Mearh Smeamete – Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Sausage Delicacy

Originally served at Ceilidh XVI, March 29, 2003. Updated with additional research, source notes, and modernized interpretation in June 2026.

AI-assisted formatting and editing note: This article was developed with the assistance of ChatGPT for organization, source comparison, grammar, and HTML formatting. Historical interpretation, recipe testing notes, and final editorial judgment are my own.

Mearh Smeamete: Following the Trail of an Anglo-Saxon Sausage Recipe

Sometimes revisiting an old recipe does not reveal mistakes. Sometimes it reveals how much care went into the reconstruction in the first place.

That is what happened when I returned to Mearh Smeamete, a sausage dish I served as part of an Anglo-Saxon inspired feast in 2003.

At first glance, the recipe can look surprisingly modern: pork sausage, apples, spices, vinegar, bread, and a milk-thickened sauce baked together in a casserole dish. It was delicious. It was practical. It worked beautifully in a busy feast kitchen.

But more than twenty years later, with far more sources available online than I had in 2003, I wanted to understand the reconstruction more deeply.

Not to ask, “Was Mary Savelli wrong?”

But to ask:

What was Mary seeing?

Ceilidh XVI, March 29, 2003. The original Anglo-Saxon inspired feast where Mearh Smeamete appeared on my table.

Original Feast Context: Mearh Smeamete was originally prepared for Ceilidh XVI, an Anglo-Saxon inspired feast held on March 29, 2003.

📜 Read the original feast record:
Ceilidh XVI – March 29, 2003

🍎 Explore the updated feast research:
Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Feast: Ceilidh XVI Revisited

The Value of Revisiting Old Recipes

One of the gifts, and occasional discomforts, of maintaining a long-running historical cooking blog is that older work remains visible.

Old recipes show what sources were available, what assumptions were common, what questions had not yet been asked, and what tools did not yet exist. In 2003, many of the resources we now take for granted were not sitting one click away. Searchable manuscript databases, digitized dictionaries, OCR text, archive scans, and online facsimiles were far less accessible.

Historical cooks often worked from the books they owned, interlibrary loans, photocopies, handwritten notes, conference conversations, and the generosity of other researchers.

That is worth remembering.

Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England attempted something genuinely difficult: turning fragmentary evidence into dishes modern cooks could prepare, discuss, and place on the table. That work deserves to be revisited with generosity.

A Note on Mary Savelli’s Work: This revisit is not an attempt to correct Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. If anything, it deepened my appreciation for the care behind the reconstruction. Mary was building practical bridges between incomplete Anglo-Saxon evidence and real kitchens.

What Historical Food Reconstruction Actually Looks Like

When people imagine historical cooking research, they often picture a tidy manuscript recipe waiting to be translated:

Take sausage, apples, bread, and spice...

Anglo-Saxon food rarely works that neatly.

Instead, reconstruction often feels more like archaeology than recipe transcription. Sometimes we have a word. Sometimes we have a medical warning. Sometimes we have a list of foods owed as rent, a monastic rule, a glossary entry, a dietary recommendation, or a later recipe that seems to preserve an older habit.

Sometimes the evidence is literal archaeology: seeds in midden pits, butchered animal bones, shellfish remains, charred grain, hearths, ovens, cooking vessels, residues in pottery, and the ordinary rubbish of daily life. A broken pot, a fish bone, or an apple seed may not give us a recipe, but it can help us understand what ingredients were present and how food was handled.

Other times, reconstruction follows continuity. Roman foodways influenced later European cooking. Anglo-Saxon England did not exist in a sealed jar. Ideas, ingredients, medical theories, trade goods, cooking methods, and elite tastes moved across time and place. Later Anglo-Norman and medieval English recipes cannot prove an earlier Anglo-Saxon dish by themselves, but they can show which techniques and flavor patterns remained plausible in English kitchens.

Food Archaeology Is More Than Recipes: No single clue proves Mearh Smeamete. The argument becomes stronger when several kinds of evidence point in the same direction: language, cooking technology, comparative recipes, archaeology, medical texts, and practical feast experience.

That is the kind of trail I followed for Mearh Smeamete.

What Does Mearh Smeamete Mean?

The first clue was not culinary.

It was linguistic.

In the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, mearh can refer to marrow or pith, but it is also glossed as a sausage. That single detail changes the way the dish reads. The title is not merely decorative Old English attached to a modern pork casserole. It points toward sausage as a meaningful part of the reconstruction.

The second word, sméa-mete, is glossed as a delicacy.

Put together, Mearh Smeamete can be understood as something like:

Sausage delicacy.

Or, more freely:

A fine sausage dish.

Language Note: The title does not prove that a complete Anglo-Saxon recipe for this dish survives. It does, however, make the reconstruction meaningful. Mearh points toward sausage, and sméa-mete points toward delicacy or fine food.

That was the first moment I began to appreciate the dish differently.

What Was Mary Seeing?

Mary’s note for Mearh Smeamete does not point to one surviving Anglo-Saxon recipe. Instead, she connects several strands of evidence. She notes that sausage is an ancient method of preserving meat, that Roman cooks were making composed dishes with sausage and forcemeat, and that Anglo-Norman cooks continued the practice of baking ground pork with spices.

That is not guesswork.

That is reconstruction from pattern.

And once I recognized that, I began to see Mearh Smeamete less as a single disputed casserole and more as a practical answer to a historical question:

If an Anglo-Saxon “sausage delicacy” had to be reconstructed for a feast table, what evidence could guide the cook?

To answer that, we need to follow the breadcrumbs.

Bald’s Leechbook, Osterhlaf, and Food Clues in Strange Places

One of the most useful things Mary did in Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England was work honestly with fragmentary evidence.

Her reconstruction of Leaxes Hlaf, or salmon loaves, shows this method clearly. Mary notes that Anglo-Saxons served seafood in some sort of loaf or patty form because of the word osterhlaf, an oyster loaf or oyster patty, found in Bald’s Leechbook. She then compares that clue with Roman fish cakes or fish dumplings from Apicius and chooses salmon and oatmeal for her practical version.

That matters because it shows her reconstruction method:

• a food word survives,
• the complete recipe does not,
• comparative evidence helps suggest a form,
• the modern cook makes a practical, transparent choice.

This is exactly the kind of method we need for Mearh Smeamete.

Bald’s Leechbook is not a cookbook, but it preserves food terms, ingredients, and dietary ideas that help reconstruct Anglo-Saxon foodways.

Bald’s Leechbook is a medical text, not a collection of kitchen recipes. But in Anglo-Saxon medicine, food and health were closely entangled. Medical texts used everyday ingredients: apples, vinegar, honey, wine, milk, butter, herbs, grains, animal fats, and spices. They also preserve food categories and dietary warnings that help us understand what people recognized as food.

That does not mean every dish was medicinal.

It means that medical texts sometimes preserve culinary clues when recipe books do not.

Reconstruction Note: A medical text does not give us a feast menu. But when a medical text preserves words for prepared foods, cooking ingredients, or dietary habits, it becomes part of the food historian’s evidence pile.

Sala Cattabia and Bread as Structure

The most suspicious part of Mary’s recipe, at least to my modern eye, was not the sausage.

It was the structure.

Bread in the bottom of the dish. Sausage and apple layered over it. A thickened sauce spooned on top. More bread over everything. Then the whole thing baked as a composed dish.

At first glance, that can feel surprisingly modern.

But Roman cookery preserves a far older world of bread vessels, soaked bread, layered fillings, minced meat and fish, forcemeat, binders, pastry, eggs, sauces, and composed dishes.

One of the most useful Roman parallels is Sala Cattabia from Apicius. It is not a sausage recipe, and it is not Anglo-Saxon. Its importance lies in what it shows bread doing.

In one version of Sala Cattabia, the cook hollows out an Alexandrian loaf, soaks it with posca, a mixture of water and vinegar, and then fills it with layered savory ingredients. The seasoning mixture includes pepper, honey, mint, garlic, fresh coriander, salted cow’s milk cheese, water, and oil. Modern reconstructions often fill the loaf with layers of cooked meat, cucumber, cheese, nuts, capers, onion, herbs, honey, oil, and sharp liquid before pressing or chilling it for service.

Other versions read less like a neat bread box and more like a layered composed dish: soaked bread with the liquid pressed out, arranged with cucumbers, cheese, herbs, honey, vinegar, broth, and savory additions.

Either way, the important point is the same.

Bread is not merely served beside the dish.

It is hollowed, soaked, pressed, layered, filled, and used as the body of the preparation.

Sala Cattabia from Apicius is not a sausage recipe, but it shows bread acting as vessel, absorbent body, and structure in a composed savory dish.

That Roman bread logic helps explain why a stuffed-loaf interpretation of Mearh Smeamete is tempting. A sturdy loaf could be hollowed, lightly moistened with vinegar-water, filled with sausage, apple, spice, and softened bread crumb, then pressed and baked or sliced for service.

That would not make it “the original” Anglo-Saxon version.

But it would be a historically plausible reconstruction built from the same kind of evidence Mary was using: an Old English food word, Roman comparative material, bread as cooking structure, and a practical feast form.

Minutal, Forcemeat, and Roman Composition Dishes

Sala Cattabia explains bread as structure.

Edwards’ discussion of Apicius helps explain the forcemeat, binder, and composition-dish logic.

In the section on fish and forcemeat ragouts, Edwards explains minutal as a chopped meat or fish ragout that could be stewed with vegetables or fruit, highly seasoned, and thickened with flour, pastry, or bread.

That one detail matters enormously for Mearh Smeamete.

Edwards’ discussion of Roman fish and forcemeat ragouts helped explain the bread, binder, and composition-dish logic behind Mary’s reconstruction.

In Minutal Marinum, fish is cooked, cooled, minced, and formed into small cakes or dumplings. Other Apician dishes use eggs to bind, pastry or bread to thicken, and sauces to hold complicated dishes together.

This gives us another possible path for interpreting Mearh Smeamete. Instead of a casserole or stuffed loaf, one could imagine an enriched sausage patty bound with bread, shaped, and cooked more like a forcemeat cake.

Again, that does not prove the exact form of Mary’s recipe.

It shows that the underlying culinary logic was real: ground or minced protein, seasoning, binder, bread or starch, and a composed final dish.

But What About the Sauce?

The milk-thickened sauce is one of the easiest parts of Mary’s recipe to misunderstand.

Butter, flour, and milk can immediately make a modern reader think of later white sauce or French culinary traditions. That reaction is understandable. We should not imagine an Anglo-Saxon cook carefully whisking together a modern béchamel.

But thickening and binding are much older kitchen habits.

Roman cooks clearly understood how to turn liquids into cohesive dishes. In De Re Coquinaria, composed dishes are thickened or stabilized using flour, bread, eggs, reduced liquids, and starches such as amydon (or amulum). Translators sometimes use the familiar word roux as shorthand for these flour-or starch-based thickening systems because they perform a similar kitchen job for modern readers.

That does not mean Roman cooks were making French roux.

It means modern translators were translating the unfamiliar into the familiar.

The more useful historical question is whether cooks in the Roman and early medieval world understood how to bind meat, liquid, grain, and seasoning into a unified composed dish.

The answer increasingly appears to be yes.

Historical Translation Note: When modern translators use words like roux, they are not claiming Romans were preparing later French mother sauces. Instead, they are translating unfamiliar thickening systems into language modern cooks immediately understand. Roman cooks likely relied on starches, flour, bread, eggs, or reduction to bind and stabilize composed dishes.

References to binding and thickening in Roman composition dishes helped me rethink Mary’s sauce as a practical modern translation of an older culinary principle.

Mary’s sauce is modernized for a contemporary kitchen, but the job it performs is historically sensible. It binds sausage, apple, bread, vinegar, and spice into a coherent feast dish.

The Turning Point: I expected the bread-and-sauce structure to be the most difficult part of the reconstruction. Instead, Roman cookery gave me evidence for hollowed and soaked bread, layered savory compositions, forcemeat, bread-thickened ragouts, eggs, flour, and binding sauces. The casserole suddenly looked much less suspicious.

Fruit with Meat: Why the Apple Matters

The next question is the apple.

To a modern cook, pork and apples feel familiar enough that the combination can almost seem suspicious. It is easy to look at sausage and apple together and think, “That sounds like modern comfort food.”

But the pairing is not out of place in the early medieval flavor world Mary was reconstructing.

Ann Hagen notes that Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman foodways show a marked interest in fruit with meat and savory dishes. Fruit sauces, sweet-sharp accompaniments, and dishes combining richness with fruit appear repeatedly in discussions of English food traditions. Fruit could brighten heavy foods, cut fat, and make rich meat or fish more pleasant to eat.

Hagen’s discussion of baked composition dishes and fruit with meat helped explain why apple belongs naturally in a reconstructed sausage delicacy.

In Mearh Smeamete, the apple is doing useful culinary work. It softens the richness of the pork sausage. It adds sweetness without turning the dish into dessert. Alongside vinegar and spice, it helps create the sweet-sharp-savory balance that appears again and again in ancient and medieval cookery.

Flavor Note: The apple in this dish should not be treated as a modern garnish pasted onto an old recipe. Fruit with meat belongs comfortably within the broader English and early medieval culinary pattern Mary was exploring.

Anthimus and the Sweet-Sour-Spiced Meat Pattern

Another helpful comparison comes from Anthimus, a sixth-century Byzantine physician writing dietary advice for a Frankish king. His work sits in that useful borderland between food and medicine, where ingredients are chosen not only for flavor but also for digestion, bodily comfort, and balance.

In his section on beef, Anthimus recommends a slow-cooked meat preparation using vinegar, honey, pepper, wine, and aromatics. This is not a recipe for Mearh Smeamete. It is not even pork. But it shows a flavor family that belongs to the same wider culinary world:

• rich meat,
• sharp vinegar or wine,
• sweet honey or fruit,
• warming pepper or spice,
• aromatic herbs.

Anthimus preserves a sweet-sour-spiced meat pattern using vinegar, honey, pepper, wine, and aromatics.

That pattern matters because it helps explain why Mary’s sausage, apple, vinegar, pepper, cinnamon, and cardamom do not feel random once placed in context. The ingredients are not identical to Anthimus, but the flavor logic is familiar: richness balanced by sharpness, sweetness, and warming spice.

Later Medieval Continuity: Not Proof, But Pattern

Later medieval English recipes cannot prove that an Anglo-Saxon cook made Mearh Smeamete in Mary’s form.

But they can show that the techniques underneath the reconstruction were not alien to English cookery.

By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, surviving English manuscripts show many of the same culinary habits that make Mary’s reconstruction plausible: minced meat, pork, sweetness, spice, egg binding, bread thickening, baked enclosures, farced meats, and composed dishes.

That is useful continuity evidence.

It does not give us a straight line from Anglo-Saxon sausage to Mary’s casserole. History rarely hands us such tidy little ribbons. Instead, it shows that the underlying kitchen logic remained visible in later English recipes.

Continuity Note: Later medieval recipes are not proof of an earlier Anglo-Saxon recipe. They are useful because they show that minced meat, bread or flour thickening, egg binding, sweet-spiced pork, and baked composed dishes all belonged to the broader English culinary tradition.

Rapeye of Fleysshe

Harleian MS 279 includes Rapeye of Fleysshe, a dish of pork boiled, ground small, tempered with broth, sweetened with honey, thickened, enriched with egg yolks, and finished with spice. That gives us several useful parallels: pork, mincing or grinding, sweetness, broth, thickening, eggs, and spice.

It is not Mearh Smeamete.

But it shows that later English cooks were very comfortable turning pork into a sweet-spiced, thickened, composed dish.

Doucettes and Baked Sweet-Savory Pork

Doucettes, also known from later medieval English collections, brings pork, eggs, sweetness, spice, and baked enclosure into the conversation. Again, it is not Mary’s sausage casserole. But it shows that pork could belong in sweetened, spiced, egg-bound, baked preparations.

That matters because the modern eye often divides food into strict categories: sausage is savory, apples are sweet, milk sauce is modern, and pie crust is pastry. Medieval cookery is not so obedient. Sweet, savory, rich, sharp, and spiced could happily share a dish.

Liber Cure Cocorum and Thickening

Liber Cure Cocorum is also useful for understanding thickening and binding. Later medieval English recipes use words such as alye or ally for mixing, binding, or thickening dishes. Bread, flour, rice flour, egg yolks, amidon, and grains could all help bring a dish together.

This is directly relevant to Mary’s casserole. Her milk-thickened sauce may be a modern kitchen solution, but the need it answers is old: how to bind a composed dish so that meat, bread, fruit, spice, and liquid become one preparation instead of a loose pile of ingredients.

Farced and Stuffed Meats

Later English recipes also preserve farced or stuffed meats, where chopped, seasoned, or enriched mixtures are placed inside another structure. These dishes remind us that medieval cooks often thought in terms of form as much as flavor: stuffed, wrapped, enclosed, thickened, layered, pressed, or baked.

That matters for Mearh Smeamete because Mary’s dish sits in exactly that kind of world. It is not plain sausage on a plate. It is sausage transformed into a composed feast dish.

A Conservative Fourth Possibility: Coffin-Baked Sausage

There is one more possible interpretation worth mentioning, carefully.

Mary’s recipe uses bread in the baking dish. The Roman evidence gives us soaked and layered bread. The osterhlaf clue gives us loaf or patty logic. Later medieval cooking gives us enclosed dishes and coffins.

Today, when we hear “pie crust,” we often imagine tender, flaky, edible pastry. Medieval coffins were not always that. A coffin could be a sturdy paste container, made from flour and water, designed to hold food during cooking. Sometimes the enclosure might be eaten. Sometimes its main job was more practical: to hold shape, protect the contents, trap moisture, contain juices, and make transport easier.

A flour-and-water paste made thick enough to hold meat could become hard and functional rather than delicate and delicious. In that sense, it was cooking technology as much as food.

Conservative Possibility: A coffin-baked version of Mearh Smeamete is more speculative than Mary’s casserole, a stuffed loaf, or sausage patties. Still, it belongs in the range of plausible interpretations because it uses bread or paste as cooking structure rather than treating it only as a side dish.

In a coffin interpretation, the sausage, apple, vinegar, spice, and binder could be enclosed in a thick paste and baked gently. The paste would protect the filling, preserve juices, and help the dish travel or hold for service.

I would not call this the most likely original form.

But as a conservative historical possibility, it is useful. It reminds us that the question is not simply, “Casserole or not casserole?” The deeper question is:

How might an early cook have contained, protected, bound, and served a rich sausage delicacy?

Four Plausible Reconstructions

After following the evidence, I do not think Mearh Smeamete points toward one inevitable form.

Instead, it points toward a family of plausible reconstructions.

1. Mary Savelli’s Feast Casserole

This is the version I served in 2003: sausage, apple, spice, vinegar, bread, and a milk-thickened sauce baked together. It is practical, scalable, delicious, and well suited to feast service.

Its strongest support comes from Roman composition dishes, bread and pastry thickening, binders, later English thickened meat preparations, and the practical needs of a large feast kitchen.

2. A Stuffed Bread Loaf

This version leans into Sala Cattabia and osterhlaf: a hollowed loaf, lightly moistened, filled with sausage, apple, spice, and bread-bound filling, then pressed and baked or sliced for service.

This interpretation treats bread as vessel and structure.

3. Enriched Sausage Patties or Forcemeat Cakes

This version follows the logic of Minutal Marinum, oyster loaves, salmon loaves, and forcemeat dishes: sausage mixed with bread, apple, vinegar, spice, and perhaps egg, then formed into patties and pan-fried or griddled.

This interpretation treats Mearh Smeamete as a small, fine sausage delicacy.

4. Coffin-Baked Sausage Delicacy

This version is the most speculative, but still worth considering: a sausage mixture enclosed in a thick flour-and-water paste, baked for moisture retention and structure.

This interpretation treats bread or paste as cooking technology.

The Important Point: The evidence does not require one single reconstruction. It supports several historically reasonable approaches. Mary chose the one best suited to a feast kitchen, and that choice deserves respect.

Mary Savelli’s Original Reconstruction

One of the things I expected when revisiting this recipe was that I might want to move far away from the original.

Instead, I found myself appreciating Mary’s work more.

Her recipe does not claim to be a surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscript recipe. It is a practical reconstruction built from a meaningful Old English title, Roman and early medieval culinary parallels, Anglo-Norman baked meat traditions, and the English fondness for fruit with meat.

It also worked.

That matters.

Historical feast cooking is not only about what can be defended on paper. It is about what can be prepared, held, transported, baked, portioned, and served to real people at the right time. Mary’s casserole version does that beautifully.

Feast Cook’s Note: Mary’s casserole version is delicious, scalable, and practical. It can be assembled ahead, baked day-of, and served easily in a busy feast kitchen. That practicality is part of the reconstruction, not separate from it.

My 2026 Interpretation

If I were reconstructing Mearh Smeamete today, I might choose a different form.

After revisiting Sala Cattabia, osterhlaf, Roman forcemeat dishes, bread-thickened ragouts, later English pork dishes, and coffin logic, I can imagine several versions.

I might make a stuffed loaf, especially for a dramatic feast presentation.

I might make enriched sausage patties, especially if I wanted something closer to a small delicacy.

I might experiment with a rough coffin, more for cooking technology than eating pleasure.

But that is preference, not correction.

Mary’s casserole remains historically plausible, practical, and very much worth serving. Revisiting the sources does not make her version weaker. It makes the range of possibilities richer.

2026 Reflection: The question is not whether Mary chose the only possible form. The question is whether her form belongs within a historically plausible reconstruction framework. After following the evidence, I believe it does.

Humoral and Historical Flavor Notes

Mearh Smeamete balances richness with sharpness.

Pork sausage is fatty and substantial. Apple brings sweetness and tartness. Vinegar cuts through the richness. Pepper, cinnamon, and cardamom warm the dish. Bread absorbs juices and gives structure. Milk and butter soften the sharper elements, binding everything into a rich feast dish.

In an early medieval medical and dietary worldview, these contrasts mattered. Food could warm, cool, moisten, dry, stimulate digestion, or soothe discomfort. That does not mean every feast dish was medicine, but it does mean food and bodily balance were closely connected.

Seen this way, Mary’s recipe is not simply sausage, apple, and bread. It is rich meat tempered by fruit, acid, spice, grain, and dairy.

More from the Anglo-Saxon Feast Project:

• Ceilidh XVI – March 29, 2003: Original Feast Record
• Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Feast: Ceilidh XVI Revisited
• Æppla Syfling: Following the Trail of an Anglo-Saxon Apple Butter
• Leaxes Hlaf – Anglo-Saxon Salmon Loaves

Mearh Smeamete – Sausage Casserole

Serves: 8 as part of a feast

Ingredients

• Butter, for greasing the baking dish
• 3 cups cubed bread, divided
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 1/2 pounds pork sausage
• 2 large apples, chopped
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
• 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 6 tablespoons flour
• 3 cups milk

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2. Butter a large baking dish. Scatter half of the cubed bread over the bottom of the dish.
3. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened.
4. Add the pork sausage and cook until browned, breaking it into small pieces as it cooks.
5. Stir in the chopped apples and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, just until they begin to soften.
6. Spoon the sausage and apple mixture over the bread in the baking dish.
7. Sprinkle with the salt, cinnamon, black pepper, and cardamom. Drizzle the vinegar over the sausage mixture.
8. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour to make a smooth paste.
9. Add the milk all at once, whisking or stirring until the sauce thickens and bubbles.
10. Spoon the sauce evenly over the sausage mixture.
11. Top with the remaining cubed bread.
12. Bake uncovered for about 30 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned and the casserole is hot throughout.

Cook’s Notes

This dish can be assembled earlier in the day and baked before service. If making ahead, cover and refrigerate after assembly. Allow extra baking time if placing the dish into the oven cold.

For a firmer, more loaf-like texture, reduce the milk slightly or increase the bread by about 1/2 cup. For a richer version, use a good-quality pork sausage with enough fat to season the apples and bread.

Alternate Reconstructions

Stuffed Bread Loaf Version

Hollow out a sturdy round or oval loaf. Lightly moisten the interior with diluted vinegar, apple juice, or a mild posca-style mixture. Fill with the cooked sausage, apple, spice, and bread-bound mixture. Replace the top, press lightly, and bake until heated through. Slice to serve.

Sausage Patty Version

Combine cooked or finely chopped sausage with apple, bread crumbs, egg, vinegar, and spices. Shape into small patties and pan-fry. This moves the dish closer to oyster loaf, salmon loaf, and Roman forcemeat logic.

Coffin-Baked Version

For an experimental version, enclose the sausage mixture in a thick flour-and-water paste designed more as a baking container than a delicate edible crust. Bake until the filling is cooked through, then open the coffin and serve the contents. This version is more speculative, but it explores bread or paste as cooking technology.

Feast Service Version

Mary’s casserole remains the easiest and most reliable option for serving a crowd.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Mearh Smeamete mean?

Mearh can mean marrow or pith, but Bosworth-Toller also glosses it as sausage. Sméa-mete means a delicacy. Together, the phrase can be understood as “sausage delicacy” or “fine sausage dish.”

Is Mearh Smeamete an original Anglo-Saxon recipe?

No complete Anglo-Saxon recipe for this exact dish survives. This is a historically informed reconstruction created by Mary Savelli using Old English vocabulary, Roman culinary parallels, and evidence from Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and later medieval foodways.

Did Anglo-Saxons eat sausage?

The Old English word mearh can refer to sausage, and sausage was already an ancient method of preserving meat. Mary’s reconstruction draws on that linguistic evidence as well as Roman and later medieval traditions of minced, ground, or forced meat dishes.

Why are apples included with sausage?

Fruit with meat appears in discussions of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman foodways. Apples help balance rich pork, while vinegar sharpens the dish and warming spices add depth.

Why does the recipe include bread?

Bread and pastry appear in Roman ragouts and composed dishes as thickeners, binders, vessels, and structural ingredients. Anglo-Saxon evidence for osterhlaf, or oyster loaf, also suggests that bread-based savory preparations were part of the broader food world Mary was reconstructing from.

Why does the recipe use a milk-thickened sauce?

The sauce is a modern practical method for binding the casserole. While the exact sauce is not Anglo-Saxon, the broader principle of using binders and thickeners in composed meat dishes is well supported in Roman and later medieval cookery.

Could this be made another way?

Yes. The evidence could support a baked casserole, a stuffed bread loaf, enriched sausage patties bound with bread, or a more experimental coffin-baked version. Mary’s casserole version is especially useful for feast service because it scales well and can be made ahead.

Sources and Further Reading

• Mary Savelli, Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. Anglo-Saxon Books, 2002.
• Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, entries for mearh and sméa-mete.
• Ann Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing and Consumption. University College London, 1992.
• Thomas Oswald Cockayne, ed., Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, Vol. II.
• Bald’s Leechbook, British Library Manuscript Viewer.
• Anthimus, De Observatione Ciborum, especially De carnibus vero vaccinis: https://archive.org/details/anthinideobserva00anthuoft/page/8/mode/2up
• Apicius, Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, available through Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29728/29728-h/29728-h.htm
• Edwards, Roman Cookery of Apicius, especially the discussion of fish and forcemeat ragouts: https://archive.org/details/romancookeryofap0000apic/page/86/mode/2up
• Harleian MS 279, including later medieval English recipes such as Rapeye of Fleysshe and Doucettes.
• Liber Cure Cocorum, for later medieval English thickening and binding practices.

Final Thought: Revisiting Mearh Smeamete made me appreciate Mary Savelli’s reconstruction more, not less. I began with questions about the structure of the dish. I ended with a web of evidence: sausage, delicacy, bread as vessel, bread as binder, fruit with meat, sweet-sour-spiced flavor logic, forcemeat, thickened ragouts, later English continuity, and feast practicality. I might build the dish differently today, but Mary’s version still deserves its place at the table.

Would you serve Mearh Smeamete as a baked casserole, a stuffed bread loaf, crisp sausage patties, or a coffin-baked feast dish?

Applade Ryalle: Medieval Apple Soup from Harleian MS. 279

Originally published: October 21, 2016
Updated: May 13, 2026

.Cxxxv. Applade Ryalle — prepared in variations for flesh day, fish day, and “for need.”

One of the great joys of cooking from medieval manuscripts is discovering just how flexible historical recipes could be. Applade Ryalle, found in Harleian MS. 279 (circa 1430), begins simply enough with cooked apples strained into a smooth puree. From there, however, the recipe branches into three entirely different dishes depending upon circumstance: one for flesh days using beef broth and grease, one for fish days using almond milk and olive oil, and one “for need” using wine and honey.

What emerges is not merely a recipe, but a fascinating glimpse into medieval adaptability. The same humble apple base becomes savory, creamy, or luxurious depending on the occasion and ingredients available. It is practical cookery transformed into something unexpectedly elegant.

I made all three versions during my original experiment with this recipe, and each one produced a completely different experience. The kitchen smelled gloriously of apples, wine, cinnamon, ginger, and spice — essentially autumn in a cauldron.

Pumpion Pie (1658 & 1670) — The Earliest English Pumpkin Pie from The Compleat Cook and The Queen-Like Closet

England’s earliest spiced pumpkin pies: 1658 & 1670 English “pumpion” pies layered with apples or scented with sack and rosewater—two period versions, two modern bakes.

Pumpion Pie (1658 & 1670) — The Compleat Cook & The Queen-Like Closet

Home › Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series › Pumpion Pie (1658 & 1670)

Part of the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series — Early modern English cooks balanced spice, fruit, and rich sauces to delight feast guests. In that spirit, we imagine how 17th-century dishes—roasts, puddings, and pies—might grace today’s Thanksgiving table with historical flavor and good cheer.

A Pie of Pumpion and Apple — England’s First Pumpkin Pies

By the mid-1600s, New World “pumpions” (pumpkins) found a home in English kitchens. Two of the earliest printed examples—The Compleat Cook (1658) and Hannah Woolley’s The Queen-Like Closet (1670)—reveal different approaches: one layers herbed pumpkin fritters with sliced apples and currants, finished with a wine-egg caudle; the other stews and mashes the pumpkin, perfumes it with rosewater and sack, and glazes it with a sweet caudle. Together, they prefigure the later Anglo-American pumpkin custard pie while retaining a distinctly Restoration palate.

Historical Context: The Journey of the Pumpkin

From the New World to the Old: Pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo) are among the oldest cultivated crops in the Americas, domesticated in Mexico around 7000–5500 BCE. By the 15th century they were a staple from South America to New England. Spanish and Portuguese explorers carried seeds home in the early 1500s, where the “Indian gourd” quickly took root in Iberian and Italian gardens.

Arrival in England: The word pompion (later spelled pumpion or pumpkin) entered English by 1548, from French pompon and ultimately Latin peponem, “melon.” William Turner’s Herbal (1551–68) lists the pompion among familiar garden plants, and John Gerard’s Herbal (1597) describes “the great round pompion,” judging it “cold and moist in the second degree.” English cooks viewed it as a vegetable requiring the balancing warmth of spice, wine, and butter.

Early English Recipes: By the mid-1600s, the pumpkin had moved from curiosity to kitchen. The herbed, apple-layered pie in The Compleat Cook (1658) and Hannah Woolley’s sweeter rosewater version in The Queen-Like Closet (1670) mark its first recorded uses in English cookery. Both reflect a transitional taste—part vegetable fritter, part custard pie—infused with the season’s abundance of spice.

Across the Atlantic Again: English colonists in New England found pumpkins thriving in Indigenous fields and adopted them eagerly. By the late 17th century, colonial cooks abandoned herbs and apples for smooth spiced custards, giving rise to the pumpkin pie of early American tradition, immortalized in Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery (1796).

Date	Event	Location
~7000 BCE	Pumpkins domesticated	Mesoamerica
Early 1500s	Introduced to Europe by Spanish explorers	Iberia
1536	Described in Mattioli’s Commentarii	Italy
1548	First English record of “pompion”	England
1597	Gerard’s Herbal notes “great round pompion”	England
1658	The Compleat Cook publishes “Pumpion Pie”	London
1670	Hannah Woolley’s Queen-Like Closet	London
1796	Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery	United States

Humoral Insight: Early modern physicians classified pumpkins as “cold and moist.” Period cooks corrected this by adding warming ingredients—spice, sugar, and eggs—making dishes like pumpion pie both healthful and seasonally balanced.

Glossary: Pompion — early English spelling of pumpkin; Caudle — a warm sauce of egg yolk and wine; Verjuice — acidic juice from unripe grapes used for tartness.

Original Recipes

A. The Compleat Cook (1658)

To make a Pumpion Pie.
Take about halfe a pound of Pumpion and slice it, a handfull of Tyme, a little Rosemary, Parsley and sweet Marjoram slipped off the stalks, and chop them small, then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper, and six Cloves, and beat them; take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix them, and beat them altogether, and put in as much Sugar as you think fit, then fry them like a froiz; after it is fryed, let it stand till it be cold, then fill your Pye, take sliced Apples thinne round wayes, and lay a row of the Froiz, and a layer of Apples with Currans betwixt the layers while your Pye is fitted, and put in a good deal of sweet Butter before you close it; when the Pye is baked, take six yolks of Eggs, some white Wine or Verjuice, and make a Caudle thereof, cut up the Lid, and pour it in, then sugar it, and serve it up.

B. Hannah Woolley, The Queen-Like Closet (1670)

To make a Pumpion Pye.
Take the Pumpion, and pare it, and slice it thin, and stew it till it be tender, then mash it and season it with beaten Spice, Sugar, and Rosewater, and lay it in your Pye, and put in good store of Butter, and when it is baked, pour in a Caudle made of Eggs, Sack, and Sugar, and serve it hot.

Period Technique: A caudle is a lightly thickened sauce of wine (or sack) and egg yolks, poured into a hot pie to glaze and enrich it just before serving.

Choose Your Pie: The 1658 version is savory-sweet with herbs, apples, and currants; the 1670 version is silkier and perfumed with rosewater and sack. Both are unmistakably 17th-century.

Fridayes Pye (1615): Meatless Chard, Apple & Raisin Tart from John Murrell

A Fridayes Pye made with greens instead of beet-root

Originally published 6/23/2015. 
Updated: October 20, 2025 – expanded with historical context on fish days, greens vs. root beet.

During research for large, serve-warm-or-room-temp banquet dishes, I fell in love with this meatless tart from John Murrell’s A New Booke of Cookerie (London, 1615). It’s a savory-sweet “Friday” pie—perfect for fast days—combining beet greens (i.e., chard) with apples, raisins, ginger, and a squeeze of orange.

Why “Fridayes” Pye?

In early modern England, Friday was on of the traditional "fish days" or fasting days required by the Church — meaning no flesh meat (beef, pork, lamb, etc.) could be eaten. This custom was rooted in Catholic tradition and continued well into the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, even after England’s break from Rome. 

By the early 1600s, when John Murrell published A New Booke of Cookerie (1615), the observance of Friday and Lent fasts was still common across all social classes. Cooks compiled specific “Friday” or “Fish Day” sections in their books, filled with meatless dishes made from: 

• Fish, eggs, dairy, and vegetables 
• Pastries and pies enriched with fruit and spice instead of meat 
• Almond milk, butter, and oil as substitutes for animal fats 

So when Murrell labels this as a “Fridayes Pye,” he’s signaling that the recipe is appropriate for a fast day: 

• It’s meatless, using greens, fruit, butter, and spice instead of animal flesh. 
• It fits the pattern of “Lenten pies” — dishes made for observant days that were still elegant and flavorful. 
• The ingredients (greens, raisins, orange) reflect the seasonal spring diet tied to Lent and Easter preparation.

Fish Days and Fast-Day Cookery

In early modern England, “Friday” dishes like this one belonged to the long tradition of fish days—weekly abstinences from flesh meat inherited from the medieval Church. After the Reformation these customs never disappeared; instead, Elizabeth I and her Parliament re-cast them as patriotic observances that protected England’s fishing trade. On a fish day, cooks avoided beef, pork, or fowl but freely used fish, eggs, cheese, and butter. Only during the stricter Lenten fast were all animal products forbidden, replaced by almond milk or oil. Thus Murrell’s “Fridayes Pye,” rich with greens, fruit, and spice but still containing butter, fits the ordinary fish-day table perfectly—pious enough for Friday, but indulgent compared with true Lenten fare.

Historical note: The 1563 “Act for the Maintenance of the Navy” mandated regular fish days not for religion but to sustain England’s maritime economy. Observing fish days kept demand for sea-fish steady, ensuring a ready navy in wartime. Religious habit thus became state policy—a rare case where piety and politics shared the same table.

📌 Beet “greens,” not beet-root: In 16th–17th-c. English sources, “beetes” often means the leaf (chard). The line “picke out the middle string, and chop them small” points to de-ribbing greens. You can still make a beet-root version, but the period default is chard.

Why Greens, Not Roots?

When early English cooks wrote of “beetes,” they almost always meant the leaves—what we now call Swiss chard or leaf beet. The swollen red root beet familiar today was a later development. Medieval and early-modern gardeners grew white and red beetes mainly for their greens, prized for winter hardiness and gentle sweetness. Continental varieties that emphasized the root (the forerunners of today’s beetroot) reached England in the later 17th century and did not become common until the Georgian period.

John Murrell’s instruction to “picke out the middle string, and chop them small” clearly describes de-ribbing leaves rather than peeling roots. In humoral terms, greens were considered more cool and moist, balancing the hot and dry spices like ginger and pepper—making this dish suitable for Friday fasts and Lenten abstinence alike.

Fun fact: The modern bulbous beet descended from chard-like ancestors. 18th-century breeders selected for thicker roots, giving rise to the sugar beet and the deep red garden beet we know today.

Original Recipe (1615)

Fridayes Pye. WAsh greene Beetes cleane, picke out the middle string, and chop them small with two or three well relisht ripe Apples. Season it with Pepper, Salt, and Ginger: then take a good handfull of Razins of the Sunne, and put all in a Coffin of fine Paste, with a piece of sweet Butter and so bake it: but before you serue it in, cut it vp, and wring in the iuyce of an Orenge, and Sugar.

— John Murrell, A New Booke of Cookerie, 1615; ed. T. Gloning

Medieval Rapeye (Harleian MS. 279) — Apple, Date & Almond Pudding Recipe

Harleian MS. 279 (ab 1430) — .Liiij. Rapeye — Date & Apple Pudding

Rapeye (Harleian MS. 279, c.1430) — Apple, Date & Almond “Pudding”

Originally published 3/26/2017 / Updated 10/1/2025

What is “Rapeye”?

The name can sound jarring to modern ears, but in Middle English it had an entirely different meaning. You’ll find it spelled rapeye, rapy, rape, or rapé across manuscripts like Harleian MS. 279, Forme of Cury, Liber cure cocorum, and A Noble Boke off Cookry. The most likely origin is the Old French rapé (“grated” or “rasped”), from the verb raper (“to grate, scrape”). This makes sense: most recipes called for grated or pounded dried fruit, thickened with rice flour or bread.

In practice, Rapeye could mean either a sauce or a fruit paste/pudding. Some versions are clearly sauces for meat or fish; others, like this one, stand as thick fruit dishes in their own right. The Forme of Cury has a “Rape” made of figs and raisins strained with wine; the Liber cure cocorum “Rape” is a raisin sauce sharpened with vinegar. Our apple–date Rapeye is more of a spoon dish or pudding, but the common thread is fruit grated or mashed, spiced, sweetened, and thickened until “chargeaunt” (stout or substantial).

Parallels exist in other European traditions: Latin glossaries sometimes link rapa (turnip) to grated preparations; Italian rappigliare means “to curdle or thicken.” While etymologies vary, the consensus is that Rapeye signified a grated fruit preparation that could flex between sauce, sweetmeat, or pudding depending on context.

Rapeye shows up multiple times in fifteenth-century English cookbooks and seems to be a flexible category—sometimes a sauce, sometimes a fruit paste, sometimes (like this one) a spoonable “pudding.” In Harleian MS. 279 the fourth Rapeye (.Liiij.) combines almond milk with minced dates and raw apples, thickened with rice flour and perfumed with ginger, cinnamon, maces, cloves, sugar, and a touch of saffron or sanders (sandalwood) for color. It’s comforting, gently spiced, and—per my taste testers—popular even with folks who “don’t like dates.”

Original Recipe & Translation

Middle English (Austin, UMich)

.Liiij. Rapeye.—Take almaundys, an draw a gode mylke þer-of, and take Datys an mynce hem smal, an put þer-on y-now; take Raw Appelys, an pare hem and stampe hem, an drawe hem vppe with wyne, or with draf of Almaundys, or boþe; þan caste pouder of Gyngere, Canel, Maces, Clowes, & caste þer-on Sugre y-now; þan take a quantyte of flowre of Rys, an þrowe þer-on, & make it chargeaunt, an coloure it wyth Safroun, an with Saunderys, an serue forth; an strawe Canel a-boue.

Modern-English 

Make a good almond milk. Mince dates finely and add plenty to the milk. Peel raw apples, pound them, and strain with wine or with the almond “draff” (the pressed solids), or both. Add ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves, and enough sugar. Sprinkle in rice flour to thicken (make it chargeant), and color with saffron and sandalwood. Serve, strewing cinnamon on top.

Seasonal Note: With apples at their peak in autumn and the warming spices of ginger, cinnamon, mace, and cloves, this Rapeye fits naturally into a fall table. In the medieval calendar, it would have been equally at home during cooler seasons and fasting days when almond milk stood in for dairy. Today, it makes a wonderful harvest-time pudding.

Menu Placement

• Fish/fasting days (Lent-friendly): Made with almond milk (no dairy), fruit, rice flour, and spices—ideal as a pottage or spoon course.
• Entremet / Subtle “pudding”: Served warm and “standing thick,” dusted with cinnamon—works between savory courses or as a gentle sweet near the end.
• Breakfast tavern / camping: Holds well and reheats; can be made ahead and served warm or room temperature.

Humoral Notes

Medieval diners balanced dishes by qualities (hot/cold, dry/moist). Almonds were often classed as warming & drying; dates generally warming & moistening; apples tending cooling & drying. The spicing (ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves) nudges the dish warmer; almond milk and gentle cooking temper dryness; rice flour adds drying/“binding.” Likely seen as moderately warm and tending moist—comfortable fare for cooler seasons.

See also: Rapeye of Fleysshe and Rapeye (.Liij.).

Dry Peaches and Red Quince Paste served at Curia Regis (9/10/2017)

To Dry Peaches – 17th-Century Fruit Paste (Hannah Wolley, 1670)

Originally published 9/16/17. Updated 9/19/2025.

Golden peach pastes adapted from Hannah Wolley’s Queen-Like Closet (1670): jewel-bright confections, oven or dehydrator friendly, ideal for SCA feasts.

This sweet preserve comes from The Queen-Like Closet (1670), a cookbook and household guide by Hannah Wolley. While late for the SCA timeline, her preserving methods represent skills widely practiced in the 16th and 17th centuries—perfectly in line with late-period banquet fare.

About Hannah Wolley

Hannah Wolley (1622–c.1674) was among the first Englishwomen to make a career from writing. She was the first to publish cookery books under her own name, the first to openly market them to servants and housewives as well as the gentry, and one of the earliest women in England to claim authorship professionally. Her career began with The Ladies Directory (1661) and The Cook’s Guide (1664), before culminating in The Queen-Like Closet (1670). The latter went through multiple editions, was translated into German, and became her best-known work. She blended recipes for food, preserves, and medicines, establishing herself as the “Martha Stewart” of her day.

What Kind of Peaches?

In 17th-century England, peaches were a luxury fruit, grown in walled gardens or imported at high cost. Period peaches were closer to older European cultivars: smaller, firmer, often slightly tart, and prized for their fragrance. They were valued in preserves where structure and color mattered as much as flavor.

• Period style: Older white-fleshed clingstone peaches (smaller, firmer).
• Modern substitutes: White peaches (delicate, aromatic), yellow peaches (bright amber color), or apricots (documented in the original recipes).
• Practical feast kitchen: Frozen peaches or reconstituted dried apricots work beautifully when fresh fruit is out of season.

Sources in Period

CCXV. To dry Apricocks. Take your fairest Apricocks and stone them... boil them till they are clear... lay them out upon Glasses to dry in a stove, and turn them twice a day.

CCI. To dry Apricocks or Pippins to look as clear as Amber. Take Apricocks... set them into a warm Oven... every day turn them till they be quite dry. Thus you may dry any sort of Plumbs or Pears as well as the other, and they will look very clear.

—Hannah Wolley, The Queen-Like Closet (1670)

Editor’s Note: Although Hannah Wolley’s Queen-Like Closet (1670) is technically outside the SCA’s 1600 cut-off, the method of drying fruits with sugar syrup was already well established centuries earlier. Wolley’s text preserves a technique that was in active use during the medieval and Renaissance periods, even if not written down until her time.

• 14th century – Forme of Cury (c.1390): preserves and sugared fruits appear.
• 15th century – Harleian MS. 279 (c.1430): recipes for fruit pastes and conserves.
• 16th century – Platina and Scappi describe sugared fruits, marmalades, and pastes on elite banquet tables.
• 17th century – Hannah Wolley records these long-standing practices in print (1670).

This timeline shows that while Wolley’s printed version is late, the preservation technique itself is “in period” and entirely appropriate for SCA feasts.

Menu Placement

Dried fruits and fruit pastes were served as part of the banquet course—the sweets and subtlety table that followed the main meal. They also travel well, making them practical for camping feasts today.

Humoral Notes

According to humoral theory, peaches were considered cold & moist. Drying them and cooking them with sugar shifted them toward balance, making them more wholesome. Serving them with warming spices like cinnamon or ginger further balanced their nature.

Apple & Blackberry Tartlets – Hobbit-Inspired Dessert

Apple & Blackberry Tartlets

“I could eat anything in the wide world now… but not an apple!” — Fili

Rustic tartlets brimming with orchard apples and hedgerow blackberries, glossed with a spoon of jam. They’re simple, juicy, and very Shire-coded.

Kitchen Adventures – Apples (Quince) stewed with pine nuts, rosewater and sugar - Chiquart / Domenico ((Italian) Mele cotogne, stufate pignoli con acqua rosa, & zuccaro)

 

Per fare la pizza di molti strati, comunemente freddi pasta secca a strati- To make pizza of many layers, commonly called a cold dry layered pastry. - Scappi & Mele cotogne, stufate pignoli con acqua rosa, & zuccaro - Apples (Quince) stewed with pine nuts, rosewater and sugar - Chiquart / Domenico prepared to be served.



Researching medieval cuisine is like stepping into a time machine. By reviving these historic recipes, we unearth culinary traditions that continue to surprise and inspire us today. One dish that stands out is Mele Cotogne, Stufate Pignoli con Acqua Rosa e Zuccaro—a unique blend of stewed Quince with pine nuts, rosewater, and sugar. This dish is mentioned in many of the menus provided by M. Domenico, yet it seems to have slipped through the cracks without specific written instructions.

Naturally, I had to take on the challenge to recreate this intriguing sounding dish which was prepared for our Baronial 12th Night Celebration in 2024. As mentioned in previous posts, the menu for the event was drawn from M. Domenico's "Singular Doctrine", and more specifically his "Banquet of the Month of January. I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed researching and then recreating dishes that woul dhave been enjoyed during this time.

The Singular Doctrine of M. Domenico is a 16th-century Italian culinary text that presents elaborate monthly menus, daily meal plans for morning and evening, a listing of common foods of the time, and instructions on the best ways to prepare them. However, while the text includes detailed menu listings, many of the actual recipes are absent. One such example is Mele Cotogne, Stufate Pignoli con Acqua Rosa, & Zuccaro, which appears in numerous menus but is never explicitly written out. The omission of these instructions suggests that certain preparations were considered basic knowledge among cooks of the period. This absence hints that stewed quince was a well-established culinary staple, so familiar that formal documentation of its preparation was deemed unnecessary.

To bring this dish back to life, I turned to a similar medieval recipe—Chiquart's Spiced Apples and Pears from On Cookery (1420). Chiquart was a 15th-century master cook who served at the court of Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy. He is best known for his work Du fait de cuisine (On Cookery), written in 1420, which provides one of the most detailed accounts of medieval European culinary practices. His text includes elaborate feast preparations, ingredient lists, and cooking techniques, offering insight into the refined and sometimes extravagant cuisine of noble households. His emphasis on spice blends, slow-cooked fruits, and carefully balanced flavors makes his work a valuable resource for understanding medieval gastronomy. His approach is an exemplary foundation for reviving Mele Cotogne, Stufate Pignoli con Acqua Rosa e Zuccaro. 

Recipe: Mele Cotogne, Stufate Pignoli con Acqua Rosa e Zuccaro Serves 4 to 8 

Ingredients

2 tbsp. butter

4 tart green apples / or quinces

4 tsp. sugar 

2 tsp. pine nuts

2 tsp. raisins

1/4 cup quince preserves 

1 tsp. Duke's Powder, or Apple or Pumpking Pie spices

Instructions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Butter a baking dish that is large enough to hold your apples (or quinces). Cut your quinces or apples in half, and remove the core.  The opening should be approximately 1 inch wide. 

2. Mix pine nuts with the spices.  Spoon sugar, pine nuts and raisins into each hole filling the apple or quince, and top with a bit more butter.  Pour water or wine into the bottom of the baking dish.  Sprinkle around any additional sugar, spices around the fruit.  If using apples, supplement with a generous helping of the quince preserves. 

3. Bake the fruit until the fruit is easily pierced by a knife approximately 45 minutes.  Sprinkle with rosewater. 

Please Note: This dish can be served warm or room temperature. If made ahead, it will need to be heated enough to melt the butter. Also note, pine nuts can be toasted before being mixed with the spices, but I chose not to do this. 

Results: 

I made this dish using apples because I was unable to locate quinces at the time.  You could also substitute pears, or a mix of apples and pears.  This dish is magical!  Fragrant of roses, apples, quince, the warm spices, sweet from the sugar, and crunchy from the pine nuts.  Using quince jelly when no quince are available enhances the apples natural tartness, while incorporating the period flavor that the original recipe calls for.  If you wish to, use a sweet Italian dessert wine instead of water to further enhance the dish.  

Sources: 

Friedman, David D., translator. Du fait de cuisine. 15th century. The David D. Friedman Medieval and Renaissance Cookbook Collection, www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Du_Fait_de_Cuisine/Du_fait_de_Cuisine.html. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.

Romo, Domenico. La Singolare Dottrina Di M. Domenico Romano: Trattato di cucina del '500. 1st ed., 2002. Google Books, books.google.com/books/about/La_Singolare_Dottrina_Di_M_Domenico_Romo.html?hl=it&id=FGFWAAAAcAAJ. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.

🦚 Curious about the full feast?
Explore the complete menu from the Flaming Gryphon 12th Night Feast 2024 to see all the dishes and historical inspirations behind this event.

Kitchen Adventures – 17th Century Dessert (Spanish Wedges)

Spanish Candy Wedges from A Book of Fruits and Flowers, 1653

Originally published:  Jul 2, 2022

https://giveitforth.wixsite.com/giveitforth/post/medieval-desserts-spanish-wedges

To Preserve all kinde of Flowers in the Spanish Candy in Wedges.

Take Violets, Cowslips, or any other kinde of Flowers, pick them, and temper them with the pap of two roasted Apples, and a drop or two of Verjuice, and a graine of Muske, then take halfe a pound of fine hard Sugar, boyle it to the height of Manus Christi, then mix them together, and pour it on a wet Pye plate, then cut it it in Wedges before it be through cold, gild it, and so you may box it, and keep it all the year. It is a fine sort of Banquetting stuffe, and newly used, your Manus Christi must boyle a good while and be kept with good stirring.

Download Recipe Here

Ingredients

2 apples (I used granny smith)
1-2 drops white wine vinegar (to replace verjuice)
1 grain of musk *opt.
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup water
Pinch of dried edible flowers

Directions

1. Peel and core your apples, cut into wedges, and roast in a 400-degree oven for approximately 20 minutes, or until apples have started to brown.

2. While apples are roasting bring your sugar and water and boil it until it reaches 245 degrees.

3. Add sugar syrup, roasted apples, white wine vinegar, or verjuice to a blender and blend until smooth. Opt. Add a drop or two of food-grade musk flavoring at this point.

4. Prepare a mold by spraying it with a little bit of oil and lining it with parchment paper.

5. Sprinkle flowers on the bottom of the tin, add the apple mixture. Be sure to sprinkle more flowers on top.

6. Allow drying until no longer sticky to the touch, cut as desired.When completely dry this candy has the texture of maple sugar candy, otherwise, it is very similar to fruit leather. Store in air tight container

NOTES:

There are two different ways this recipe can be read. The first is the method that I used where the pureed apple is added to the boiled sugar syrup and allowed to dry. The second is that the pureed apple is added to the sugar and water and that mixture is then brought to a boil before being poured into your mold.

It took several days for this beauty to dry completely. When it had dried became a crystalized sugar candy. I did allow it to dry overnight in the oven before removing it from the mold. I veered from the recipe by using a 6" tart pan instead of an 8" pie pan, and I believe this made the candy thicker than originally intended.

I also believe that this very thick candy should have been allowed to dry two or three days before I removed it from the mold and cut it into wedges. The thing that I would do differently in the future would be to make a thinner candy by using a larger plate.

I believe this is a very luxurious treat, that would enhance any dessert course at an event. The taste is a very sweet apple, with just a touch of floral note at the end of the bite. I cut this 6" tart-shaped treat into 12 wedges and I would not want to make it any bigger. At this size, it creates a two to three-bite candy.

TOA Documentation

Source

"The Project Gutenberg Ebook Of A Book Of Fruits And Flowers". Gutenberg.Org, 2022, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13265/13265-h/13265-h.htm?fbclid=IwAR1UD2bx6I7bO97kplgubSC10fQE05PsXq0GMT8gFpH9C-xvmtRwouCh_x8.

Kitchen Adventures – A Trio of Tarts - Apple, Peach & Grape & Raisin (Medieval Dessert)

Precedella surrounded by Roasted Apple Tarts

"I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream."

--Mark Twain

What is a tart?

A tart is a pastry that is filled with a savory or sweet filling that has an open top, unlike a pie that can be enclosed.

When does the term "tart" first make an appearance?

According to the food history timeline tarts and tartlets are first mentioned in the "Forme of Cury" and refer to both sweet and savory items.

What about pies?

According to the food history timeline, the first recorded use of the word "pie" was in 1303.

Why call it a tart?

The Online Etymological dictionary believes that the word tart referencing a "small pie," can be traced to the late 14c., from Old French tarte "flat, open-topped pastry" (13c.), possibly an alteration of torte, from Late Latin torta "round loaf of bread"

Where do you find inspiration?

Sometimes I find something I want to do, for example, a menu, or a recipe that would be interesting to recreate. At other times, I might find disparate recipes that "fit the pattern" of a period menu. There is also my research into Harl MS 279.

In this case, it was a couple of snippets from Le Menagier de Paris (Platter: Grapes and peaches in little pies.) that sparked the imagination. That snippet led me to research further into his menus and I found this:

For dessert: compete, with red and white sugared almonds placed on top: rissoles, flans, figs, dates, grapes, nuts

The Grape and Peach tarts were served as part of the vigil for Fiadnata, and the roasted apple tarts were served at Appolonia's vigil.

I also like to look for unusual recipes when I am researching a menu, and these three stood out to me for different reasons. The method of roasting the apples for the apple tart. The similarity between how to make the peach and the grape and raisin tarts, and lastly, the unusual ingredients in the grape and raisin tart.

Do you make your own pie/tart shells?

I have to put the caveat here that no, I do not. I purchase the store brand double crust pie dough, bring it to room temperature, flour it, and roll it out with a rolling pin so that it is slightly larger and thinner. I also use the top of a wide-mouth mason jar (4 or 16 ounces, I'm not picky) as my template. Done correctly, I can get between 12 and 14 tart shells from one pie crust, and 24 to 28 for a double, which saves me the bother of making my own! Knowing this, when I plan for a feast, I know that I can fill three tables with one double-crust store-brand pie shell. Which I believe makes me a cleverly lazy cook ;-)

Original Recipe - Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin (1553)

Ain gúten dorten von braten epffel zú machen

Schellen die epffel vnnd schneiden die jn 4 stúck, schneiden

den bútzen heraús vnnd thents darnach jn ain haffen,

der oben woll zúdeckt sey, vnd lands jn ainem haffen demfen,

doch das man offt darzúlúog, das sý nit verbrinnen, darnach

so streichs aúff den boden, der aús schenem mell gemacht

seý, vnnd thent ain halb pfúnd zúcker, ain lot zimerrerlach

daran, klaingestossen.

Translation

125 To make a good tart with roasted apples. Peel the apples and cut them into four pieces, cut out the cores, and put them in pot, which should be well covered, and let them stew in the pot. One should watch them frequently, so that they do not scorch. Afterwards spread them on the pastry shell, which should be made of good flour, and put a half pound of sugar and a half ounce of finely ground cinnamon therein.
Glossary

• Epffel: Apples
• Schneiden: Cut
• Bútzen: Cores
• Haffen: Pot
• Demfen: Stew
• Zúcker: Sugar
• Zimerrerlach: Cinnamon

Ingredients

1 9" pie crust of your choice

2-3 apples, peeled, cut in quarters, and cored

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 tsp cinnamon

** Couple of tablespoons of water

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Add your apples to your pot. I like to use a combination of apples in my pies. For example, this pie was made with opal and a green apple. I did add a little bit of water to the pot, covered it with a lid, and cooked the apples until they were soft enough to mush.
3. The apples will release liquid as they cook. Add the sugar and the cinnamon to the apples once they are cooked enough and stir through.
4. Allow the apple mixture to cool. While the apples are cooling, ready your tart shells. I prefer a rustic look so I fold the dough over the filling instead of putting the tarts into a pan.
5. Add the apple filling to the tart shells a teaspoon at a time. Bake your tarts at 400 degrees until they start to turn golden.

Original Recipe - Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin (1553)

Wiltú ain weinpertorten machen

Nim die weinber vnnd die ziwiben aúch darúnder/ nims

also gantz, thúo zúcker daran vnnd zimerrerlach vnnd

schwings woll vmb vnnd thúo es aúf ain bedellin/ laß ain

klain weil bachen/ darnach thúo ain wenig ain malúasier

daran vnnd lasß noch ain weil bachen, so ist es gemacht, wan

dú die weinber jn torten thon wilt, so thús for jn ain pfannenn

vnnd thúo nichts daran, weder wein noch wasser, vnnd

rest sý woll darin herúmber, so geschwelens fein aúff, darnach

thús erst jn torten, wie dú sý haben wilt.

Translation

93 If you would make a grapetart. Take the grapes, with raisins mixed among them. Take them whole, put sugar thereon and cinnamon and shake it well together and put it on a pastry shell. Let it bake a little while. Then put some Malavosia (white wine) thereon and let it bake a while longer, then it is ready. When you put the grapes on the tart, then put them beforehand in a pan and put nothing in it, neither wine nor water, and fry them, stirring them all around well therein, then they will swell up nicely. Only after that put them in the tart, as you would have it.
Glossary

• Weinber: Grapes
• Ziwiben: Raisins
• Zúcker: Sugar
• Zimerrerlach: Cinnamon
• Malúasier: Malavosia (white wine)
• Bedellin: Pastry shell
• Pfannenn: Pan

Ingredients

2 cups grapes, washed, cleaned, and picked from the stem (I used the gum drop grapes)

1 cup raisins

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup red wine

1 tsp. cinnamon

**a couple of finely chopped orange peels per cook's prerogative

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Place grapes in a pot and heat, keeping an eye on them so that they do not burn, or burst. Cook them for approximately 5 -7 minutes. They will swell up and become *very* fragrant.
3. Add the raisins to the grapes along with the wine and cinnamon. Cook until most of the wine has been absorbed by the raisins. As an alternative, you could soak the raisins in the wine overnight, and then cook off the alcohol after adding the raisins to the grapes.
4. Proceed as above.

Original Recipe - The Good Housewife's Jewell, (England, 1596)

To make all maner of fruit Tarte. You must boyle your fruite, whether it be apple, cherrie, peach, damson, peare, Mulberie, or codling, in faire water, and when they be boyled inough, put them into a bowle, and bruse them with a Ladle, and when they be colde, straine them, and put in red wine or Claret wine, and so season it with suger, sinamon and ginger. Translation

To make all manner of fruit tart:

Boil your choice of fruit, such as apple, cherry, peach, damson, pear, mulberry, or codling, in fair water. When they are boiled enough, transfer them to a bowl and crush them with a ladle. Once they have cooled down, strain the fruit mixture. Add red wine or Claret wine to the strained fruit mixture, and season it with sugar, cinnamon, and ginger.

Glossary:

Fruite: Fruit
Boyle: Boil
Cherrie: Cherry
Damson: Damson plum
Peare: Pear
Mulberie: Mulberry
Codling: Type of apple
Faire water: Clean water
Bowle: Bowl
Bruse: Crush
Ladle: Spoon with a long handle for serving or stirring
Colde: Cold
Straine: Strain
Red wine: Red wine
Claret wine: Dry red wine
Suger: Sugar
Sinamon: Cinnamon
Ginger: Ginger

Ingredients

5-6 peaches

1/4 cup red wine

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ginger

1/4 tsp. salt

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. Peel, core, and quarter your peaches and place them in a pot with the red wine and cook until your peaches have softened and are starting to fall apart.
3. Add the sugar, and the spices and cook a few minutes more until the sugar has melted and the mixture begins to thicken.
4. Proceed as above, filling your pie or tart shells and cooking until the shells begin to turn lightly brown.

Thoughts

The tart fillings can be made in advance and frozen. This allowed me to have these fillings readily available when I needed them, and to make them when the fruit was at its peak and least expensive. They make excellent offerings for day-boards, and vigils and to serve at the end of a meal. Additionally, they are modern enough in taste that many diners are surprised to discover the origins are from the mid to late 1500s. I have brought them to pot lucks at work and there have been no leftovers!

Sources

"Das Kochbuch Der Sabina Welserin (C. 1553)". Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, 2022, https://www.uni-giessen.de/fbz/fb05/germanistik/absprache/sprachverwendung/gloning/tx/sawe.htm. Accessed 18 Oct 2022.

Medievalcookery.Com, 2022, https://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/ghj1596.txt. Accessed 18 Oct 2022.

"Tart | Search Online Etymology Dictionary". Etymonline.Com, 2022, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=tart. Accessed 18 Oct 2022.

Food Timeline FAQs: pie & pastry. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpies.html#tarts> [Accessed 18 October 2022].