Medieval Fig & Raisin Rapeye | Harley MS 279 Recipe

.Liij. Rapeye – Medieval Fig, Raisin, Currant & Pine Nut Pottage

Harley MS 279, 1430s | Originally published March 16, 2017 | Fully revised August 2026

Some old recipes grow when you revisit them. This one multiplied.

I first made .Liij. Rapeye in 2017: figs and raisins cooked in wine, pounded smooth, enriched with currants and pine nuts, sweetened, spiced, and served thick enough to stand. In 2021 I returned to the post and tucked two more Harley MS 279 recipes underneath it, .Cxxj. Rapeye and .Ciij. Fygeye, because they also contained figs and seemed closely related.

That was useful for comparison, but not especially kind to the recipes.

They are not three versions of the same fig sauce. One is a thick wine-and-dried-fruit pottage with pine nuts. One combines figs and raisins with almond milk and cooked pear, then finishes with an extravagant scattering of spices. The third cooks figs in ale with bread and pine nuts and can be presented in three different colors.

So in this revision I am giving them back their individual identities. This article returns to the recipe I actually cooked in 2017: .Liij. Rapeye. The pear-and-almond Rapeye and the three-colored Fygeye are becoming reconstructions of their own.

And this first Rapeye is more interesting than I gave it credit for.

Jump to the Modern Reconstruction

Before We Start Cooking

If you are new to this recipe, here are the bones of it before we wander into figs, medieval starch, and my longstanding argument with a kitchen strainer.

Manuscript	Harley MS 279
Date	1430s, late medieval England
Recipe	.Liij. Rapeye
Manuscript section	Potage Dyvers
Dish type	Thick fruit pottage or paste-like spoon dish
Defining ingredients	Figs, raisins, wine, raisins of Corinth, pine nuts, sugar, cloves, mace, pepper, cinnamon, saffron
Target texture	Stondyng: thick and substantial, not runny
Reconstruction confidence	High for ingredients and method; moderate for exact quantities and final degree of thickness

My 2017 reconstruction of .Liij. Rapeye, a thick fig-and-raisin pottage with pine nuts and raisins of Corinth.

So, What Exactly Is Rapeye?

When I first wrote this post in 2017, I called Rapeye “a sauce of dried fruits, boiled in wine and spiced.” That description was not pulled out of thin air. It fits this recipe rather nicely. The trouble is that it does not fit all the Rapeyes in Harley MS 279.

And that is one of the things I love about coming back to these old recipes. The manuscript has a way of tapping you on the shoulder and saying, “You might want to look at that again.”

The British Library dates Harley MS 279 to the 1430s, and .Liij. Rapeye appears in the section called Potage Dyvers, or various pottages. Elsewhere in the same manuscript are Rapeyes made with meat, fish, and other preparations that do not fit neatly into the modern idea of a fruit sauce at all.

So rather than force the word into one tidy definition, I think it is better to let this particular recipe tell us what it wants to be.

Here, figs and raisins are simmered in wine, pounded and strained, enriched with little raisins of Corinth and pine nuts, sweetened and spiced, and served stondyng, thick enough to hold itself instead of running across the dish. “Fruit pottage” is probably closer to the mark than “condiment,” although I will happily admit that a spoonful beside roasted meat or cheese is very good indeed.

The Original Recipe

Thomas Austin’s 1888 edition of Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books gives the recipe as follows:

.Liij. Rapeye. Take half Fygys & halfe Roysonys, and boyle hem in Wyne; þan bray hem in a morter, an draw wyth the same lycoure þorw a straynoure so þikke þat it be stondynge; þanne take Roysons of Corauns, Pynys, Clowys, Maces, Sugre of Siprys, an caste þer-to: þan putte it on a potte; þan take Saunderys a fewe, Pepir, Canel, an a litel Safroun; an ȝif it be noȝt stondyng, take a lytil flowre of Amidons, an draw it þorw a straynwoure, an caste þer-to Salt, & serue forth stondyng.

A Modern Translation

53. Rapeye. Take equal parts figs and raisins and boil them in wine. Pound them in a mortar, then pass them through a strainer with the same cooking liquor, keeping the mixture thick enough to stand. Add raisins of Corinth, pine nuts, cloves, mace, and Cyprus sugar and put it into a pot. Add a little saunders, pepper, cinnamon, and a little saffron. If it is not thick enough to stand, use a little flour of amidon to thicken it. Add salt and serve it thick.

Reading the Recipe Across the Centuries

This is the part I wish I had done more often when I first began reconstructing medieval recipes: put the old instruction right beside the kitchen decision and see exactly where one becomes the other.

Harley MS 279	Kitchen-Ready Reconstruction
Take half Fygys & halfe Roysonys, and boyle hem in Wyne	Use equal volumes of dried figs and ordinary raisins. Simmer them gently in enough wine to soften and plump the fruit.
bray hem in a morter, an draw wyth the same lycoure þorw a straynoure	Pound or purée the softened fruit, then work it through a sieve with some of its cooking wine. A blender is useful, but straining still produces a smoother texture closer to the stated method.
so þikke þat it be stondynge	Keep the purée thick enough to hold body on the spoon or plate. It should not flow like a thin sauce.
Roysons of Corauns, Pynys, Clowys, Maces, Sugre of Siprys	Add small raisins of Corinth (modern dried currants), whole pine nuts, clove, mace, and fine sugar.
Saunderys a fewe, Pepir, Canel, an a litel Safroun	Season with a little pepper and cinnamon and a small amount of saffron. Food-safe red sandalwood may reproduce the saunders, but it may also simply be omitted in a modern kitchen.
ȝif it be noȝt stondyng, take a lytil flowre of Amidons	Only if the fruit is still too loose, add a small amount of wheat starch. It is a correction for texture, not automatically required.

The Word I Should Have Paid More Attention To: Stondyng

The cook tells us three times, in one way or another, that this dish needs to be thick. That is not background noise. That is the recipe waving both hands at us.

The fig-and-raisin mixture should come through the strainer already so þikke þat it be stondynge. If it still will not hold itself after the currants, pine nuts, sugar, and spices go in, then, and only then, the cook reaches for amidon. At the end we are told once more to serve it stondyng.

I do not think that means a hard slab. My accidental 2017 “fig fudge” was delicious, but that happened because the poor Rapeye got baked at 400°F. I would now aim for something much closer to a very thick fruit butter or soft paste: spoonable, moundable, and willing to stay where you put it.

A Few Ingredients Worth Meeting

This is where medieval recipes become dangerous to my free time. A perfectly ordinary-looking ingredient turns out not to be ordinary at all, and suddenly I am three manuscripts deep wondering how fifteenth-century cooks made starch.

Amidon: Not Just Flour

Flowre of Amidons caught my attention the first time I made this recipe. It sounds as though the cook is simply reaching for flour, but amidon was a prepared wheat starch. Surviving medieval instructions describe soaking wheat for days, washing it, pounding it, separating the starchy portion, and drying it for later use.

The important thing for Rapeye is that amidon is a rescue ingredient. The figs and raisins are supposed to do most of the thickening themselves. If your purée is already properly stondyng, congratulations: leave the starch in the cupboard.

If you do need it, purchased wheat starch is the closest easy modern choice. Rice flour has good medieval precedent in a closely related Rapeye from the Forme of Cury. Cornstarch will certainly thicken the dish, but that is our modern kitchen helping out, not Harley MS 279.

Those “Currants” Are Tiny Raisins

The recipe uses ordinary raisins in the base and then adds Roysons of Corauns afterward. These are raisins of Corinth, the tiny dried grapes we now buy as dried currants or Zante currants. They are not fresh black, red, or white currant berries.

I rather like what that does to the dish. The larger raisins disappear into the fig purée, while the little raisins of Corinth remain whole. One dried grape becomes part of the body of the pottage; the other gives you little bursts of texture.

Sugar of Cyprus

Sugre of Siprys was a recognizable luxury sugar in late-medieval English records. The trade behind labels like “Cyprus sugar” was more complicated than a modern package stamped with a country of origin, but the important kitchen point is much simpler: this was good imported sugar, and its presence helped make the dish special.

In 2017 I used half a cup. Looking at the recipe now, I think that was more enthusiasm than evidence. The manuscript never tells us to use a large quantity, and figs and raisins are already very sweet. The revised version starts with two tablespoons and lets the wine and spices have some room to speak.

Saunders and Saffron

Saunderys, usually identified as red sandalwood, was used in medieval kitchens chiefly for color. Saffron brought both perfume and a golden hue. This Rapeye is already going to be a deep, dark fruit color, so I would not chase a dramatic red. A little is enough.

One modern caution: do not put decorative, incense, cosmetic, or craft sandalwood into food. If you cannot find something explicitly sold as food-grade, simply leave the saunders out. There is no prize for historical accuracy that comes with an unsafe ingredient.

Making .Liij. Rapeye Today

Serves: 4–6 as a small pottage or accompaniment
Preparation: about 15 minutes
Cooking: about 20–25 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup dried figs, stems removed and roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 3/4 cup dry wine, plus up to 1/4 cup more if needed for straining
• 1/4 cup raisins of Corinth (modern dried currants or Zante currants)
• 1/4 cup whole pine nuts
• 2 tablespoons fine cane sugar, plus more to taste if desired
• 1/8 teaspoon ground clove
• 1/8 teaspoon ground mace
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Small pinch saffron threads, crumbled
• Optional: a very small amount of explicitly food-grade red sandalwood/saunders
• Pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon wheat starch mixed with 1 tablespoon cool wine or water, only if needed

Method

1. Soften the fruit. Put the figs, ordinary raisins, and 3/4 cup wine in a small saucepan. Bring just to a simmer, cover partially, and cook gently for about 8–10 minutes, until the fruit is swollen and soft. Do not cook the pan dry.
2. Pound or purée. Transfer the warm fruit and remaining cooking liquid to a mortar or blender. Process to a thick purée.
3. Strain. While the mixture is still warm, work it through a sturdy fine-mesh sieve or food mill with the back of a spoon or flexible spatula. Add a little of the reserved wine only as needed to help it pass through. The strained fruit should remain very thick.
4. Add the enrichments. Return the strained fruit to a clean saucepan. Stir in the raisins of Corinth, pine nuts, sugar, clove, mace, pepper, cinnamon, saffron, optional food-grade saunders, and a small pinch of salt.
5. Cook to standing. Warm gently, stirring frequently, for about 5–8 minutes. The mixture should become glossy and thick enough to mound on a spoon rather than pour.
6. Use amidon only if necessary. If it remains too loose, stir in a small amount of the wheat-starch slurry. Cook briefly, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Do not add starch simply because it appears in the ingredient list; the manuscript makes it conditional.
7. Serve. Spoon into a shallow dish and serve warm or at room temperature. You want it thick and substantial, but still spoonable, not baked dry.

Kitchen Copy: The Short Version

Simmer 1/2 cup chopped dried figs + 1/2 cup raisins in 3/4 cup wine until very soft. Purée, then press through a sieve, using a little extra wine only if needed. Return to the pan and add 1/4 cup dried currants, 1/4 cup pine nuts, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1/8 teaspoon each clove, mace, and black pepper, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, a pinch of saffron, and salt. Cook gently until very thick. Add a little wheat-starch slurry only if the fruit will not hold its shape. Serve warm or at room temperature.

The 2017 Kitchen Adventure

Now we come to the part that still makes me laugh.

The first time I made this dish, I discovered two things.

The first was that putting an extremely thick fig-and-raisin purée through a kitchen strainer is an excellent way to become personally offended by a kitchen utensil.

I eventually abandoned the sieve and relied on the blender. I still think a modern blender is a perfectly sensible reconstruction tool, especially for an ordinary home kitchen. But I would phrase my old advice differently now. The manuscript intentionally tells the cook to draw the pounded fruit through a strainer. That step removes tougher skins and some of the seediness and gives the pottage a smoother finish. A blender can make the particles smaller; it does not actually perform the same job.

The better modern compromise is to purée first and strain while the mixture is still warm, loosening it with just enough of its cooking wine to help it through.

The second discovery was entirely accidental.

I told the household that the Rapeye was resting in the oven. Someone later preheated that oven to 400°F.

By the time we realized what had happened, my thick fruit pottage had dried into something I could cut into squares. It was delicious. We ate it rather cheerfully and I compared it to fruit fudge.

It was also not what the manuscript asked me to make.

That accident remains one of my favorite kitchen stories, but a cuttable fruit sweet should not be used as evidence for the intended medieval texture. The manuscript asks for stondyng, not “forgotten in a 400-degree oven until confectionery occurs.”

One More Thing I Would Change: The Sugar

Yes, I think the 2017 version was too sweet.

I used half a cup of sugar for one cup of dried fruit. Nobody complained. We were, after all, eating what had accidentally become medieval-adjacent fig fudge, but the manuscript does not actually give us permission to be that generous.

It asks for Cyprus sugar, certainly, and that matters. But figs, raisins, and raisins of Corinth are already intensely sweet. This time I would begin with two tablespoons, taste, and add more only if the dish truly needs it. That lets the clove, mace, pepper, cinnamon, saffron, wine, and pine nuts remain part of the conversation.

Rapeye Has Cousins

Once I started looking, this recipe stopped feeling lonely. Other English collections preserve close relatives: the same figs and raisins, the same wine, the same pounding and thickening, but each cook takes the idea in a slightly different direction.

Source	Shared Pattern	Distinctive Features
Forme of Cury, c. 1390	Equal figs and raisins, wine, mortar, strainer, spices, thickening, saunders, salt	Uses rice flour rather than amidon; no pine nuts or separate raisins of Corinth specified
Liber cure cocorum, c. 1430	Raisins, raisins of Corinth, wine, mortar, spices	Uses both red and white wine, bread for body, vinegar, cloves, mace, and cubebs
Harley MS 279, 1430s	Figs and raisins cooked in wine, pounded and strained, served thick	Adds pine nuts, raisins of Corinth, Cyprus sugar, saffron, and conditional wheat starch

That family resemblance is reassuring. It tells me we are on solid ground with the basic method even when the medieval cook refuses, as usual, to tell us whether “some sugar” means a spoonful or half the pantry.

A Little Medieval Food Theory

I like including humoral notes because they remind us that a medieval diner did not think about food exactly the way we do. Figs, raisins, wine, spices, season, digestion, and temperament all sat inside a larger conversation about what foods did inside the body.

The Tacuinum Sanitatis tradition discusses figs and raisins in that world of hot, cold, moist, and dry qualities. Dried figs were not understood in quite the same way as fresh ones; drying changed how the food was thought to behave.

That makes this combination of dried fruit, wine, sugar, and warming spices perfectly at home in medieval dietetic thinking. But I do not want to turn every bowl on a medieval table into medicine. Harley MS 279 gives us a recipe, not a prescription. The humoral material is useful background, another window into how the people eating this dish may have understood it.

And What Do We Do With It?

This is one of those questions I wish the manuscript answered for us. It does not give this particular Rapeye a secure place in a surviving feast menu, so I am not going to manufacture one.

What we do know is that it lives among the Potage Dyvers and that the cook cares very much that it be served thick. That makes me picture a substantial spoon dish rather than something poured thinly over a roast.

In a modern kitchen, though? I would happily put a small spoonful beside roast poultry, pork, or a good cheese. I would also serve it on its own as part of a medieval meal. That is my table speaking, not the manuscript, but sometimes the most useful thing a reconstruction can do is give an old flavor somewhere to live again.

Dietary and Substitution Notes

• Vegetarian / plant-based: The manuscript recipe contains no meat, dairy, or eggs.
• Gluten-free: Omit amidon if the fruit is naturally thick enough. If thickening is needed, use rice flour for a historically documented medieval alternative or cornstarch as a modern one.
• Nut-free: Pine nuts are explicit in the manuscript, so omitting them changes the recipe. If necessary for safety, leave them out rather than substituting another allergen and identify the change.
• No alcohol: Wine is central to the historical preparation. Grape juice can make a pleasant modern fruit dish, but it should be labeled a non-alcoholic adaptation rather than a faithful reconstruction.
• No saunders: Simply omit it unless you have an explicitly food-grade product.

Related Give It Forth Reconstructions

• .Liiij. Rapeye – Medieval Apple, Date & Almond Pudding
• Rapeye of Fleysshe – A Pork Rapeye from Harley MS 279

Coming next: the former 2021 additions to this post, .Cxxj. Rapeye with figs, raisins, almond milk and pear, and .Ciij. Fygeye with ale, bread, pine nuts and three-color presentation, are being reconstructed as separate articles so each can be read on its own terms.

A note about this revision: I first cooked this Rapeye in 2017 and added two related recipes to the post in 2021. For this 2026 return I went back to the manuscript edition, checked the dating and related recipes again, and separated what Harley MS 279 actually says from the choices I have to make in a modern kitchen. The sources are below for anyone who wants to follow the same rabbit holes.

Sources and Further Reading

• British Library, Harley MS 279: Culinary Treatises. Current manuscript dating and contents.
• Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. University of Michigan, Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. Text of .Liij. Rapeye and other Harley MS 279 recipes.
• The Forme of Cury. Includes the earlier recipe Rape using figs, raisins, wine, rice flour, saunders, and spices.
• Liber cure cocorum. Includes For to make a rape and a period method for preparing amidon.
• Medieval Cookery, “Recipes from John Crophill’s Commonplace Book – Amydone”. Comparative fifteenth-century instructions for producing wheat starch.
• Christopher Monk, “Shining a Light on… Great Raisins”. Discussion of raisins of Corinth and medieval raisin terminology.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Medieval Garden Enclosed, “Cool, Cooler, Coolest”. Discussion of humoral qualities assigned to fresh and dried figs.
• M. Moleiro, Tacuinum Sanitatis commentary. Overview of the medieval health manual and its entries for raisins and dried figs.
• Birkbeck Institutional Research Online, study of late-medieval luxury consumption and spice trade. Discussion of “Cyprus sugar” in late-fourteenth-century English records.

Reconstruction Confidence Level

This is where I land after going back through the recipe one more time.

Overall confidence: High for the ingredient family, order of operations, and intended thick texture; moderate for exact quantities, wine choice, sweetness, and final consistency.

High confidence: Equal parts figs and raisins are boiled in wine, pounded, and strained with their cooking liquor. Raisins of Corinth, pine nuts, cloves, mace, Cyprus sugar, saunders, pepper, cinnamon, saffron, salt, and conditional amidon are all explicit. The dish is repeatedly required to be stondyng.

Moderate confidence: The amount and color of wine are unspecified. Spice and sugar quantities are reconstructed. “Standing” clearly means thick/substantial, but the manuscript does not provide a modern viscosity measurement. The 2026 recipe therefore aims for a moundable fruit paste rather than claiming an exact historic texture.

Lower confidence: The precise visual contribution of saunders and saffron in this dark fruit preparation, exact serving temperature, and the dish’s placement within a particular feast course are not securely stated.

Modern testing: The 2017 version was cooked and taste-tested and was well received. It was accidentally overheated in a 400°F oven and became cuttable; that result was delicious but is not treated as evidence for the intended historical texture. The revised, lower-sugar version still needs a fresh trip through the Give It Forth kitchen, which is hardly a hardship.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Rapeye a sauce or a pudding?

For .Liij. Rapeye, “thick fruit pottage” is safer than either modern category. Harley MS 279 places it among the Potage Dyvers and repeatedly says it should be stondyng, or thick/substantial.

What are “raisons of Corauns”?

They are raisins of Corinth: the small dried grapes now commonly sold as dried currants or Zante currants. They are not fresh black or red currant berries.

What is amidon?

Amidon is prepared wheat starch. Medieval methods steeped wheat in water, processed and strained the grain, allowed the starch to separate, and dried it for later use. In this Rapeye it is only added if the fruit mixture is not already thick enough.

Can I use cornstarch?

Yes, as a modern kitchen substitution. Purchased wheat starch is closer to the Harley instruction; rice flour also has medieval precedent in a closely related Forme of Cury Rapeye.

Do I have to strain the fruit?

For the closest reconstruction, yes. The manuscript specifically instructs the cook to pound the fruit and draw it through a strainer. Blending alone works as a practical adaptation but leaves more skin and seed texture behind.

Why use so little sugar compared with the 2017 recipe?

The manuscript specifies Cyprus sugar but gives no quantity. Because dried figs and raisins are already very sweet, the revised reconstruction begins with a modest amount and allows the cook to adjust to taste.

Can I bake it into the “fig fudge” from the original post?

You can, and it was delicious when it happened accidentally, but it would be a modern confection inspired by the reconstruction. The medieval recipe instructs us to serve Rapeye thick, not bake it dry.

Is this a Tudor recipe?

No. The British Library dates Harley MS 279 to the 1430s, more than fifty years before the Tudor dynasty began in 1485.

One of the joys of returning to these old Kitchen Adventures is realizing that an accident, a substitution, or even an awkward encounter with a strainer can become useful evidence later. The recipe has not changed since the fifteenth century. My questions have.