Auter Brawn en Peuerade | Medieval Pork Pottage with Pepper Sauce (Harleian MS 279)

Auter Brawn en Peuerade, a medieval pork pottage with pepper sauce from Harleian MS 279.

Originally published March 14, 2016. Updated June 24, 2026 with expanded historical notes, feast placement discussion, color theory context, internal links, and a copy-friendly modern reconstruction.

Auter Brawn en Peuerade, or "another brawn in pepper sauce," is a fifteenth-century English pork pottage from Harleian MS 279. It combines pork, onions, broth, wine, vinegar, pepper, saffron, and warming spices into a richly colored dish that sits somewhere between a stew, a sauce, and a medieval pottage.

This recipe is especially useful because it appears alongside another version of Brawn en Peuerade. The earlier version is based more heavily on wine, while this "auter" version begins with a strong broth of beef or capon. Together, the two recipes show how medieval cooks could adapt the same flavor family to different ingredients, textures, and service styles.

Gelyne in Dubbatte: Medieval Chicken in Wine Sauce | Harleian MS 279 (c.1430)

Originally published January 23, 2016. Updated June 23, 2026.

This post has been updated as part of the 2026 Give It Forth recipe glow-up project, with expanded historical notes, revised feast placement discussion, improved formatting, internal links, and modern reconstruction guidance. AI-assisted editing was used for organization and clarity.

Gelyne in Dubatte, a medieval chicken dish finished in wine, broth, spices, vinegar, and bread-thickened sauce.

Some medieval recipes look simple at first glance, then open like a trapdoor into a much larger kitchen. Gelyne in Dubatte, from Harleian MS 279, is one of those dishes.

At its most basic, this is chicken cooked in broth, wine, spices, vinegar, and bread. Yet the recipe sits at the crossroads of roast meat, pottage, and sauce-making. The chicken is first roasted almost done, then cut into pieces and finished in a seasoned liquid thickened with bread. The result may be served as a brothy pottage, a spoonable stew, or a richer sauced dish laid over sops of bread.

When I first interpreted this recipe in 2016, I leaned toward a brothier version. Revisiting the title, manuscript placement, and Thomas Austin's glossary has made me appreciate how flexible this dish may have been. The sauce is not an afterthought. It may be the heart of the recipe.

Caules Wyrtmete: Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Cabbage Salad from Medical Texts

Originally served at Ceilidh XVI on March 29, 2003. Updated and expanded with additional historical research in 2026.

Caules Wyrtmete: Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Cabbage Salad from Medical Texts

When I reconstructed the menu for Ceilidh XVI in 2003, one of the simplest dishes on the table was a cabbage salad called Caules Wyrtmete. Made with cabbage, peas, leeks, vinegar, oil, and cheese, it seemed a practical addition to an Anglo-Saxon feast. Yet revisiting the sources revealed something far more interesting: the strongest evidence for this dish was not a cookbook, but a medical manuscript.

Rather than a direct copy of a surviving Anglo-Saxon recipe, Caules Wyrtmete explores the space where food, medicine, garden produce, and feast reconstruction meet. The result is a dish that asks one of the most interesting questions in historical cookery: can a feast dish be responsibly reconstructed from a remedy?

What began as a simple cabbage salad eventually led through Anglo-Saxon medicine, Roman dietary theory, and a remedy for dysentery preserved in one of England's most important medical manuscripts. The deeper the investigation went, the less the dish resembled a salad at all.