like a pear or apple or whatever you like; then cook these

fritters, shaped like pears or apples or however, in fine oil another

short while.

[The Neapolitan recipe collection, (Italy, 15th c - T. Scully, trans.)]

====

Saug saraser. Tak Almandes, frye hem in oille, and bray hem, tempre hem

with almand mylke and red wyn, and ye thrudde perty shal be sugur / and

if hit be no3t thikke ynow, lie it with amydon or with flour de rys;

colour hit with alkinet, boille hit, dresse it, florissh hit aboue with

pomme-garnet, and 3if forth.

[Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, (England, 1430)]

====

To make Ghecloven Nonnen [cloven nuns]. Take eggs and hard-boil them

well. Then take off their shells and peel them and so cut them

lengthways into halves. Then take the yolks of the same eggs and grind

them up thoroughly in a mortar. But first put in there a little saffron,

cinnamon and ginger, sage, parsley. And if one wishes, one also puts

pepper and apples into it. Then grind up well everything that has been

written earlier and fill therewith the whites of the eggs whose yolks

you removed. Then you fry the eggs like this in rape oil or in butter.

And when it is fried then one strews it with cinnamon powder and with

loaf sugar mixed together onto the filling. And when you serve these

eggs to the table so lay them in the dishes with their opening upwards:

to wit, with the filling upwards.

[Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen, (Netherlands, ca. 1510 - C. van

Tets, trans.)]

Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 11:12:14 -0400

From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] period uses for sage in desserts and with

vegetables

How about preserving it as a sage butter and freezing it for later use? Sage or herbal butter recipes can be found in the Florilegium file

http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-CONDIMENTS/idxfood-condiments.html

Modern recipes and techniques abound-

http://www.thejoykitchen.com/recipe/browned-sage-butter

http://www.preservingyourharvest.com/Sage.html

http://www.rodalenews.com/freezing-herbs-and-preserving-herbs

Johnnae