Medieval Fig & Pear Rapeye with Almond Milk | Harley MS 279

.Cxxj. Rapeye | Harley MS 279, 1430s | New reconstruction, August 2026

This poor recipe has been living in the margins of Give It Forth since 2021.

I found it while revisiting my old .Liij. Rapeye post, where I had tucked it underneath the recipe I actually cooked and given it a short ingredient list followed by the cheerful instruction, “Prepare as above.”

Except it is not prepared as above.

Not really.

The first Rapeye cooks figs and raisins in wine, pounds and strains them, then adds currants, pine nuts, sugar, and spices until the mixture is thick enough to stand. This one takes another road entirely. The figs and raisins are ground with almond milk and strained through cloth. Pears are boiled separately, peeled, cored, and pounded. The two fruit mixtures meet in the pot with wine and either dark sugar or honey, and then, just before the dish goes to the table, mace, cloves, cubebs, and grains of paradise are scattered over the top.

That is not a variation worth hiding under “prepare as above.” That is a recipe with a personality of its own.

So, eleven years after I first started wandering through Harley MS 279 and five years after I tucked this Rapeye into somebody else’s article, it finally gets its own kitchen adventure.

Jump to the Modern Reconstruction

Before We Start Cooking

Here are the bones of the recipe before we disappear down the usual medieval rabbit holes.

Manuscript	Harley MS 279
Date	1430s, late medieval England
Recipe	.Cxxj. Rapeye
Manuscript section	Potage Dyvers
Dish type	Thick fruit-and-almond pottage
Main ingredients	Figs, raisins, almond milk, pear, wine, dark sugar or honey
Finishing spices	Mace, cloves, cubebs, grains of paradise
Reconstruction confidence	High for the sequence and named ingredients; moderate for quantities, the unidentified “good spices,” and final texture

.Cxxj. Rapeye, a fifteenth-century fig, raisin, almond milk and pear pottage from Harley MS 279.

A Rapeye That Deserved Its Own Article

Harley MS 279 is a fifteenth-century English culinary manuscript now held by the British Library, which dates it to the 1430s. .Cxxj. Rapeye appears among the manuscript’s Potage Dyvers, surrounded by a wonderfully mixed company of meat, fruit, almond, and fish pottages.

That placement is one reason I am resisting the urge to call this simply a “pear sauce.” It may certainly behave like a thick sauce on a modern plate, but it belongs to a medieval world where pottage covered a much broader range of spoonable dishes than the word “soup” does today.

It is also another reminder that Rapeye was not one fixed formula. Elsewhere in Harley MS 279 the name is attached to very different preparations, including fruit, meat, fish, and baked versions. Whatever family resemblance medieval diners recognized in these dishes, it was broader than my old definition of “dried fruit boiled in wine and spiced.”

The Original Recipe

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

.Cxxj. Rapeye. Take Fygys & Roysonys, & grynd hem in a Mortere, & tempere hem vppe with Almaunde Mylke, & draw hem þorw a cloþe; þen take gode Spycys, & caste þer-to; take Perys, seþe hem & pare hem, & do a-way þe core, & bray hem in a mortere, & caste to þe oþer; take gode Wyne, & Blake Sugre or Hony, & caste þer-to a lytil, & let it boyle in fere; & whan þow dressyst yn, take Maces & Clowes, Quybibys & Graynys, & caste a-boue.

In Modern English

121. Rapeye. Take figs and raisins and grind them in a mortar. Temper them with almond milk and draw them through a cloth. Add good spices. Take pears, boil them, peel them, remove the cores, and pound them in a mortar; add them to the other mixture. Take good wine and a little black sugar or honey, add them, and let everything boil together. When you serve the dish, scatter mace, cloves, cubebs, and grains of paradise over the top.

Reading the Recipe Across the Centuries

This is where the recipe becomes much clearer than my old “prepare as above” note ever allowed it to be.

Harley MS 279	What I Do in the Modern Kitchen
Take Fygys & Roysonys, & grynd hem in a Mortere	Roughly chop equal amounts of dried figs and raisins, then grind or process them before adding the almond milk.
tempere hem vppe with Almaunde Mylke, & draw hem þorw a cloþe	Add almond milk gradually to make a thick fruit purée, then press it through a sturdy sieve or cloth. A blender makes the grinding easier, but straining still changes the texture.
þen take gode Spycys, & caste þer-to	The manuscript does not identify these spices. I use a small amount of cinnamon and ginger, both familiar in Harley MS 279, while treating that choice as reconstruction rather than certainty.
take Perys, seþe hem & pare hem, & do a-way þe core, & bray hem	Boil a whole pear until tender, then peel it, remove the core, and mash it. The order matters: the medieval cook cooks the pear before pounding it.
take gode Wyne, & Blake Sugre or Hony, & caste þer-to a lytil	Add a modest splash of wine and a little dark, less-refined cane sugar or honey. The manuscript offers the sweeteners as alternatives.
let it boyle in fere	Bring the combined fruit mixture to a gentle simmer and cook until the flavors come together and the pottage is thick.
whan þow dressyst yn, take Maces & Clowes, Quybibys & Graynys, & caste a-boue	Finish at service with mace, clove, cubeb, and grains of paradise. For modern diners I grind or finely crush them rather than leave whole cloves and cubebs waiting to ambush somebody’s teeth.

Almond Milk Is Doing Real Work Here

Almond milk is so common in medieval English cookery that it is easy to skim right past it. We probably should not.

Harley MS 279 contains its own instructions for making almond milk. Blanched almonds are pounded and “drawn” through a strainer with liquid, producing something cooks could use anywhere ordinary dairy milk was unsuitable or simply not wanted. Other fifteenth-century recipes specifically recommend almond preparations during Lent.

That does not mean this Rapeye is automatically a Lenten dish. The recipe itself never says so. It simply reminds us that almond milk was an ordinary and tremendously useful medieval kitchen ingredient, not a twenty-first-century invention that somehow wandered backward in time wearing a health-food label.

For the closest reconstruction, homemade almond milk made from blanched almonds will give you more body and almond flavor than most thin commercial cartons. But I am also a realist. If opening a carton is what gets a fifteenth-century recipe onto your table tonight, open the carton.

Give It Forth: Medieval Almond Milk Recipes

One Pear Changes the Whole Dish

This is the ingredient that makes me most curious to cook the recipe properly.

The first fruit Rapeye is dark, concentrated, and built almost entirely from dried fruit and wine. Here, a cooked pear brings water, softness, and a gentler fresh-fruit sweetness into the mixture. It should loosen the dense fig-and-raisin base while still leaving us with something substantial enough to eat with a spoon.

The manuscript says to boil the pear first, then peel, core, and pound it. That is a tiny instruction with a real effect. Cooking softens both flesh and skin and lets the peeled pear collapse almost immediately into a smooth pulp.

I would choose a pear that is ripe but still firm enough to survive simmering. A Bartlett/Williams pear is perfectly workable; Bosc or Anjou would hold together a little longer. The medieval cook does not name a variety, so neither will I pretend ours is uniquely correct.

What Is “Black Sugar”?

This one sent me back into the sugar cupboard.

Late-medieval English sources distinguish several grades of sugar. C. M. Woolgar describes “black” sugar as a brown, less highly refined grade below the fine white sugars available to elite households. Harley MS 279 and its sister collections use both white and black sugar in different recipes, so the color word is doing real work.

That makes modern light-brown sugar with molasses stirred back into refined white sugar a less convincing analogue than a minimally refined cane sugar. Muscovado, panela shaved from a block, or another dark unrefined cane sugar gets us closer in spirit.

But the medieval cook gives us an escape hatch anyway: use black sugar or honey.

For the reconstruction I would use a little muscovado if I had it, honey if I did not, and resist the temptation to make the dish candy-sweet. The figs, raisins, and pear have already done a great deal of that work for us.

The Spice Shower at the End

And then the recipe gets fancy.

The fruit mixture has already received its mysterious “good spices,” but when the dish is ready to be served, the cook reaches for mace, cloves, cubebs, and grains of paradise and casts them over the top.

Cubeb is a pepper relative with a warm, camphorous, slightly bitter edge. Grains of paradise, the seeds of Aframomum melegueta, bring peppery heat with woody and citrus notes. Both appear repeatedly in medieval European cookery and both would have announced that this was not merely stewed fruit from the back of the pantry.

The manuscript does not actually tell us to grind those finishing spices. They may have been used more coarsely than a modern cook expects. I am choosing to grind them finely because biting directly into a whole clove is a remarkably effective way to stop thinking about fifteenth-century food and start thinking exclusively about the clove.

And What Are the “Good Spices”?

That is the little mystery sitting in the middle of the recipe.

Harley MS 279 simply says gode Spycys. No list. No helpful quantities. Not even a wink.

I do not want to solve that uncertainty by pretending the answer is obvious. Since mace, clove, cubeb, and grains of paradise are named separately for the final garnish, I would rather not dump the same four spices into the body of the dish and call the problem solved.

For this first kitchen-ready reconstruction I use cinnamon and ginger, two spices that appear repeatedly throughout Harley MS 279 and sit comfortably with figs, raisins, pear, wine, and almond. It is a conservative choice, not a manuscript fact. If further comparative work points us toward a specific period powder, this is exactly the kind of detail I would happily revisit.

Making .Cxxj. Rapeye Today

Serves: 4–6 as a small pottage or part of a larger medieval meal
Preparation: about 20 minutes
Cooking: about 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup dried figs, stems removed and roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk, preferably homemade or full-bodied, plus a little more if needed
• 1 medium pear, ripe but firm
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 cup dry wine
• 1–2 tablespoons dark muscovado or other minimally refined cane sugar, or 1–2 tablespoons honey
• Small pinch of salt, optional but helpful to a modern palate

For the Finishing Spices

• 1/8 teaspoon ground mace
• Small pinch ground clove
• 1/8 teaspoon finely ground cubeb
• 1/8 teaspoon finely ground grains of paradise

Method

1. Cook the pear. Put the whole pear into a small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook until a knife slips into the flesh easily, usually 15–25 minutes depending on the pear. Remove it and let it cool just enough to handle.
2. Prepare the dried fruit. While the pear cooks, put the chopped figs and raisins into a food processor or sturdy blender. Pulse until finely chopped. Add the almond milk gradually and process to a thick purée. Letting the mixture stand for 5–10 minutes before the final blending makes stubborn dried fruit a little more cooperative. That rest is a modern convenience, not a manuscript instruction.
3. Strain it. Press the fruit-and-almond mixture through a sturdy fine-mesh sieve or dampened cloth. Add only enough extra almond milk to help the mixture through. This is supposed to remain a substantial fruit base, not become almond-fruit soup.
4. Add the “good spices.” Stir the cinnamon and ginger into the strained fruit mixture. These two spices are my reconstruction of the manuscript’s unidentified gode Spycys.
5. Prepare the pear. Peel the cooked pear, cut away the core and stem, and mash or pound the flesh until smooth. Stir it into the fig-and-raisin mixture.
6. Add wine and sweetness. Transfer everything to a saucepan. Add the wine and 1 tablespoon of muscovado sugar or honey. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring often so the fruit does not scorch.
7. Cook together. Simmer for about 5–10 minutes, until the flavors are blended and the mixture is thick and spoonable. Taste. Add the second tablespoon of sweetener only if you think it needs it. Add a tiny pinch of salt if desired.
8. Dress the dish. Spoon the Rapeye into a shallow serving dish. Mix the mace, clove, cubeb, and grains of paradise and scatter them lightly over the surface just before serving.

Kitchen Copy: The Short Version

Boil 1 medium pear whole until tender. Meanwhile, grind 1/2 cup dried figs + 1/2 cup raisins with about 3/4 cup almond milk and press through a sieve. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon + 1/8 teaspoon ginger. Peel and core the cooked pear, mash it, and add it to the fruit. Stir in 1/4 cup dry wine and 1 tablespoon muscovado sugar or honey. Simmer gently for 5–10 minutes until thick and spoonable; taste before adding more sweetener. At service, sprinkle lightly with mace, clove, cubeb, and grains of paradise.

What I Would Change from the 2021 Version

Mostly, I would stop pretending this recipe could be made by following the directions for .Liij. Rapeye.

My little 2021 redaction listed figs, raisins, almond milk, pear, wine, sugar or honey, and the four finishing spices. Then I wrote: “Prepare as above.”

That shortcut erased almost everything interesting about the recipe.

It erased the fact that the figs and raisins are not first boiled in wine. It erased the almond-milk straining step. It erased the pear being cooked separately. It turned the finishing spices into ingredients stirred into the pot instead of something cast over the dish at service. And it made the unidentified gode Spycys disappear completely.

This is exactly why I keep going back to these old Kitchen Adventures. A list of ingredients can get you something edible. The verbs tell you what the medieval cook was actually doing.

The Rapeye Family Is Getting Crowded

Now that we have pulled this one out of the older post, the family resemblance among Harley MS 279’s Rapeyes becomes much easier to see without pretending they are identical.

• .Liij. Rapeye combines figs and raisins with wine, raisins of Corinth, pine nuts, sugar, spices, and conditional wheat starch.
• .Liiij. Rapeye uses almond milk, dates, raw apple, wine or almond draff, rice flour, and spices.
• Rapeye of Fleysshe is made from cooked pork, broth, honey, egg yolks, and spices.

And next comes .Ciij. Fygeye, which takes figs in yet another direction with ale, bread, pine nuts, cinnamon, and an optional three-color presentation.

A Little Medieval Food Theory

Pears had a place in medieval humoral thinking too. The Tacuinum Sanitatis tradition described pear as relatively cooling and moistening. Medieval writers and cooks also understood spices as warming and as helpful to digestion.

It is tempting to look at a cool, moist pear sitting underneath mace, clove, cubeb, grains of paradise, cinnamon, and ginger and announce that we have discovered the medical logic of the recipe.

I would not go that far.

What we can say is that the combination makes sense inside the dietetic world medieval diners inhabited. That is useful context, but Harley MS 279 still gives us a kitchen instruction, not a physician’s prescription.

How Would I Serve It?

Again, the manuscript does not hand us a feast menu and say, “Put Rapeye right here.” I wish it did.

Its home among the Potage Dyvers makes me comfortable serving it as a small spoon dish in its own right. The almond milk and cooked pear should make this version softer and creamier than the first fig-and-raisin Rapeye, while the peppery spice garnish keeps it from drifting into something that tastes like modern breakfast fruit.

I would also be very curious to try a spoonful beside roast poultry or pork. That is a modern serving experiment, not a claim about fifteenth-century service, and I suspect it would be excellent.

Dietary and Substitution Notes

• Vegetarian: Yes, as written.
• Dairy-free: Yes. Medieval almond milk is nut-based, not dairy milk.
• Vegan option: Use dark cane sugar rather than honey, and check that the wine fits your dietary requirements.
• Gluten-free: The recipe itself contains no wheat or bread. Check commercial almond milk and other packaged ingredients if strict avoidance is required.
• Nut allergy: Almond milk is structurally important here. A different plant milk would create a modern adaptation rather than a close reconstruction.
• No cubeb or grains of paradise: Both spices are explicit in the finishing garnish. Black pepper can make a pleasant modern substitute, but I would rather omit an unavailable spice than pretend black pepper is historically identical.
• No alcohol: Wine is explicit. Grape juice can make an edible adaptation, but it changes the recipe.

A note about this reconstruction: This recipe appeared briefly in a 2021 update to my older Rapeye article, but that short redaction did not preserve its distinct method. For this new article I returned to Austin’s transcription of Harley MS 279, checked the manuscript context and related recipes, and separated what the medieval cook actually tells us from the quantities and conveniences needed in my kitchen. The recipe below is a reconstruction ready for testing; where the manuscript leaves us guessing, I have said so.

Sources and Further Reading

• Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. University of Michigan, Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. Primary text of .Cxxj. Rapeye and related Harley MS 279 recipes.
• British Library, Harley MS 279: Culinary Treatises. Manuscript catalogue and current dating.
• C. M. Woolgar, “Sauces and Spices, Sugars and Preserves,” The Culture of Food in England 1200–1500. Yale University Press, 2016.
• C. M. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500. Yale University Press.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Cool, Cooler, Coolest”. Medieval humoral classifications, including pear.
• Christopher Monk, “Medieval Culinary Glossary: Grains of Paradise”. Identification, flavor, and medieval culinary use of grains of paradise.
• Anglo-Norman Dictionary, “Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice”. Imported spices and their presence in medieval English and Anglo-French sources, including mace and cubeb.
• Give It Forth, “Almond Milk Recipes in the Middle Ages”. Primary recipes and kitchen methods for medieval almond milk.

Reconstruction Confidence Level

This one gives us a beautifully clear sequence of operations, but medieval cooks still refuse to hand over their measuring spoons.

Overall confidence: High for the order of preparation and named ingredients; moderate for proportions, final texture, and the identity of the unspecified “good spices.”

High confidence: Figs and raisins are ground, tempered with almond milk, and drawn through cloth. Pears are boiled, peeled, cored, pounded, and added. Wine and a little black sugar or honey are added before the mixture boils together. Mace, cloves, cubebs, and grains of paradise are applied at service.

Moderate confidence: The manuscript supplies no quantities. A one-to-one ratio of figs and raisins continues the practical scale used in my earlier Rapeye work, but it is not stated here. The amount of pear, almond milk, wine, and sweetener is reconstructed for a spoonable pottage.

Lower confidence: Gode Spycys is not defined. Cinnamon and ginger are my conservative choice based on their frequent appearance in Harley MS 279 and their compatibility with the named ingredients. The manuscript also does not say whether the finishing spices were whole, crushed, or powdered; finely grinding them is a modern dining choice.

Modern testing: This full reconstruction has not yet had its own Give It Forth kitchen test. It previously existed only as a short 2021 redaction attached to another recipe. Once I cook the complete version, I will update quantities, texture notes, and anything the pot teaches me that the manuscript did not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is medieval almond milk actually dairy-free?

Yes. Medieval almond milk was made by grinding blanched almonds with liquid and straining them. It was widely used in medieval European cooking, including in dishes suitable for periods when dairy and meat were restricted.

Do I cook the figs and raisins in wine first?

No. That is the method used in .Liij. Rapeye, but not here. In .Cxxj. Rapeye, the dried fruit is ground first, tempered with almond milk, and strained. Wine is added later after the cooked pear joins the mixture.

Why boil the pear before peeling it?

Because that is the order given in the manuscript. Boiling softens the pear so the peeled and cored flesh can be pounded smoothly into the fruit-and-almond base.

What is black sugar?

Late-medieval English sources distinguish black sugar from finer white grades. It was a darker, less highly refined cane sugar. Dark muscovado or another minimally refined cane sugar is a reasonable modern approximation; the manuscript also explicitly allows honey instead.

What are cubebs?

Cubebs are the dried berries of Piper cubeba, a pepper relative used in medieval European cooking. Their flavor is peppery, aromatic, and slightly camphorous.

What are grains of paradise?

Grains of paradise are the seeds of Aframomum melegueta, a West African member of the ginger family. They have peppery heat with woody and citrus notes and were a valued medieval spice.

What does “good spices” mean?

The manuscript does not tell us. For this reconstruction I use cinnamon and ginger, but that is an informed kitchen choice rather than a certain translation of a known medieval spice blend.

Is this a Tudor recipe?

No. Harley MS 279 is dated to the 1430s, well before the beginning of the Tudor dynasty in 1485.

There is something satisfying about rescuing this recipe from the footnotes of my own blog. It turns out the pear had been waiting there all along, patiently refusing to be prepared “as above.”