Basic Recipe – Kaku-Mochi (Traditional Japanese Square Rice Cake)

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Traditional Kaku-Mochi being kneaded and cut into squares on a wooden board

Traditional Kaku-Mochi – glutinous rice kneaded and cut into squares.
Image generated by ChatGPT (© 2025, used with permission).

Basic Recipe – Kaku-Mochi (Traditional Japanese Square Rice Cake)

Context: Kaku-Mochi, or square rice cakes, form the heart of O-zoni (Rice Cake Soup), served at the 2019 Crown Tournament Feast. These rice cakes were a symbol of prosperity and endurance, reflecting both samurai field traditions and the ritual importance of rice in Muromachi-period Japan.

Basic Recipe – Vegetarian Dashi (Kombu–Shiitake Stock)

Ingredients for vegetarian dashi: kombu, shiitake mushrooms, and clear golden broth

Ingredients for Vegetarian Dashi – kombu, shiitake mushrooms, and a clear golden broth.
Image generated by ChatGPT (© 2025, used with permission).

Context: This vegetarian dashi forms the foundation for many dishes in the Muromachi-period Crown Tournament Feast, including O-zoni (Rice Cake Soup). Dashi is the clear stock that underpins nearly every element of honzen ryori dining — simple, elegant, and full of umami.

O-zoni (rice cake soup) from the Crown Tournament 2019 feast

O-zoni – Rice Cake and Simmered Vegetables with Fish-Paste Cake
Photo: Avelyn Grene (Kristen Lynn)

Originally published 1/29/2020 Updated 11/6/2025

Kitchen Adventures – Crown Tournament 10/19/2019: O-zoni (Rice Cake Soup)

Context: In Muromachi-period formal dining (honzen ryori), o-zoni is a welcoming soup — a composed bowl of mochi (rice cake), seasonal vegetables, and savory elements in a clear broth. The feast version here uses square kaku-mochi in vegetarian kombu-shiitake dashi so more diners could enjoy it. Regional variations exist, but rice cake is essential.

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Weekend Spotlight

Weekend Spotlight: Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Feast (2003–2026)

This summer, we're revisiting one of the oldest projects in the Give It Forth archive: Ceilidh XVI, an Anglo-Saxon-inspired feast first prepared in 2003 and originally influenced by Mary Savelli's Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England.

More than twenty years later, our understanding of Anglo-Saxon foodways has grown considerably. What began as a feast recreation has become an opportunity to revisit each dish, reexamine the sources, and explore what current research can tell us about early medieval cooking.

The menu includes:

Mearh Smeamete – Sausage Casserole
Hlaf – Bread
Æppla Syfling – Apple Butter
Caules Wyrtmete – Cabbage Salad
Hriðer Smeamete – Stewed Beef
Beren Briw – Barley Polenta
Hunigbæe Moran – Honeyed Carrots
Sciellfisc – Shellfish*
Brǣdan Fisc – Fish Baked with Coriander
Pisan – Peas with Salt and Oil*
Sumerlio Mearhgehæcc – Summer Pudding***
Hunigæppel – Honey Nut Cakes

Recent research has already revisited Æppla Syfling and Mearh Smeamete, and additional dishes will continue to be explored as the project develops. Some recipes remain remarkably strong. Others reveal just how much historical food research has evolved over the past two decades.

This project isn't simply about recreating a feast. It's about understanding how we interpret the past, how historical cooking scholarship changes over time, and what those changes can teach us about Anglo-Saxon food culture. Many of the measurements, ingredient references, and kitchen techniques used throughout this series are also collected in The Historical Kitchen, our growing library of historical cooking reference guides and interactive tools.

→ Visit the Anglo-Saxon Feast Research Hub

→ Explore The Historical Kitchen

Browse Recipes

Explore historical dishes by feast course, ingredient, era, manuscript, and culinary tradition.

🏰 A Living Historical Kitchen
Give it Forth is continually updated as older recipes are retested, translated, reorganized, and expanded with historical context. You may occasionally notice new labels, revised categories, or updated pages as the archive grows.

Welcome to Give it Forth — a project devoted to reviving historical recipes and making them practical, accessible, and enjoyable for the modern kitchen.

Whether you're a reenactor, educator, feast cook, food historian, gardener, or simply curious about historic foodways, here are a few places to begin:

🍽 Feast Menus & Dayboards – Explore historical feast menus, event food, and dayboards.
📜 Harl. MS 279 – Dive into one of medieval England’s most fascinating recipe manuscripts.
🌿 Historical Herbal & Culinary Resources – Explore herbs, stillroom traditions, flower cookery, historical gardening, and culinary research sources.
🧂 Cooking Basics – Learn historical ingredients, spices, kitchen tools, and methods.

🍽 Browse the Feast Courses

Learn how historical meals were structured and explore dishes by course.

✨ Special Topics & Historic Curiosities

Comfits – Sugar-coated spices served as digestive aids and banquet sweets
Gilding – Adding shimmer, gold, and spectacle to historic food
Edible Art & Subtleties – Illusion foods, sugarwork, and feast theatrics
Jellies & Gelatin – Molded dishes, aspics, and Renaissance showpieces

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Looking for something specific? Browse recipes by feast course, dish type, ingredient, era, use, and dietary notes.

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