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.
