Online medieval cooking classes

Over the last year and a half I have given a number of live online medieval cooking classes, some of which were recorded.   Each class is an hour long, and recording quality is sometimes a little... mixed. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy them. 

• Three Spanish recipes from Ruperto de Nola (1529) part 1  Recipes are Marzipans for Invalids, and Renaissance donuts)
• Three Spanish recipes from Ruperto de Nola (1529) part 2 Recipes are Marinated mutton and Renaissance donuts)
• Cooking together; a Janete of Hens from Ruperto de Nola (1529).  Recipe is here

Macaroons - French Bisket Bread

Got spare egg whites because you made delicious doucettes?  Looking for a simple tasty biscuit recipe? I have you covered with these wonderful Elizabethan biscuits. 

Source: Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, 1604

To make French biskit bread:

Take one pound of almonds blanched in cold water, beat them verie smale, put in some rose water to them, in the beating, wherein some musk hath lien,then take one pound of sugar beaten and searced and beat with your almonds, then take the whites of fowre eggs beten and put to the sugar & almonds, then beat it well together, then heat the oven as hot as you doe for other biskit bread, then take a paper & strawe some sugar upon it, & lay two spoonfulls of the stuf in a place, then lay the paper upon a board full of holes, & put them into the oven as fast as you can & so bake them, when they begin to looke somewhat browne they are baked inough.

Ingredients:

2 Egg whites

200g Ground Almonds 

200g caster sugar

Rosewater

Beat your egg whites until  fluffy.  Moisten your ground almond meal with some rose water (try a teaspoon first and taste because rosewaters differ greatly in strength) and then sift in the caster sugar. Mix all dry ingredients together, then fold in the beaten egg whites. 

Heat your oven to a moderate temperature, around 180 degrees. 

Line a baking tray (ideally a perforated tray but don't stress about it if you don't have one) with paper and sprinkle lightly with sugar.  Using a dessert spoon, spoon balls of the mixture on to the tray - don't worry if they don't look perfect, they will be perfect tasting!

Bake for 15-20 mins until they are light brown.  The outsides will be crisp and nutty, and the insides deliciously chewy.    

Elizabethan dish - Fartes of Portingale

Ahah!  I thought I had posted this recipe on my blog ages ago, and it was only when this recipe appeared on a recent episode Tasting History and I did a search for my version to compare that I realised that I had drafted this but not posted it. Oops!  I will have to cook these again so I can add some photos to this post. 

So anyway, this one of the most delicious dishes in my repertoire.  The combination of the sweetness of the dates and currants, with lamb mince and the beef broth is just divine.  It is also a really useful dish for catering feasts with because you can get easy portion control (eg. 3 meatballs per person) and the meatballs can be prepped beforehand and then just cooked up in broth on the day. 

The recipe I am giving is quite a large serving - if you are serving it as an entree, or for a smaller dinner, feel free to halve the recipe.  

The Good Huswive's Handmaid for Cookerie (1588) Handmaide for the Kitchin

How to make Fartes of Portingale*.

Take a peece of a leg of Mutton, mince it smal and season it with cloues, Mace pepper and salt, and Dates minced with currans: then roll it into round rolles, and so into little balles, and so boyle them in a little beefe broth and so serue them foorth.

Translation: Take a piece of a leg of mutton, mince it small and season it with cloves, mace, pepper an salt and dates minced with currants: then roll it into round rolls and then into little balls. and so boil them in a little beef broth and so serve them forth. 

Recipe

30 grams of dates (buy pitted ones, it is worth it!)
1 kg lamb mince (if you can find mutton, use it, and let me know where I can get my hands on some of it!!!)
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1.4 tsp mace
salt
pepper
30 grams currants
3 litres of beef stock

Chop the dates finely - this is by far the most tedious part of the recipe - having some hot water on hand to wipe the knife down occasionally will help. I am told that the best method is to actually use a slicing rather than a chopping motion to cut up dates. Mince up the currants as well.  Mix together with the meat and spices, and then form into small balls (you will get about 25-30).  Bring your beef stock up to the boil, and add the meatballs. Cook until done - this will only take about 15 minutes.  Serve piping hot in the broth. 

*Portingale was the Elizabethan way of saying Portugal. Fartes are essentially cooked balls of food - most often meatballs, sometimes dough.

Marzipans for Invalids

Marzipans for invalids who have lost the desire to eat, very good and of great sustenence

(Mazapanes para dolientes que pierdan el comer, muy buenos y de gran sustancia) 

The book of cooking, Ruperto de Nola (Robert), Logrono, 1529

Not the average marzipan, I encourage you to give this recipe a go! It is super simple to make, and unusually for a lot of recipes from this period, has provided the proportions of the ingredients. Don't let the fact that it contains of all things, chicken, put you off: trust me, they taste really good.

Take a very fat capon or a hen which is very fat, and cook it with just your salt until it is very well-cooked; then take the breasts from it, and all the white meat without skin, and weigh that meat, and take as much peeled almonds, and combine the meat and the almonds; and take as much fine white sugar as all of this, and grind the almonds a great deal, and then the meat with them, and then the sugar; and then grind everything together, and stretch that dough upon a wafer, and make little marzipans of the size that you wish; and make the edges a little high, and let it be a little deep in the middle; and moisten it with orange-flower water with some feathers.

And then sprinkle fine ground and sifted sugar over that water, and then moisten it again, and sprinkle it as before; and then cook them in the oven in some flat casseroles, and paper underneath; and let the fire of the oven be moderate; and upon removing it from the casserole, the paper must be cast off of each one, (70) in such a manner that the marzipan does not break.

And this is a very singular dish and of great support for the invalids who have lost the [desire] to eat; because the little of this that they eat is of more sustenance than any other thing; principally drinking in addition to it the sulsido of hens made in the jug; and this is beyond estimation.

Take a chicken breast and simmer it in salted water until thoroughly cooked - but try not to overcook as it will make the chicken dry. Weigh the cooked chicken breast and measure out the same weight of almonds (you can do this with peeled almonds, or save yourself some time and use ground almonds) and sugar.  Grind them all together in a mortar and pestle (you could use a food processor but just be aware that the texture will be a little different). 

If you don't have any wafers handy (who does? Maybe me since I did all those posts about wafers, here and here!), you can, at a pinch make these and just form them directly on to a sheet of baking paper. Make the sides a little raised.  Moisten with orange flower water, sprinkle with caster sugar and then sprinkle a bit more orange flower water on top. 

Bake in the oven at a moderate temperature until they are lightly browned.  They can be eaten either warm, or cold. 

You can see why this recipe would be a good food for an invalid - it gives an easy protein boost, the patient doesn't need to have good teeth as everything is ground up, and the sweetness makes it appetising.