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Beren Briw: Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Barley Pottage from the Lacnunga to Mary Savelli

Beren Briw entered my kitchen more than twenty years ago as a barley “polenta” from Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. Whole barley was soaked, then simmered with butter, minced radish, beef broth, salt, and a whisper of cinnamon. It was mild enough to sit beside a richly seasoned beef dish, sturdy enough for feast service, and unusual enough to remain memorable.

It also left a question simmering at the back of the pot:

Where did the broth and cinnamon come from, and how closely does this recipe follow the Old English evidence?

The answer is more generous than a simple verdict of “authentic” or “invented.” The Lacnunga preserves genuine Old English instructions for thick briw made with barley meal, butter, radish, crop-leek, elecampane, salt, and prolonged cooking. Bald’s Leechbook assumes that cooks already knew how to turn fresh barley meal or groats into pottage. Later medieval and Renaissance sources then show barley flour or hulled barley entering preparations made with poultry broth, meat broth, beef-boiling liquor, almond milk, sugar, and cinnamon.

Mary Savelli’s recipe stands where those trails meet. It is not a transcription of one Anglo-Saxon recipe. It is better understood as a historically informed composite: an approachable modern dish built from a direct Old English core, later barley-pottage traditions, and the practical decisions required by a modern kitchen.

This article preserves Savelli’s recipe exactly as I received and cooked it, traces its evidence backward and forward, and offers a second reconstruction that begins with the ingredients and texture most securely supported by the Old English texts.

Why This Article Matters

It preserves Mary Savelli’s influential recipe rather than quietly replacing it.
It identifies the barley, radish, butter, salt, long cooking, and hot service that are directly supported by the Lacnunga.
It explains why briw is better understood as thick cereal pottage than thin broth.
It follows beef broth and cinnamon into later barley dishes without backdating them into the Anglo-Saxon source.
It separates a medicinal text, ordinary cooking knowledge, comparative evidence, and modern reconstruction.
It provides a conservative feast-table version for continued kitchen testing.

Mary Savelli’s Recipe Give It Forth Reconstruction

Historical Integrity Statement

No complete culinary recipe titled Beren Briw survives from Anglo-Saxon England. The phrase is a modern descriptive title assembled from genuine Old English vocabulary and can be understood approximately as “barley pottage.” The closest direct evidence is a cluster of medicinal briw instructions in the Lacnunga. These support barley meal, butter, radish, crop-leek, elecampane, white salt, long cooking, a thick consistency, and hot service. Beef broth and cinnamon are not named in those passages. They enter through later comparative barley cookery and Savelli’s modern reconstruction.

The Feast That Brought Beren Briw to Give It Forth

Beren Briw was served in the second course at Ceilidh XVI on March 29, 2003, beside Hriðer Smeamete, a sweet-sour beef casserole, and Hunigbæe Moran, honeyed carrots. The menu drew heavily upon Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England, one of the practical books then available to cooks who wanted to move beyond vague descriptions of “meat, bread, and ale” and place something tangible on an early medieval table.

The feast was first recorded on Give It Forth in 2015. By then, some of my original planning notes and feast redactions had been lost, but the menu and Savelli’s recipes survived. Returning to the feast in 2026 has turned each dish into a small archaeological dig. Some recipes sit surprisingly close to the sources. Others are composites whose ingredients belong to several historical layers.

Beren Briw falls into the second group, but that does not make it a failure. It makes it a useful map of how historical cooking was reconstructed at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Read the original Ceilidh XVI feast record and menu.

What Does “Beren Briw” Mean?

The title sounds satisfyingly Old English because both of its parts are rooted in Old English vocabulary.

Beren means “of barley” or “barley.” It appears in phrases such as beren mela, barley meal, and beren hlaf, barley bread.

Briw means a thick pottage made from meal, grain, or pulse. The Bosworth-Toller dictionary glosses it as a thick pottage or porridge, and one Old English example explicitly compares another preparation to something “as thick as briw.”

This distinction matters. Ann Hagen separates broþ, a relatively thin broth or soup, from briw, a cereal pottage. Her discussion brings together several Old English passages showing barley meal or groats cooked into a familiar, thick preparation. One recipe describes barley meal and dairy beaten until the mixture is “as thick as thin briw,” a phrase that sounds contradictory only until we remember that even a thin pottage was still thicker than broth.

“Barley polenta” is therefore a useful modern comparison, but it is not a literal translation. No maize is implied, of course. The label tells a modern cook to expect a soft, spoonable grain dish rather than a clear soup or a dry pilaf.

Explore Ann Hagen’s open-access study of Anglo-Saxon food processing and consumption.

The Old English Evidence in the Lacnunga

The strongest direct evidence appears in British Library Harley MS 585, in the collection now commonly called the Lacnunga. The passage belongs to a group of remedies for lung disease. It is medical writing, not a household cookbook, but its instructions preserve kitchen actions, food textures, and ingredient combinations that would otherwise be almost invisible.

A short portion of the Old English reads:

“beren mela 7 hwites sealtes fela; wyl loncge, 7 hatne ete.”

In context, the cook is told to make a briw for lung disease. Crop-leek is cut finely and cooked first in butter. Radish, elecampane, barley meal, and plenty of white salt are then added. The mixture is cooked for a long time and eaten hot.

A second nearby instruction, numbered 60.1 in the Helsinki Corpus, again makes a briw from butter, radish, elecampane, and barley meal, this time with hyssop. It too is cooked for a long time and given warm. This is probably the reference behind Savelli’s note to Lacnunga 60.1.

The two passages together directly support:

barley meal;
butter;
radish;
elecampane;
crop-leek in one version;
hyssop in another version;
white salt;
prolonged cooking;
serving the dish hot or warm.

They do not name beef broth or cinnamon. They also do not state an exact amount of liquid, a grain-to-water ratio, a vessel size, or a final yield. Those details were either assumed, left to the practitioner’s judgment, or considered too ordinary to record.

For the Old English text and manuscript numbering, consult:

What Bald’s Leechbook Adds

Bald’s Leechbook does not preserve Savelli’s exact barley-and-radish recipe. Its contribution is subtler and, in some ways, more important.

A dietary instruction recommends fresh barley meal or groats made together into a pottage “swa coccas cunnon”, “as cooks know how.” The patient is also given barley bread, fresh butter, and eggs. The writer does not explain how to make the barley pottage because that technique belongs to ordinary culinary knowledge.

That little phrase opens a kitchen door. It tells us that cereal pottage was familiar enough to be left undescribed. The medical writer records the therapeutic selection of foods, not the basic craft every competent cook was expected to understand.

Debby Banham’s study of the earliest English culinary recipes argues that these dietary passages deserve attention precisely because practical cookery survives inside medical instruction. They are not formal recipe books, but they often preserve the oldest written evidence for familiar preparations.

Read Debby Banham, “The Earliest English Culinary Recipes: Dietary Advice in Old English Medical Texts.”

Food and Medicine Shared the Same Pot

Modern readers are accustomed to placing food and medicine in separate cupboards. Old English medical texts do not always respect that boundary. A preparation might be nourishing, soothing, purgative, warming, cooling, strengthening, or simply easier for a sick person to eat. The same tools used for dinner, including pots, knives, mortars, strainers, butter, meal, broth, herbs, and salt, also served the healer.

That does not mean every remedy was an ordinary daily meal. Elecampane and hyssop mark these briw preparations as purposeful medicinal foods. Yet the method depends upon recognizable cookery: mince the plants, soften them in butter, add meal, cook until thick, and serve warm.

A Necessary Caution

This article discusses historical medical texts as evidence for food preparation. It does not recommend the Lacnunga remedies as modern medical treatment. The feast-table reconstruction below omits elecampane and hyssop and should be understood as culinary interpretation, not medicine.

Mary Savelli’s Recipe as a Historical Composite

Savelli’s recipe retains the most recognizable core of the Lacnunga preparation: barley, radish, butter, salt, long cooking, and hot service. She then makes several deliberate changes.

She replaces barley meal with whole barley, a choice that creates visible, chewy grains and requires a four-hour soak. She omits crop-leek, elecampane, and hyssop. She supplies the liquid that the Old English text leaves unstated and chooses beef broth for richness. Finally, she adds a small quantity of cinnamon.

Those additions do not come from Lacnunga 51.1 or 60.1, but neither are they random. When we work backward from sixteenth-century barley dishes, both broth and cinnamon appear within the documented culinary tradition.

Mary’s recipe can therefore be understood as three layers:

Old English core: barley, radish, butter, salt, prolonged cooking, hot service.

Later culinary bridge: meat broth, beef-boiling liquor, cinnamon, whole or hulled grain.

Modern redaction: exact measurements, four-hour soaking, covered saucepan, timing, and the explanatory label “barley polenta.”

This is why “composite reconstruction” is the fairest description. It acknowledges the recipe’s real historical instincts without pretending that every ingredient belongs to one surviving Anglo-Saxon instruction.

Working Backward from 1650: Broth and Cinnamon in Barley Dishes

Later sources cannot prove what an Anglo-Saxon cook did centuries earlier. They can, however, show whether Savelli’s choices belong to a coherent premodern barley tradition. Here the answer is yes.

Date	Source	Barley Preparation	What It Contributes
Fifteenth century	Cuoco Napoletano	Barley flour cooked with almond milk and chicken broth as porridge for a sick person.	Clear evidence that barley porridge could be enriched with poultry broth.
1520	Libre del Coch	Farro, translated in this collection as cracked barley, cooked in hen or mutton broth, with almond milk, sugar, and cinnamon.	A close broth-and-cinnamon analogue, although the exact grain behind farro should be treated cautiously.
1570	Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera	Peeled barley prepared like coarse wheat, soaked, simmered in fat meat broth, and enriched with cheese, eggs, pepper, cinnamon, and saffron.	Direct sixteenth-century evidence for hulled barley, meat broth, and cinnamon in one preparation.
Late sixteenth century	The Prince of Transylvania’s Court Cookbook	Barley grist cooked in beef-boiling water or ordinary water; butter is added when beef broth is not used. Other barley preparations in the same collection use cinnamon.	Strong support for beef broth as a barley-pottage liquid and for cinnamon within the wider barley repertoire.

Fifteenth-Century Invalid Porridge

The Neapolitan recipe collection gives a short “Porridge for a Sick Person” made by sieving barley flour into almond milk and chicken broth, then cooking it until done. Like the Old English briw, it sits at the crossing of nourishment and medicine. Unlike the Lacnunga preparation, it explicitly names broth.

Read the fifteenth-century Neapolitan barley porridge.

Libre del Coch, 1520

A recipe translated as “Pottage of Cracked Barley” washes farro, cooks it in good hen’s broth, adds almond milk and sugar, and finishes the dishes with sugar and cinnamon. A second version uses hen or mutton broth and strains the grain to make a delicate invalid food.

The grain name requires caution. Farro can refer to hulled wheat rather than barley, and translations vary. The recipe is therefore best used as comparative evidence for the combination of hulled grain, broth, and cinnamon, not as unassailable proof of barley.

Read Libre del Coch, “Pottage of Cracked Barley.”

Scappi, 1570

Bartolomeo Scappi offers the clearest later match. In a preparation for coarse wheat or peeled barley, the grain is soaked, cooked in cold fat meat broth, and enriched with cheese, eggs, pepper, cinnamon, and saffron. Scappi notes that peeled barley requires longer cooking than the coarse wheat.

This does not turn Savelli’s cinnamon into an Anglo-Saxon ingredient. It does show that her combination of soaked barley, meat broth, prolonged cooking, and cinnamon belongs to a documented sixteenth-century culinary pattern.

Read the translated Scappi passages collected in “A Time for Change: New World Foods in Old World Menus.”

The Transylvanian Court Cookbook

The late-sixteenth-century Transylvanian collection contains a small forest of barley porridges. One version cooks barley grist in beef-boiling water or ordinary water. If beef broth is used, the cook is told that butter is unnecessary; if water is used, butter is added. Other versions use meat-boiling water, almond milk, egg yolks, sugar, rose water, raisins, and cinnamon.

The recipes do not place every one of those ingredients into one universal barley dish. Instead, they show a flexible family of porridges that could be savory, sweet, medicinal, rich, strained, or substantial. Savelli’s broth and cinnamon fit comfortably within that later family.

Read The Prince of Transylvania’s Court Cookbook.

The result is a trail of comparison, not a proven genealogy. We cannot draw an unbroken line from the Lacnunga to Scappi or from Scappi to Savelli. What we can see is a persistent culinary vocabulary: barley softened by long cooking, enriched with fat or broth, served as pottage, and sometimes perfumed with warm spice.

Ingredient-by-Ingredient Evidence Audit

Ingredient or Method	Evidence	Assessment
Barley	Lacnunga and Bald’s Leechbook	Direct and strong
Barley meal or groats	Directly named in Old English texts	Stronger than whole pearled barley
Radish	Direct in both related Lacnunga briw passages	Direct and strong
Butter	Direct in the Lacnunga	Direct and strong
Crop-leek	Direct in remedy 51.1	Direct plant name; modern leek is a practical stand-in
Elecampane and hyssop	Direct medicinal ingredients	Historically important, omitted from the feast-table recipe
White salt	Direct in remedy 51.1	Direct and strong
Long cooking and hot service	Direct in both related passages	Direct and strong
Water	Not explicitly named in the closest passage	Necessary modern inference; neutral and conservative
Beef broth	Later medieval and Renaissance barley preparations	Strong later comparison, not direct Anglo-Saxon evidence for this dish
Cinnamon	Later grain and barley dishes, especially sixteenth-century sources	Historically coherent later addition, weak for the Anglo-Saxon core
Four-hour soak	Needed for Savelli’s whole grain; also found in later hulled-grain recipes	Practical and later comparative, not required for barley meal

Mary Savelli’s Beren Briw

The following recipe is preserved exactly as supplied from Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. Its title, measurements, ingredients, and instructions remain unchanged.

Beren Briw – Barley Polenta

1 cup barley
4 cups water
4 radishes, minced
2 tbsp. butter
½ cup water
1¾ cups beef broth or stock
½ tsp. salt
⅛ tsp. cinnamon

Soak the barley in water for four hours. Drain the water and reserve the barley. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and sauté the radish. Stir in the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover the pan with a lid, and let the mixture simmer until the barley is tender, approximately 40–60 minutes.

What Savelli Preserved

Savelli keeps the ingredients that make the Old English preparation recognizable: barley, radish, butter, and salt. Her long simmer respects the repeated instruction to cook the briw for a long time, and her warm, thick side dish fits the Old English meaning of the word better than a thin soup would.

What Savelli Reconstructed

Whole barley, the exact liquid ratio, beef broth, cinnamon, four-hour soaking, and the final forty-to-sixty-minute timing are Savelli’s redaction choices. The omission of leek, elecampane, and hyssop also changes the character of the medicinal originals.

Her recipe is therefore not “wrong.” It is answering a different question:

How might scattered Anglo-Saxon evidence and later barley traditions become a pleasant, reliable side dish for a modern historical feast?

That question produced a useful dish. Our new reconstruction asks something narrower: what happens when we begin with barley meal, radish, butter, leek, salt, thick texture, and water as the least assumptive cooking liquid?

How I Reconstruct a Barley Pottage That Never Survived as a Feast Recipe

The evidence cannot all be poured into one pot with equal confidence. Each layer must be given a different job.

Direct Evidence

The Lacnunga establishes barley meal, butter, radish, crop-leek, elecampane, salt, prolonged cooking, and hot service. A second related passage adds hyssop while repeating barley meal, butter, radish, elecampane, long cooking, and warm service.

Ordinary Culinary Knowledge

Bald’s Leechbook shows that barley meal or groats could be made into pottage “as cooks know how.” The basic technique was familiar enough to remain unwritten.

Historical Inference

Some additional liquid is required to turn barley meal into pottage. Because the closest source does not name broth, water is the least assumptive choice. A modern leek stands in for the uncertain crop-leek.

Later Culinary Comparison

Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century recipes show barley cooked with chicken broth, mutton broth, meat broth, and beef-boiling liquor. They also show cinnamon entering grain and barley dishes. These later recipes explain Savelli’s choices but do not move them backward into the Lacnunga.

Modern Feast-Table Reconstruction

The Give It Forth version omits elecampane and hyssop because it is intended as food, not as a recreated medical remedy. It uses coarse barley meal or medium barley grits, keeps radish and leek, begins with water, and aims for a thick, spoonable consistency.

Give It Forth Evidence-Weighted Reconstruction

Testing Status

This is a research-based first-pass reconstruction. The ingredient relationships are evidence-weighted, but the exact water requirement, cooking time, yield, holding behavior, and final texture still require kitchen testing. Record those observations before scaling the recipe for a large feast.

Beren Briw: Barley, Radish, and Leek Pottage

Estimated yield: 4 household servings or 6 small feast servings

Ingredients

1 cup coarse barley meal or medium barley grits
4 cups water, divided, plus more if needed
2 tablespoons butter, divided
1 small leek, white and pale green portions, washed and finely minced
4 small radishes, finely minced or coarsely grated
¾ teaspoon fine salt, plus more to taste

Method

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat.
Add the minced leek and cook gently for about 5 minutes. The leek should soften without browning.
Add the radish and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.
Stir in the barley meal or grits, coating the grain with the butter and vegetables.
Gradually add 3 cups of the water while stirring steadily. This is especially important when using fine barley meal, which can clump.
Add the salt and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer.
Cook over low heat, stirring often, until the barley is tender and the pottage is thick but still spoonable. Coarse meal may require about 25 to 40 minutes; medium grits may require 45 to 60 minutes.
Add the remaining water a little at a time whenever the pottage becomes too stiff before the grain is tender.
Stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter. Taste and adjust the salt.
Serve hot. The finished briw should settle softly in the bowl rather than stand in a dry mound.

Why This Reconstruction Works

Barley meal returns the dish to the form directly named in the Lacnunga. The leek is cooked first in butter, following the sequence of remedy 51.1, and the radish follows soon after. Water supplies the liquid necessary for pottage without claiming a broth the text does not name.

The slow simmer allows the barley starch to thicken the dish naturally. The result should resemble soft polenta or a substantial porridge, but with the earthy sweetness of barley, the gentle bite of radish, and the mellow savor of leek and butter.

Salt is deliberately restrained in the measured recipe even though the Old English text calls for plenty of white salt. Modern diners, commercial butter, and feast holding conditions vary. Begin modestly, then season by taste when the barley has fully swollen.

Most Conservative Variation

Use coarse barley meal, water, butter, radish, leek, and salt only. Do not add broth, cinnamon, sugar, or imported spice. This remains a feast-table adaptation because elecampane is omitted, but it is the closest practical modern version of the directly attested culinary core.

Savelli Bridge Variation

To make the connection with Mary Savelli’s composite visible, replace up to half of the water with unsalted beef broth and add ⅛ teaspoon cinnamon near the end of cooking. Label this version as a later-period comparative variation, not the most conservative Anglo-Saxon reconstruction.

Whole-Barley Variation

Use Savelli’s four-hour soak and whole barley method. Expect a looser pottage with distinct chewy grains rather than the more cohesive texture produced by meal or grits. This version is excellent for preserving the 2003 feast experience, but it moves farther from the beren mela named in the Lacnunga.

Reconstruction Notes

Why Use Barley Meal or Grits?

The closest Old English source specifies beren mela, barley meal. Bald’s Leechbook broadens the evidence by pairing barley meal with grytta, groats or grits. Either form produces a more pottage-like result than modern pearled barley.

Coarse meal is preferable to very fine flour because it preserves some texture and is easier to cook without becoming gluey. A food processor or grain mill can be used to crack hulled barley into coarse particles, but avoid reducing it entirely to powder.

Why Cook the Leek First?

The Lacnunga explicitly places crop-leek first in the butter before the radish, elecampane, barley meal, and salt are added. Cooking the leek gently develops sweetness and provides a savory foundation without importing later spices.

What Happens to the Radish?

Radish loses much of its sharp raw bite during prolonged cooking. It becomes mild, earthy, and faintly sweet. Finely mincing or grating it allows the flavor to disperse through the barley rather than leaving isolated chunks.

Why Omit Elecampane?

Elecampane belongs to the direct documentary evidence and must not be erased from the historical discussion. It is omitted from the main recipe because this version is intended as a shared feast dish rather than a medicinal preparation. Its strong aromatic bitterness would also require separate ingredient research and controlled testing.

Why Water Instead of Broth?

The closest Old English passages do not name the cooking liquid. Water therefore requires fewer assumptions than beef broth. Broth remains a well-supported later comparison and an entirely reasonable Savelli-style variation, but it should be labeled honestly.

Why No Cinnamon?

Cinnamon is at home in later medieval and Renaissance barley cookery. Scappi’s sixteenth-century preparation provides especially clear support for hulled barley cooked in meat broth and enriched with cinnamon. The spice is omitted from the main reconstruction because the Lacnunga does not name it.

Kitchen Notes

Barley continues absorbing liquid after it leaves the heat. Stop cooking while the pottage is a little looser than the texture you want to serve. A resting pot can transform from spoonable to masonry with impressive speed.

Fine barley flour thickens faster than coarse meal or grits and is more likely to clump. Add the water gradually and stir constantly during the first several minutes. For a very fine meal, whisk part of it into cool water before adding it to the pot.

Radishes vary in size and heat. Small red radishes are a practical modern choice, but daikon or larger winter radishes will create a different balance. Begin with the measured quantity, then adjust only after the first test batch.

For feast service, keep additional hot water nearby. Stir a little into the pot as needed during holding. Broth can also be used for loosening the Savelli bridge variation.

Feast Placement

At Ceilidh XVI, Beren Briw sat beside Hriðer Smeamete and honeyed carrots. That placement remains excellent. A mild barley pottage absorbs the sweet-sour juices of the beef, while radish and leek keep the course from becoming too sweet.

The dish also works beside:

roasted or stewed beef, mutton, pork, or poultry;
boiled greens, cabbage, or leeks;
roasted carrots, parsnips, or turnips;
salted fish or simply baked fish;
barley or mixed-grain bread for a grain-focused educational tasting;
a comparison service featuring Savelli’s whole-barley version beside the meal-based reconstruction.

Serve the pottage in shallow bowls or on a platter with a well in the center for stew. It should behave as a supporting dish, not a dry heap of grain.

Steward’s Table Notes

Scaling: Scale the grain and water proportionally for the first calculation, but hold back part of the liquid. Large pots evaporate differently and may require less water per serving.
Make ahead: The pottage will firm considerably under refrigeration. Reheat slowly with additional water or broth, stirring from the bottom to prevent scorching.
Holding: Use low heat and keep the dish covered. Stir regularly and loosen as needed.
Service: Finish with butter and final salt adjustment shortly before sending it to the table.
Allergens: Barley contains gluten. The recipe also contains dairy unless the butter is replaced.
Vegetarian service: The main reconstruction uses water and is vegetarian. Use a plant-based fat for a vegan modern adaptation.

Use The Steward’s Table to scale this recipe for feast service.

Kitchen Copy • Scale This Recipe

Copy and paste the plain-text recipe below into The Steward’s Table. This first-pass recipe has an estimated yield of 4 household or 6 small feast servings. Verify quantities after testing.

Beren Briw: Barley, Radish, and Leek Pottage
Estimated yield: 4 household or 6 small feast servings

1 cup coarse barley meal or medium barley grits
4 cups water, divided, plus more if needed
2 tablespoons butter, divided
1 small leek, finely minced
4 small radishes, finely minced or grated
3/4 teaspoon fine salt, plus more to taste

Melt 1 tablespoon butter over low heat.

Cook the leek gently for 5 minutes without browning.

Add the radish and cook 2 to 3 minutes.

Stir in the barley.

Gradually add 3 cups water and the salt.

Simmer slowly, stirring often, until tender and thick but spoonable.

Add the remaining water as needed.

Finish with the remaining butter and adjust the salt.

Serve hot.

Modern Kitchen Adaptations and Dietary Notes

Dairy Free or Vegan

Replace the butter with olive oil or a neutral plant-based fat. This is a modern adaptation. Butter is directly supported by the Lacnunga passages.

Gluten Free

Barley contains gluten and cannot be made gluten free without changing the defining grain. Oat groats, millet, or buckwheat could create a pleasant pottage, but the result would no longer be Beren Briw.

Broth-Free

No change is necessary. The main Give It Forth reconstruction uses water.

Using Pearl Barley

Pearl barley is widely available and easy to cook, but polishing removes part of the bran and produces separate grains rather than a meal-thickened pottage. Use Savelli’s recipe when pearl barley is the desired texture.

Using Barley Flour

Fine barley flour may be used, but begin with less flour or more liquid and whisk carefully. The result will be smoother and can thicken very quickly.

A Note About Adaptations

Historical recipes belong to everyone who wishes to explore them. These adaptations make the dish more accessible to modern kitchens, but they are not all equally historical. The article labels each change so readers can decide which version best suits a feast, classroom, experiment, or family table.

Confidence Level

Overall Confidence: Moderate

The documentary core is strong. Two related Lacnunga passages clearly connect barley meal, butter, radish, elecampane, prolonged cooking, and warm service. One also names crop-leek and white salt. The meaning of briw strongly supports a thick cereal pottage.

The complete feast recipe is less certain because the source supplies no measurements, cooking-liquid quantity, vessel, household serving context, or final yield. The omission of medicinal herbs is also a deliberate modern decision.

High confidence: barley meal, butter, radish, white salt, long cooking, hot service, and a thick pottage-like result.
Moderate to high confidence: using coarse meal or grits and cooking leek first in butter.
Moderate confidence: water as the least assumptive cooking liquid and the proposed grain-to-water ratio.
Low confidence as an Anglo-Saxon feast dish: the exact quantities, timing, yield, and omission of elecampane.
Low confidence for the direct Anglo-Saxon core: beef broth and cinnamon in this exact preparation.
High confidence as later comparative evidence: barley preparations made with poultry broth, meat broth, beef-boiling liquor, and cinnamon by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
High confidence as a documented modern composite: Mary Savelli’s published recipe and its place in the 2003 feast.

Reconstruction Journal

Original Feast: Ceilidh XVI, March 29, 2003

First Give It Forth Publication: February 10, 2015

Cornerstone Research Revision: August 2026

The 2003 feast used Mary Savelli’s recipe as written. The 2015 post preserved the menu but did not yet separate the recipe’s evidence layers.

The 2026 review began with Savelli’s citation to Lacnunga 60.1. That passage proved genuine, but it names hyssop, radish, elecampane, butter, and barley meal rather than whole barley, broth, and cinnamon. A nearby remedy supplies crop-leek, white salt, and the clearest sequence of cooking the plants in butter before adding barley meal and boiling for a long time.

Ann Hagen’s discussion clarified the texture. Broþ is broth; briw is cereal pottage. Bald’s Leechbook then supplied the quiet but decisive phrase “as cooks know how,” showing that barley pottage belonged to ordinary kitchen knowledge even when the method was not written down.

Working backward from 1650 explained Savelli’s additions. The fifteenth-century Neapolitan invalid porridge adds chicken broth to barley flour. Libre del Coch combines a hulled grain with hen or mutton broth and cinnamon. Scappi explicitly prepares peeled barley in fat meat broth with cinnamon and other enrichments. The Transylvanian court cookbook cooks barley grist in beef-boiling water and offers numerous related porridge variations.

That evidence supports Savelli as a thoughtful composite rather than a direct Anglo-Saxon transcription. The new Give It Forth recipe therefore preserves her version, then offers a second pottage based on barley meal, radish, leek, butter, salt, water, and a deliberately thick texture.

The next stage is practical testing. Record the barley grind, total liquid absorbed, cooking time, radish intensity, salt level, yield, overnight texture, reheating requirements, and large-batch holding behavior. Photographs and a final tested recipe can then be added without rewriting the historical argument.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Beren Briw an authentic surviving Anglo-Saxon recipe?

No complete feast recipe with this title survives. The Lacnunga does preserve closely related medicinal briw instructions using barley meal, butter, radish, leek, elecampane, salt, and prolonged cooking. Both Savelli’s recipe and the Give It Forth version are modern reconstructions built from that evidence.

Is “barley polenta” a correct translation?

It is a helpful modern comparison, not a literal translation. Briw means a thick pottage or porridge. “Polenta” tells modern cooks to expect a spoonable cooked-grain dish, but the historical grain is barley rather than maize.

Why are radishes in barley porridge?

Radish appears directly in both related Lacnunga preparations. Long cooking softens its bite and turns it mild and earthy. Its presence is one of the strongest links between the modern dish and the Old English text.

Did Anglo-Saxon cooks use beef broth in barley pottage?

The closest Lacnunga passages do not say so. Later medieval and Renaissance recipes clearly cook barley in poultry broth, meat broth, and beef-boiling liquor. Beef broth is therefore a sound later comparison and a reasonable Savelli-style adaptation, but not a directly attested ingredient in this Anglo-Saxon briw.

Was cinnamon available in Anglo-Saxon England?

Cinnamon was known as an imported medicinal and aromatic material, but availability is not proof of use in this dish. The relevant Lacnunga passages do not name it. Its clearest culinary support comes from later grain and barley recipes.

Can I make this ahead?

The pottage should be tested before relying on it for a feast. Barley thickens substantially as it cools. A make-ahead batch will probably require additional water or broth during reheating and frequent stirring to prevent scorching.

Can I leave out the radish?

You can, but radish is directly supported and helps distinguish this reconstruction from generic barley porridge. Reducing the amount may be a better first adjustment than removing it entirely.

Why is elecampane discussed but not used?

Elecampane belongs to the historical remedy and is essential to understanding the source. The main recipe is designed as shared food rather than recreated medicine, so the medicinal root is documented but omitted.

Does barley contain gluten?

Yes. Barley contains gluten and is not suitable for people who must avoid it.

Continue the Anglo-Saxon Feast

Sources and Further Reading

Old English Primary Sources

Cockayne, T. Oswald, ed. and trans. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, volume III. London, 1864.
Internet Archive public-domain edition.
Lacnunga, British Library Harley MS 585, remedies 51.1 and 60.1 in the Helsinki Corpus numbering.
Helsinki Corpus transcription.
Lacnunga in Cockayne’s Leechdoms.
Public-domain text at Wikisource.

Modern Scholarship on Old English Food and Medicine

Banham, Debby. “The Earliest English Culinary Recipes: Dietary Advice in Old English Medical Texts.” Journal of Medieval History 49, no. 5 (2023).
Article and DOI record.
Hagen, Ann. A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing and Consumption. First published 1992; revised edition 1998.
Open-access thesis record at UCL Discovery.
Kesling, Emily. Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. D. S. Brewer, 2020.
Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online.
beren, briw, and broþ.

Later Barley Comparisons

Cuoco Napoletano, “Porridge for a Sick Person,” fifteenth century.
Medieval Cookery transcription and translation.
Libre del Coch, “Pottage of Cracked Barley,” 1520.
Medieval Cookery transcription and translation.
Scappi, Bartolomeo. Opera dell’arte del cucinare, 1570. Comparative translated passages in “A Time for Change: New World Foods in Old World Menus.”
PDF with the peeled-barley and meat-broth passages.
The Prince of Transylvania’s Court Cookbook, late sixteenth century.
English translation PDF.

Mary Savelli and Give It Forth

Savelli, Mary. Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. Anglo-Saxon Books, 2002. ISBN 9781898281283.
Book record and description.
Give It Forth: Original Ceilidh XVI feast record.
Give It Forth: Anglo-Saxon Feast Research Hub.

About This Reconstruction

Historical cooking is not a hunt for one perfectly authentic answer. It is the disciplined work of separating what a source says, what related evidence suggests, what the modern cook must decide, and what remains unknown.

Mary Savelli’s Beren Briw deserves to be preserved because it shaped real feast practice and because its culinary instincts were perceptive. The Old English evidence gives her barley, radish, butter, salt, thickness, and long cooking. Later barley traditions explain broth and cinnamon. The modern redaction turns those fragments into something a cook can actually place on the table.

The new Give It Forth reconstruction does not erase that earlier work. It places another bowl beside it, one made from barley meal, leek, radish, butter, salt, and water, then invites both the sources and the kitchen to speak.

AI Transparency

This historical reconstruction was researched, tested where noted, written, and edited by Yonnie for Give It Forth.

Artificial intelligence assisted with editorial organization, source comparison, formatting, proofreading, readability, and search optimization. All historical interpretation, reconstruction methodology, recipe testing, source selection, and final editorial decisions remain the author’s own.

Where evidence is comparative, uncertain, or drawn from a later period, that uncertainty is stated within the article rather than hidden.