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Autre Vele en Bokenade: Veal in Spiced Almond Pottage from Harleian MS 279
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| Autre Vele en Bokenade — veal in a saffron-colored spiced almond pottage. Original 2017 kitchen photograph. |
There are old reconstructions that make me wince because I no longer agree with them, and there are old reconstructions that make me smile because I can see exactly what I was learning. Autre Vele en Bokenade belongs firmly in the second group.
I first cooked this dish in February 2017 on a gray, rainy day when I wanted medieval comfort food. Veal was expensive, so I used beef, put the meat directly into an almond-and-broth mixture with the spices and onions, and let everything cook together until tender. The result was delicious. The taste testers loved the warm ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubeb, saffron, onion, and currant combination, and I immediately put it on the list of dishes I wanted to serve again.
Nearly ten years later, the flavor judgment still stands. The method, however, needs correcting. Harleian MS 279 does not tell us to stew raw veal in the finished almond sauce. It tells us to cut the veal into gobbets and seethe it first. Then the cook makes a separate sauce from rich broth and ground almonds, thickens it with rice flour, seasons it with spices, onion, currants, and saffron, and only then returns the cooked veal to the pottage.
That changes the dish in an important way. This is not simply beef stew made creamy with almonds. It is cooked veal served in a carefully constructed, lightly thickened, aromatic almond-and-broth pottage.
Why You Will Love This Recipe
- The flavor is wonderfully warm without being sharply acidic.
- Veal, almond-enriched broth, onion, and currants create a savory-sweet base.
- Ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs, and saffron give the dish a distinctly fifteenth-century profile.
- The manuscript gives us a clear two-stage method: cook the veal first, then build the sauce.
- It is substantial enough for a main dish but elegant enough for a first-course pottage.
What Is Autre Vele en Bokenade?
Autre simply tells us that this is another veal bokenade. It appears immediately after recipe xxxvj, Vele, Kede, or Henne in Bokenade, a different version using herbs, mace, cloves, egg yolks, ginger, verjuice, saffron, and salt.
That neighboring recipe is useful because it shows that bokenade was not one rigid formula. Medieval English collections preserve several dishes under related forms of the name, but the sauces and finishing methods vary. What they share is the broad identity of a meat pottage or stew prepared in a seasoned liquid.
This particular Autre Vele en Bokenade is distinctive because its sauce is built from rich broth and ground almonds, bound with rice flour, perfumed with an unusually broad spice mixture, sweetened gently by currants, and colored gold with saffron.
The Original Manuscript Recipe
.xxxvij. Autre Vele en bokenade.—Take Vele, an Make it clene, and hakke it to gobettys, an sethe it; an take fat brothe, an temper vp þine Almaundys þat þou hast y-grounde, an lye it with Flowre of Rys, and do þer-to gode powder of Gyngere, & Galyngale, Canel, Maces, Quybybis, and Oynonys y-mynsyd, & Roysonys of coraunce, & coloure yt wyth Safroun, and put þer-to þin Vele, & serue forth.
Source: Harleian MS 279, recipe xxxvij, in Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books.
Modern Translation
Take veal, clean it and chop it into small pieces, and cook it. Take rich broth and mix it with your ground almonds; thicken it with rice flour. Add good powdered ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs, minced onions, and currants. Color it with saffron, put your veal into it, and serve.
How I Reconstruct Medieval Recipes
The most important word in this recipe may be one of the shortest: sethe. The manuscript tells the cook to cook the veal before describing the almond sauce. That sequencing matters.
In the 2017 adaptation, I treated the sauce as the stewing liquid. That is a reasonable modern instinct because contemporary stew recipes often build everything in one pot. It is not, however, the sequence preserved here. The source-led reconstruction therefore keeps the two operations separate: first cook the veal, then construct the almond pottage, then unite them.
Evidence Layers for This Reconstruction
Explicit in Harleian MS 279
- Veal is the named meat.
- The veal is cleaned, cut into gobbets, and cooked before the sauce is described.
- The sauce uses rich or fat broth.
- Ground almonds are tempered with the broth.
- Rice flour is explicitly used to bind or thicken the sauce.
- Ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, and cubebs season the dish.
- Onions are minced.
- Currants are included.
- Saffron colors the pottage.
- The veal is put into the seasoned almond preparation at the end.
Strong Historical Inferences
- The finished dish should remain a pottage rather than becoming a dry meat preparation.
- The ground almonds enrich and slightly thicken the broth before the rice flour finishes the binding.
- The onion must cook long enough in the sauce to lose its raw harshness.
- The currants provide small bursts of sweetness rather than turning the entire dish into a dessert-like sauce.
- The use of “fat broth” suggests a deliberately rich base rather than plain water.
Modern Reconstruction Decisions
- The amount of veal and broth is reconstructed.
- Finely ground almonds or almond flour are used as a practical stand-in for almonds ground in a mortar.
- One tablespoon of rice flour is used as a conservative starting quantity; more may be added if the sauce remains too thin.
- The spice quantities are scaled to produce warmth without allowing any single spice to dominate.
- Commercial unsalted or lightly salted broth may be used when fresh veal broth is unavailable.
The Most Important Correction: Cook the Veal First
The original adaptation put raw beef, almond broth, spices, onions, and currants together and cooked them until the meat was tender. That produced good food, but it collapsed two manuscript stages into one.
The source says to cut the veal into gobbets and sethe it. Only after that does it instruct the cook to take rich broth, temper the ground almonds, bind the liquid with rice flour, and season it. The final instruction is then to “put thereto thy veal.”
For the principal reconstruction, I therefore simmer the veal separately until tender, reserve or prepare a rich broth, construct the almond sauce, and return the meat only after the sauce has developed. This should keep the veal flavor cleaner and allow much better control over the thickness of the pottage.
Rice Flour Is Part of the Recipe
In 2017 I wrote that the rice flour did not seem absolutely necessary. From the standpoint of making an edible modern stew, that may have been true. From the standpoint of reconstructing this manuscript recipe, it was the wrong conclusion.
The source explicitly says to lye it with Flowre of Rys: bind or thicken the almond-and-broth mixture with rice flour. We do not know how much the medieval cook used, but we do know it belongs there.
The 2026 reconstruction therefore uses rice flour deliberately. The goal is not a paste. The sauce should be substantial enough to cling lightly to the veal while remaining recognizably a pottage.
Ground Almonds and “Fat Broth”
The manuscript does not simply say “almond milk.” It tells the cook to take rich broth and temper ground almonds with it. That wording keeps the meat broth at the center of the sauce.
My 2017 technique of blending almond flour into broth was therefore closer to the source than I realized, although calling the result simply “almond milk” obscured the importance of the broth. A better modern description is almond-enriched meat broth.
Whether the medieval cook strained this mixture is not stated in this particular recipe. A very fine almond meal produces a smoother result; a coarser grind would give the pottage more texture.
Why So Many Spices?
Ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, and cubebs form a remarkably aromatic combination. They do not all taste the same. Ginger and galingale give penetrating warmth; cinnamon contributes sweetness and fragrance; mace gives a softer aromatic heat; cubebs add peppery, slightly resinous notes.
Saffron works differently. Its role is not simply heat. It colors the almond broth a rich gold and adds its own characteristic aroma.
Then onion and currants pull the dish in opposite but complementary directions: onion adds savory depth while the currants provide concentrated little points of fruit sweetness.
Reconstruction Journal
Originally Published: February 22, 2017
Original tested reconstruction: 1/4 pound stew beef in place of veal; 1 cup beef broth; 1/4 cup almond flour; 2 tablespoons rice flour; ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs, onion, currants, saffron, plus a modern beef bouillon cube.
What worked: The spice profile, almond-enriched broth, onion, and currants produced a comforting savory-sweet dish that the taste testers enjoyed. The flavor family remains worth preserving.
What changed in 2026: The manuscript sequence is now followed more closely. Veal is cooked first. The almond-and-broth sauce is constructed separately, explicitly bound with rice flour, then seasoned before the cooked veal is returned.
Modern additions removed from the principal reconstruction: the bouillon cube and the assumption that beef and veal are interchangeable for historical interpretation.
Testing status: The 2017 beef adaptation was tested and successful as food. The corrected veal-first, sauce-second reconstruction has not yet been cooked as a controlled retest.
Why This Reconstruction Works
The corrected version follows the source in both ingredients and order. Veal is cooked first instead of using the almond preparation as the initial braising liquid. Rice flour is treated as an intentional part of the sauce. The almonds remain tied to the rich broth rather than being treated as a generic dairy substitute. The spices, onion, currants, and saffron are allowed to flavor the pottage before the meat returns.
Most importantly, the result remains what the manuscript section suggests it should be: a richly seasoned meat pottage rather than a dry stew or a modern cream sauce.
What to Expect
Expect tender veal surrounded by a golden, lightly thickened almond-and-broth sauce. The dish is savory first, with gentle fruit sweetness from the currants. The spice profile is warm and layered rather than hot in the modern chili-pepper sense.
Compared with the 2017 beef version, veal should make the dish lighter and more delicate. Beef gives a darker, more assertive broth and can easily dominate the almond and saffron.
Historical Reconstruction Recipe
Autre Vele en Bokenade: Veal in Spiced Almond Pottage
Based on: Harleian MS 279, recipe xxxvij, c. 1430
Yield: 2 main-dish servings or 4 small first-course servings
Preparation time: About 15 minutes
Cooking time: About 35 minutes, depending on the veal
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound veal, cut into small gobbets
- 2 cups water or fresh meat broth, for cooking the veal
- 1 cup rich veal or beef broth, preferably from the cooking liquid
- 1/4 cup finely ground almonds or almond flour
- 1 tablespoon rice flour, plus more if needed
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon ground galingale
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon ground mace
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cubebs
- 1/4 cup finely minced onion
- 1 tablespoon currants
- Pinch of saffron
Method
- Cook the veal. Put the veal gobbets into a small pot with enough water or fresh broth to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce to a gentle simmer, and cook until the veal is tender.
- Reserve the broth. Remove the veal. Measure 1 cup of the richest cooking broth. If the veal was cooked in water or the broth is weak, use fresh unsalted or lightly salted veal or beef broth instead.
- Temper the almonds. Whisk or blend the ground almonds into the warm broth until well dispersed.
- Bind with rice flour. Whisk in 1 tablespoon rice flour. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring frequently. Add a little more rice flour only if the sauce remains very thin.
- Season the pottage. Add ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs, minced onion, currants, and saffron.
- Cook the sauce. Simmer gently until the onion is tender, the currants have softened slightly, and the sauce lightly coats a spoon.
- Return the veal. Add the cooked veal to the pottage and heat through for several minutes.
- Serve forth. Spoon the veal into shallow bowls with enough of the golden almond broth to surround it.
Modern food-safety note: USDA guidance for intact cuts of veal uses a minimum internal temperature of 145°F / 62.8°C followed by a three-minute rest. In this pottage, however, the small veal pieces are simmered until tender, so they will ordinarily cook beyond that minimum.
Reconstruction Notes
- Veal: This is the manuscript meat and the preferred ingredient for the principal reconstruction.
- Broth: “Fat broth” suggests a rich flesh broth. The manuscript does not specify whether it is the veal cooking broth or another prepared broth.
- Ground almonds: Almond flour is a practical modern equivalent for very finely ground almonds, though its grind may be finer than a medieval mortar would produce.
- Rice flour: Required by the source. The exact quantity is reconstructed.
- Currants: Use dried Zante currants, the small dried grape commonly sold as currants, not fresh blackcurrants or redcurrants.
- Salt: The manuscript does not explicitly call for salt in this recipe. Use a naturally flavorful broth and adjust only in a modern adaptation if needed.
The Original 2017 Tested Version
I am preserving the original kitchen test because it tells us something valuable: even though the method drifted from the manuscript, the ingredient family produced a dish people genuinely enjoyed.
- 1/4 pound stew beef instead of veal
- 1 cup beef broth or stock
- 1/4 cup almond flour
- 2 tablespoons rice flour
- 1/4 teaspoon each ginger and galingale
- 1/8 teaspoon each cinnamon, mace, and cubebs
- 1/4 cup sliced onion
- 1 tablespoon currants
- Pinch of saffron
- 1 beef bouillon cube, a modern addition used in the test
The beef, almond-enriched broth, spices, onion, and currants were cooked together until the meat was tender. Saffron and rice flour were added later to color and thicken the dish. This version was flavorful and well received, but it should be understood as a 2017 adaptation rather than the closest reconstruction of the Harleian method.
Kitchen Notes
Do not rush the onion. Because it is added directly to the almond sauce, it needs enough simmering time to soften and lose its raw edge.
Rice flour thickens quickly. Start modestly. The goal is a sauce that lightly coats the meat, not something stiff enough to stand on a spoon.
If your almond meal is coarse, the finished pottage will have more texture. That is not necessarily a flaw. For a smoother modern presentation, blend the broth and almonds before adding the rice flour.
Kitchen Copy
Kitchen Copy • Scale This Recipe in The Steward’s Table
Copy the plain-text recipe below into The Steward’s Table.
AUTRE VELE EN BOKENADE Harleian MS 279, c. 1430 Yield: 2 main servings or 4 small first-course servings 1/2 pound veal, cut into small gobbets 2 cups water or fresh meat broth, for cooking 1 cup rich veal or beef broth 1/4 cup finely ground almonds or almond flour 1 tablespoon rice flour, plus more if needed 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 1/4 teaspoon ground galingale 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/8 teaspoon ground mace 1/8 teaspoon ground cubebs 1/4 cup finely minced onion 1 tablespoon currants Pinch saffron Simmer the veal in water or broth until tender. Remove the veal and reserve 1 cup rich broth. Mix the ground almonds into the broth. Whisk in rice flour and bring to a gentle simmer. Add ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs, onion, currants, and saffron. Simmer until the onion is tender and the sauce is lightly thickened. Return the cooked veal to the sauce and heat through. Serve warm as a pottage.
Modern Kitchen Adaptations
Modern Kitchen Adaptations & Dietary Substitutions
Can I use beef?
Yes. Beef was used successfully in the original 2017 test. Treat it as a modern substitution rather than an equivalent reconstruction.
Can I use commercial broth?
Yes. Choose unsalted or lightly salted broth so you can control the final seasoning. A bouillon cube is unnecessary and can overpower the almond and saffron.
Can I skip the rice flour?
For a modern stew, you can. For the historical reconstruction, no: rice flour is explicitly part of this recipe. Cornstarch or wheat flour can substitute functionally if necessary, but they should be labeled modern substitutions.
Can I make it in a slow cooker?
You can cook the veal slowly, but make the almond-and-rice-flour sauce separately near serving time. Long slow cooking is more likely to muddy the texture of the almond sauce.
Can I use ordinary raisins?
Yes, chopped small. Zante currants are preferable because their small size better approximates the “raisins of Corinth” named in the recipe.
Historical Context
Autre Vele en Bokenade appears in the opening Potages dyuers section of Harleian MS 279. It follows directly after another bokenade, which gives us unusually useful evidence for recipe variation inside the same collection.
The earlier recipe uses veal, kid, or hen with parsley, sage, hyssop, mace, cloves, egg yolks, ginger, verjuice, saffron, and salt. Recipe xxxvij takes a completely different route: veal alone, rich broth, almonds, rice flour, five aromatic spices, onion, currants, and saffron. The shared title therefore describes a family of pottages rather than one standardized sauce.
Related Manuscript Evidence
A late-fourteenth-century Forme of Cury version, Veel in Buknade, also cooks veal first and then finishes it in a thickened broth, though that recipe uses bread, parsley juice, wine, spice powder, saffron, and vinegar rather than this Harleian almond-and-currant sauce.
The Wagstaff Miscellany preserves yet another Veel in bucnade, using onions, herbs, spices, saffron, milk, egg yolks, ginger, and verjuice. Taken together, these recipes reinforce the idea that “bokenade” names a recognizable meat-pottage family whose exact enrichment and seasoning could vary considerably.
Feast Placement
Its manuscript location makes Pottages & First Course the strongest primary classification. In a reconstructed feast I would serve a modest portion in a shallow bowl, with plenty of the saffron-colored almond broth.
Because the sauce is rich and aromatic, this dish does not need a large serving. A small first-course portion allows the spices and currants to be noticed without overwhelming later dishes.
Theory of Digestion
Within medieval and early modern dietetic thinking, this recipe is a particularly coherent combination of nourishing ingredients and warming correctives.
Humoral Character of the Main Ingredients
Veal: Thomas Elyot, preserving the older Galenic dietary tradition in The Castel of Helth, places kid and veal among highly commended meats and notes that their nourishment was considered purer than pork. Young veal was also regarded as a comparatively wholesome and digestible flesh.
Almonds: Elyot describes almonds as hot and moist in the first degree. In this dish they enrich the broth and contribute both nourishment and moisture.
Rich broth: The manuscript's deliberate call for “fat broth” adds further richness and moisture to an already nourishing veal preparation.
Rice flour: Rice and almond milk appear together among foods commended in Elyot's dietary lists. Here the rice flour also makes the pottage more substantial and binding.
The Warming and Drying Correctives
- Onions were strongly heating and drying and were associated with generating choler when used immoderately.
- Ginger was hot in the second degree and dry in the first; Elyot specifically praises it for warming the stomach and aiding digestion.
- Mace was hot in the second degree and dry in the third and was considered particularly useful to the stomach in small quantities.
- Saffron was hot in the second degree and dry in the first, and was credited with comforting the stomach and helping digestion.
- Galingale and cubebs appear in period dietary lists among warming aromatics associated with the head or stomach.
- Cinnamon belongs to the same warming aromatic vocabulary and further shifts the rich almond-and-broth base away from excessive moisture.
The Overall Complexion of the Dish
Taken together, Autre Vele en Bokenade is best described as a warm, nourishing, moderately moist pottage with a sanguine tendency, deliberately corrected toward heat and dryness by its onions and spice mixture.
The veal, rich broth, and almonds provide clean nourishment and moisture. The rice flour gives body. The unusually broad group of warming spices, together with onion, counterbalances that rich moist base and supports digestion. The currants soften the severity of the spices with sweetness, while saffron contributes both heat and the golden color prized in the finished dish.
Humoral Profile: Warm and moderately moist overall, sanguine-leaning, with a substantial hot-and-dry corrective from onion, ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs, and saffron.
Why these ingredients? The combination is coherent within medieval dietary logic. Veal and almond-rich broth nourish; rice flour stabilizes and gives body; onions and warming aromatic spices temper the moist richness and support digestion. The result is not merely heavily spiced meat. It is a deliberately balanced pottage.
Serving Today
This is still excellent comfort food. Serve it with good bread to catch the almond broth. Rice is pleasant beside it in a modern meal, but the manuscript itself does not prescribe rice as an accompaniment; rice appears here as flour inside the sauce.
For a dayboard or feast, small bowls work better than large entrée portions. The sauce is rich, and the currants and cubebs deserve enough attention to be tasted rather than buried under a huge serving.
Future Research
- Retest the corrected two-stage method with veal rather than beef.
- Compare strained and unstrained ground-almond sauces.
- Test different rice-flour quantities to identify the best pottage consistency.
- Compare recipe xxxvj and xxxvij side by side as two distinct Harleian bokenades.
- Continue tracing the broader bokenade family across English manuscripts to determine which structural features remain consistent.
Confidence Level
Overall confidence: ★★★★☆ High for method and ingredients; Moderate for proportions
High confidence: veal; cutting into gobbets; cooking the veal first; rich broth; ground almonds; rice flour; ginger; galingale; cinnamon; mace; cubebs; minced onion; currants; saffron; returning the cooked veal to the prepared pottage.
Moderate confidence: exact broth quantity, almond-to-broth ratio, rice-flour amount, individual spice quantities, onion quantity, currant quantity, and finished sauce thickness.
Lower confidence: whether the almond-and-broth mixture was strained, the exact character of the “fat broth,” and how thick or flowing the finished bokenade was expected to be.
Modern testing: the 2017 beef adaptation successfully tested the flavor family but not the manuscript sequence. The corrected veal-first, almond-sauce-second reconstruction remains to be retested.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did I completely misinterpret this in 2017?
No. The flavor combination was sound and the dish was genuinely successful. The main error was procedural: the meat was cooked directly in the sauce instead of being cooked first and added to the prepared almond pottage later.
Is bokenade simply another word for stew?
“Stew” or “pottage” is a useful broad modern description, but surviving bokenade recipes vary enough that the name should not be treated as one standardized medieval sauce.
Can I still use beef?
Yes, and the original test proves that it tastes good. It should simply be labeled as a modern substitution because the manuscript specifies veal.
Is the rice flour really necessary?
For this reconstruction, yes. The manuscript explicitly tells the cook to bind the almond-and-broth mixture with rice flour.
Why are currants in a meat dish?
Small dried currants add concentrated sweetness without making the whole pottage sweet. Sweet-savory combinations are common throughout medieval elite cookery.
Is this very spicy?
It is aromatic rather than fiery. Ginger, galingale, mace, cinnamon, and cubebs create layered warmth, while saffron, onion, and currants round out the flavor.
Continue Exploring Harleian MS 279
- Explore the Harleian MS 279 Collection
- Vele, Kede, or Henne in Bokenade
- Beef y-Stywyd
- The Historical Kitchen
- The Steward’s Table Recipe Scaler
Sources & Reconstruction References
Primary Source
- Harleian MS 279. Recipe xxxvij, Autre Vele en bokenade, in Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. University of Michigan transcription.
- Thomas Austin, ed. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Internet Archive edition.
Related Manuscript Evidence
- Harleian MS 279, recipe xxxvj. Vele, Kede, or Henne in Bokenade, the immediately preceding and substantially different bokenade.
- The Forme of Cury. Veel in Buknade, a late-fourteenth-century veal pottage thickened with bread and finished with parsley, wine, saffron, spice powder, and vinegar. Project Gutenberg.
- Wagstaff Miscellany. Veel in bucnade, a related fifteenth-century veal dish using milk or almond milk, eggs, herbs, spices, saffron, ginger, and verjuice. Transcription at MedievalCookery.com.
Dietary Context
- Sir Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helth, for later English Galenic descriptions of veal, almonds, onions, ginger, saffron, mace, and dietary balance. Oxford Text Archive transcription.
Modern Food Safety
Modern Scholarship
- Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Food in Medieval Times. Greenwood Press.
- Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Boydell Press.
- Woolgar, C. M. The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500. Yale University Press.
About This Reconstruction
Historical cooking is an evolving field of study. Every reconstruction published on Give It Forth represents my best interpretation of the surviving evidence at the time of publication.
When manuscript comparison, language evidence, scholarship, or further kitchen testing suggests a better interpretation, I revise the reconstruction and document meaningful changes in the Reconstruction Journal rather than quietly replacing the earlier work.
AI Transparency
This historical reconstruction preserves Yonnie's original 2017 kitchen test and has been substantially re-researched and edited for the 2026 Give It Forth glow-up.
Artificial intelligence assisted with editorial organization, source comparison, HTML formatting, proofreading, readability improvements, checklist auditing, and search optimization. Historical interpretation, reconstruction methodology, recipe testing history, source selection, and final editorial decisions remain the author's own.
Where the 2026 reconstruction differs from the tested 2017 version, those changes are identified as source-led revisions rather than represented as new kitchen-test results.
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