Give it Forth: Adventures in Medieval Cookery

Sugared Plums Baronial 12th Night  In preparation for serving the dessert course at an upcoming SCA event I have been working with preserving a variety of roots, fruits and yes...earlier this year I preserved flowers (see: To Candy Flowers ). So the method I am using is based on the method below: Dissolve sugar, or sugar-candy in Rose-water, boyl it to an height, put in your roots, fruits or flowers, the syrup being cold, then rest a little; after take them out, and boyl the sirrup again, then put in more roots, &c. then boyl the syrup a third time to an hardness, putting in more Sugar, but not Rose-water put in the roots &c the syrup being cold, and let them stand till they candy (Markham). I am not using rose water in my candying. I personally enjoy the taste of roses, and I also enjoy the scent that the rosewater gives to food when you use it. However, rose water is not a taste most people are familiar with and it is very much one of those like it/hate it tastes.

In June, I hosted a cook's gathering featuring a selection of dishes that would have been found on "Shakespeare's" table. Each of the cook's that attended chose a dish from the recipes presented and brought it with them. We dined that night on buttered eggs, french bread, stewed fillets of beef, Fridayes pye and a berry cream. The beef was delicious, tender, and served over a bed of saffroned rice. I cooked it in a crock pot. It recieved rave reviews. I don't cook with salt or pepper if I can avoid it, so the major comment of the evening were that this dish would have been better if I had added some salt and pepper while cooking. Note to self: Add Salt and Pepper! To stew Fillets of Beefe Take a rawe fillet of beefe and cut it in thin slices halfe as broad as your hand and fry them till they bee halfe fried in a frying-panne with sweete butter uppon each side with a soaft fire, then powre them into a dish or pipkin putting in a pint of claret-wine

Manchet Bread -three loaves from one recipe Can you imagine eating two to three pounds of bread a day? Or following it up with a gallon of ale? During the late medieval period, that was the standard ration of food given to individuals from nobility to castle garrisons. It is a staggering amount of bread to be eaten daily. Bread was an important staple of the medieval diet, in fact, it was the most basic and common element on every table.   Bread could be produced as trenchers, which were used in lieu of plates, or as "table bread" or pain de mayne. The Menagier de Paris not only gives specific instructions on how trenchers are to be made, but even advises his wife that four-day old trencher bread would be the best to use for a dinner party.   "Trencher bread, three dozen of half a foot in width and four fingers tall, baked four days before and browned, or what is called in the market Corbeil bread (Le Menagier de Paris)." Table bread