Second Course (Roasted, Boiled in Sauce, Served with Sauce, Grilled, Fried or Baked Items)

The roast consists of foods that have been exposed to dry heat, baked, roasted or grilled. It is derived from late 13th century word rostir meaning “to cook or burn”. At the suggestions of Platina, the medieval cook would serve a meat boiled in a sauce, or a meat which had been roasted to be served with a sauce. Additional cooking methods that might have been used include meat that had been cooked on a spit or a grill, frying or an item that had been baked.

For the more elaborate second course highlighting the “main” dish (and the highlight of the meal), Le Menagier suggests roast, the best you can get with appropriate sauces, rich pastries, lombardy tarts, sweet chestnuts and thin pancakes or cream fritters. This is the course where it is the most appropriate to serve heavier meats which have been roasted, baked or in a pastry shell, served cold (froide sauge), jellied (jelly of meat or fish) or sliced. Maistre Chiquart suggests “large roasts put themselves” including a whole piglet or kid, and after the roasts trays of fowl including goose, pheasant and partridge, and reminds the cook to pay attention to the sauces used recommending simple salt, sauce piquant, jance or cameline.

The modern cook is not limited in the items that can be served. Other items that could be included in this course are nuts (especially with fish), aged cheeses (especially with meat), vegetables that have been roasted, baked or fried, pears, apples, quince, medlars or chestnuts. It is not uncommon to find pancakes or other fried dishes such as fritters in this course.

Here you will find an index of recipes that would be appropriate for the second course of a four course medieval feast,  assuming that you are serving a meal that consists of appetizers, two courses and a dessert.

Index of Recipes

Meat, Fish and Poultry

Capon Farced – chicken stuffed with a mixture of sausage, onions and grapes, roasted Harl. MS 279, 1430 and How to Spatchcock Chickens

Capoun in Salome - Capon and Gravy

Capponi sopramentati serviti freddi con caparetti sopra - capon sopramentati - Stuffed poached chicken served sliced and cold

Coleys - Chicken Cullis

Chykonys in dropey - Chicken with Gravy

For Pyes of Mutton or Beefe. - Mincemeat Pie (1591)

Himono (干物) - Grilled dried Fish

Namazu kabayaki ナマズの蒲焼 (Catfish Kabayaki)

Sausages, Otherways, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

Shōga pōku-maki nasu 茄子の肉巻き生姜焼き - (Ginger Pork Rolls with Eggplant)

Wakasagi Nanbanzuke - 南部の野bなスタイルのワカサギ Smelt in the “Southern Barbarian Style”

Vegetable

A Fridayes Pye, without eyther Flesh or Fish - Beet Greens and Apple Pie with Raisins

Roasted Chestnuts, Turnips and Sage Le Menagier de Paris, 1393

Other

Let Lardes – hard custard flavored with herbs cooked in bacon grease Harl. MS 4016, 1450

To make a Crystal Jelly and Other Jelly for Service of Several Colours, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May