Autre Vele en Bokenade: Veal in Spiced Almond Pottage from Harleian MS 279 (c. 1430)

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Autre Vele en Bokenade: Veal in Spiced Almond Pottage from Harleian MS 279

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.

Jump to the Recipe

Historical Integrity: Harleian MS 279 explicitly requires veal, rich broth, ground almonds, rice flour, ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs, minced onions, currants, and saffron. It also gives a clear sequence: the veal is cut into gobbets and cooked first; the almond-and-broth pottage is then prepared and thickened; the cooked veal is returned at the end. The manuscript does not provide quantities, exact cooking times, sauce thickness, or a specific broth recipe. The 2026 reconstruction below follows the manuscript sequence but necessarily supplies modern proportions.

Eyron en Poche: Poached Eggs in Sweet Ginger-Saffron Milk Sauce from Harleian MS 279 (c. 1430)

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Eyron en Poche: Poached Eggs in Sweet Ginger-Saffron Milk Sauce from Harleian MS 279

Eyron en Poche reconstructed from Harleian MS 279. Original 2017 kitchen photograph retained.

I learned to poach eggs from my grandmother. Her method used a swirl of water and a little vinegar to help the white gather around the yolk, and when I first reconstructed Eyron en Poche in 2017, that familiar kitchen habit came with me.

The medieval recipe itself is even simpler. Break eggs into hot water, cook them, and lift them out as whole as possible. Then make a sweetened milk sauce thickened with flour, warm it with ginger, color it with saffron, pour it over the eggs, and finish the dish with spice powder. The result is one of those wonderful medieval combinations that looks familiar until the first bite: tender poached egg under a golden sauce that is gently sweet, aromatic, and warming.

I originally presented this as a medieval breakfast dish. It certainly makes an excellent breakfast today, but the manuscript does not identify it that way. Harleian MS 279 places Eyron en Poche among its Potages dyuers, so this revision treats it first as a medieval pottage and egg dish, with breakfast moved to modern serving rather than historical classification.

Why You Will Love This Recipe

• The ingredient list is short but unexpectedly elegant: eggs, milk, flour, sugar or honey, ginger, saffron, and spice powder.
• The poaching technique is plainly described in the fifteenth-century source.
• The sauce walks the medieval sweet-savory line without becoming dessert-like.
• Saffron turns an otherwise pale dish golden, while ginger and blanche powder add warmth.
• It works beautifully as a first-course dish, luncheon, dayboard item, or modern historical breakfast.

Jump to the Recipe

Historical Integrity Statement: Harleian MS 279 explicitly gives eggs cooked in hot water; a sauce of flour and milk sweetened with sugar or honey; powdered ginger; saffron; and a finishing spice powder, with blanche powder preferred. The manuscript does not specify quantities, egg doneness, milk type, flour proportion, sweetness, saffron quantity, or the proportions of the finishing spice blend. Vinegar, whirlpool poaching, salt, and pepper belong to the original 2017 modern adaptation and are not part of the manuscript-led reconstruction below.

Charlet a-forcyd ryally: Royal Enriched Pork Charlet from Harleian MS 279 (c. 1430)

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Charlet a-forcyd ryally: Royal Enriched Pork Charlet from Harleian MS 279

Charlet a-forcyd ryally reconstructed from Harleian MS 279. Original 2017 kitchen photograph.

This is the second of two charlet recipes that appear one after the other in Harleian MS 279, and it is much more elaborate than the first. The simpler Charlette cooks pork or veal in milk with eggs, saffron, and ale, lets the mixture curdle, presses it lightly, and serves it with broth. Charlet a-forcyd ryally takes that basic idea and dresses it for company.

Here the cook uses almond milk instead of cow’s milk, grinds the pork fine, mixes it with strained eggs, adds wine, saffron, ginger, galingale, and sugar, presses the curd twice, slices it, and serves it beneath a saffron-colored almond-milk-and-broth sauce finished with mace and still more sugar.

I first reconstructed this dish in January 2017. It worked mechanically: the almond milk and wine produced a fine-grained curd that could be pressed and sliced. It was also, by a comfortable margin, one of the least popular dishes with my taste testers.

Returning to the manuscript now gives me reason to reconsider that verdict. The old reconstruction got the essential idea right—curd, drain, press, slice, sauce—but it moved the ginger, galingale, and sugar into the egg mixture instead of seasoning the curd after the first pressing; it pressed the curd only once; and its sauce omitted both the fresh broth and the sugar specified by the manuscript. In other words, the dish we disliked in 2017 was not quite the dish the manuscript describes.

Why You Will Love This Recipe

• It preserves a genuinely unusual medieval technique: meat and egg transformed into a sliceable pressed curd.
• The manuscript gives us a clear comparison between an ordinary Charlette and an explicitly “royal” enriched version.
• The dish combines savory pork with saffron, wine, ginger, galingale, mace, sugar, almond milk, and broth.
• The double pressing is explicit and is easy to miss in a quick reading.
• It offers a perfect example of why historical reconstruction should remain revisable when a closer source reading changes the method.

Jump to the Recipe

Historical Integrity: Harleian MS 279 explicitly gives good almond milk, tender pork, eggs, salt, saffron, wine, ginger, galingale, sugar, fresh broth, mace, and a second quantity of almond milk for the sauce. It explicitly instructs the cook to grind the pork, mix it with strained eggs, cook the mixture with almond milk, add wine, press the curd, break it apart and season it, press it again, slice it, sauce it, and finish it with mace and sugar. The manuscript gives no quantities, pressing times, pork-to-liquid ratio, wine type, or exact broth. The 2026 recipe below preserves the successful 2017 proportions where possible while correcting the order and steps to follow the manuscript more closely. The corrected version has not yet been separately taste-tested.