Mushroom Pasties - Champignons en paste

Le Menagier de Paris (known as the Goodman of Paris) was written in 1393.

Original recipe

in the old French (transcribed)
Champignons d’une nuit sont les meilleurs, et sont petits et vermeils dedans, clos dessus: et les convient peler, puis laver en eaue chaude et pourboulir; qui en veult mettre en pasté, si y mette de l’uille, du frommage et de la pouldre.

Translation

Mushrooms of one night are the best, if they are small, red inside, and closed at the top; and they should be peeled and then washed in hot water and parboiled, and if you wish to put them in a pasty add oil, cheese, and spice powder.

Reproduction

• Pastry dough rolled thinly and cut into pieces a little over twice the size of the desired pasties (For ease of production you can use commercial pastry, or use your own recipe)
• 400 grams fresh mushrooms
• 50 grams cheese (Parmesan and ricotta),
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger,
• 1/8 tsp ground pepper.

Wash mushrooms and pare away the bottom of the stems, but leave whole. Parboil in salted water 3-4 minutes. Drain, and mix with oil and seasonings. To make pasties, mix the cheese, oil and spices in with the mushrooms; place on top of the pastry piece and turn over. Bake in a 220degC (or the best temperature for the pastry – which will be on the packet for commercial sheets) for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly browned.

A medieval mustard

 This recipe for mustard comes from Le Menagier de Paris dated around 1393

The recipe is:

Item, et se vous la voulez faire bonne et à loisir, mettez le senevé tremper par une nuit en bon vinaigre, puis le faites bien broyer au moulin, et bien petit à petit destremper de vinaigre: et se vous avez des espices qui soient de remenant de gelée, de claré, d’ypocras on de saulces, si soient broyées avec, et après la laissier parer.

Translated that is:

Item: and if you want to make it good and at leisure, soak the mustard seeds overnight in good vinegar, then grind it well in the mill, and very little by little soak in vinegar: and if you have some remnants of spices from jelly, claré, hypocras or sauces, grind them with it, and then leave to rest.

I chose a white wine vinegar to soak the mustard in (honestly, because it is what I had). 

The next day, it was interesting to see the difference between soaked and unsoaked mustard seeds.

I then ground the mustard with a mortar and pestle. 

Grinding was a slow process

The final product: a quite spicy mustard

I had to make some hippocras!

Ypocras. Pour faire pouldre d’ypocras, prenez un quarteron de très fine canelle triée à la dent, et demy quarteron de fleur de canelle fine, une once de gingembre de mesche trié fin blanc et une once de graine de paradis, un sizain de noix muguettes et de garingal ensemble, et faites tout battre ensemble. Et quant vous vouldrez faire l’ypocras, prenez demye once largement et sur le plus de ceste pouldre et deux quarterons de succre, et les meslez ensemble, et une quarte de vin à la mesure de Paris.

Translation: 

Hippocras. To make hippocras powder, take a quarteron of very fine cinnamon, sorted by the tooth, and half a quarteron of fine cinnamon flower, an ounce of fine white sorted mesche ginger and an ounce of grains of paradise seed, a sixth of an ounce of nutmeg and galingale together, and beat everything together. And when you want to make the hypocras, take half an ounce and some more of this powder and two quarterons of sugar, and mix them together, and a quarte of wine to the measure of Paris.

Waffling on about wafers

 

This post is a bit of a follow on from my previous post listing medieval and renaissance wafer recipes. In this article I will provide a modern wafer recipe that I have developed, and background information on wafers that I have gleaned. 

Because I get really irritated by blogs that have pages and pages of info before you get to the recipe, I am going straight to the recipe, and then you can read on as you wish. The recipe is from Le Menagier de Paris.

Recipe

1 egg

1/2 cup wine

1/2 cup flour

generous pinch of salt

When are they from?

Now, there is a really good question, which sadly I cannot provide a definitive answer to! The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America says that wafers “date back to ancient Greece, where they made obelios, a flat cake cooked between two hot metal plates.”
The earliest image I have spotted so far is from the Velislav Picture Bible (between 1325 and 1340)

What are they made of?

The basic wafer is pretty simple: flour, eggs, wine, salt.
But... you could get fancy, such as by stuffing them with cheese or adding ginger to the paste. Saffron wafers are mentioned in royal accounts from medieval Poland.
By the late 16th or early 17th century they might contain sugar and flavourings such as rose-water and cinnamon. A set of books in Gent, Belgium (bound together as one) dating from about 1560 has recipes that are made using white bread crumbs instead of flour.

What tool is used to make them?

A wafer iron just like this! -------------->

They did come in different shapes and sizes (including round), but this picture is quite a typical example of a medieval or renaissance wafer iron.
As you can see in this picture, there are two different sides. From my travels and research, they always seem to have two different sides in the medieval period – modern ones don't always. If you would like to see more examples of wafer irons, visit: www.larsdatter.com

When in the meal were they eaten?

They appear to have been served quite late in the meal, both in England and in France, and it seems, always with hippocras! There is a theory that they are a sort of final blessing at the end of the meal.
In Le Menagier de Paris (1393) the author gives details of the arrangements for two wedding feasts that include wafers. In both he lists them as being right towards the end of service, which goes in essentially this order:

• Service (butter, little pastries and fresh fruit)
• Pottages
• Roasts with sauces
• Entremets (jellied meats)
• Dessert (NOTE: not as we know it: frumenty, venison, pears and nuts)
• Issue: hippocras and wafers
• Boute-hors (translates literally as bottle out): spiced wine

Over the sea in England John Russell writes in about 1440ⁱ& þañ with goddes grace þe fest wille be do.

Blaunderelle, or pepyns, with arawey in confite,

Waffurs to ete / ypocras to drynk with delite.

now þis fest is fynysched / voyd þe table quyte

This basically says that after you have eaten the wafers and drunk the hippocras, you should leave the table.

How many wafers did people eat?

For the wedding feast Master Helye gave on a Tuesday in May for 40 people, altogether they ordered 18 stuffed wafers, 18 gros bastons, 18 portes, 18 estriers and a hundred sugared galettes.ⁱⁱ The final negotiation with the pastrycooks however, provided for 4 wafers for each guest.
It is worth noting that the gros bastons were the most expensive – I wonder if this is because they were simply larger, or perhaps were filled with something?
On the hippocras front: Le Menagier notes that two quarts of Hippocras was considered too much for a party of 14 guests: - a half pint between three people was considered to be sufficient.

Who made them?

Wafers appear to have been made by specialised Pastrycooks.  In France they were known as Obloyeurs (Oubloier - also spelled Oubloiier in medieval French or Obloyeurs) or Gauffriers – specialist wafer makers. 

Whats in a name?

There are a LOT of names for wafers, depending on the country, the period and the form. The earliest name appears to be the Ancient Greek obleios. This appears to have turned into oublies, and the name gaufre first seems to appear in the 13th century, from the Old French wafla, meaning “a piece of honeybee hive” (a reference to the honeycomb shaped pattern).In le Menagier de Paris (1393) for example, the author refers to Oubloie, gauffres, sweet Galettes, Supplications, Estriers and Portes, but I don't know for certain whether these are other names for the same or different wafers, or some other pastry item. I do have some theories about some of these.

For example because Porte is a medieval French word for a gate or portcullis, perhaps it was specifically a wafer using a wafer iron with a classic grid pattern. It is just a theory mind you!

A bit of research has a 1609 Castellan 'dictionary' describing oblea (the Spanish version of our Oubloie above) as “a leaf of very thin dough, and when made into tubes they are called supplicaciones”. So I feel it seems likely that our Gros Baston are referred to also as supplications. Phew, this is both exciting and tiring stuff to research!  In Germany they have oblaten which appear to be smooth wafers, and are probably related also to our oubloie.

16th century wafer iron - Switzerland

A sweet tisane

Le Menagier de Paris was published in 1393 and contains a wide range of advice and information on almost every aspect of life in the 14^th century.

Book 2, article five includes recipes for the ill (Buvrages pour les malades), and one of these recipes is for a sweet tisane.

Tizanne doulce. Prenez de l’eaue et faites boulir, puis mettez pour chascun sextier d’eaue une escuelle d’orge largement, et ne chault s’elle est à toute l’escorce, et pour deux parisis de réglisse, item, des figues, et soit tant bouly que l’orge crève; puis soit coulée en deux ou trois toiles, et mis en chascun gobelet grant foison de succre en roche. Puis est bonne icelle orge à donner à mengier à la poulaille pour engressier.

Nota que la bonne réglisse est la plus nouvelle, et est en la taille de vive couleur vergaie, et la vieille est de plus fade et morte, et sèche.

My translation:

Sweet Tisane. Take fresh running water and bring it to boil, then for every one sextier¹ of fresh water a generous porringer of barley, and it is not important if it has husks, and for two parisis² of licorice, similarly, figs, and then boil it until the barley bursts and then strain it through two or three layers of cloth, and put in each goblet an abundant amount of rock sugar. This barley is then good to give to poultry to fatten it.

Note: that good licorice is the newest, and is in size a bright color and ridged³, and the old is more pale and dead and dry.

The challenging and interesting part of this recipe interpretation wise, for me is the figs. From first reading it appeared that the amount of figs would appear to be the same as the licorice, but as that comes out at less than half a fig, and the recipe clearly uses the plural, that cannot be the case.

One could simply instead say it means “some figs” and randomly put an amount in. But the use of the latin word “item” which does not mean “item” but “similarly” gives me the thought that in fact, we do have some direction as to quantity – that the “similarly” refers us back to the earlier part of the sentence, and the amount of barley. Whilst this may seem a bit of a leap in our modern punctuated sensibility, it does make a lot more sense in quantity. I have therefore used a porringer of figs as well – approximately 7 soft dried figs. I used dried figs, because although the recipe does not specify, limiting this recipe to fresh figs would make it essentially useless for the times of year when people are most likely to be ill – winter! Both fresh and dried figs were commonly available in Europe in the medieval and renaissance.


My recipe


3.7 litres water
160g barley
7 dried figs - chopped into quarters
4 grams licorice – this is the dried stalk of the licorice plant (you might find this in an Indian supplies shop)
Rock sugar


Bring the water to the boil in a large pot.  Add the barley, figs, and licorice stick. Boil gently till the barley bursts (about 45 minutes). Strain through cloth (you might find it easier to do a first draining through a colander) and pour the liquid hot into goblets, into which a small lump of rock sugar has been ground. 

This recipe makes a warming, somehow soft tasting tisane which is both soothing and pleasant.  Give it a try! 

1  In old French a sestier is a measure of wine – approximately one gallon/3.7 litres – I have concluded with research, that sextier is simply an alternative spelling of sestier.

2  A Parisii is a small coin (like a half penny). Searching, I have found that they generally seem to have weighed between 1.6 and 1.8 grams

3  My dictionary of Old French does not contain the word vergaie. I note that another translator of this recipe Jane Hinson (The Goodman of Paris, published 1992) translates vergaie as “greenish”.  The word vergier in old French has a few meanings including young trees, border, strip, cut groove in, ridged and embossed and as good quality reglisse (licorice) has deep grooves along the length of the surface, my decision was to lean towards this interpretation of the word.  I would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on this!