Arbolettys: Medieval Cheese, Egg & Herb Pottage from Harleian MS 279 (c. 1430)

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Arbolettys: Medieval Cheese, Egg & Herb Pottage from Harleian MS 279

Arbolettys reconstructed from Harleian MS 279. Original 2016 kitchen photograph retained.

Some recipes announce themselves as winter comfort food the moment you read them. Arbolettys is one of those dishes. Milk, butter, cheese, eggs, parsley, sage, ginger, and galingale do not sound like hardship food. They sound warm, rich, savory, and deeply soothing.

I first made this recipe in 2016 on a cold, gray day and described it as a cheese soup. That interpretation produced a delicious dish and earned enthusiastic approval from the taste testers. Returning to the source now, I still think the old experiment was onto something—but I would name it differently. Arbolettys is best understood as a soft, spoonable cheese, egg, and herb pottage, somewhere between a savory custard and a very thick soup.

The reason this matters is simple: this recipe is often interpreted online as a kind of scrambled egg dish. Yet the manuscript tells the cook to boil milk, butter, and cheese together first, then add eggs, herbs, and spices, and finally serve it forth. It never tells the cook to fry, bake, or dry the eggs into curds. That makes a soft pottage-style reconstruction more defensible than I realized when I first wrote about it.

Why You Will Love This Recipe

• It is simple, fast, and genuinely comforting.
• The manuscript ingredient list is short and vivid: milk, butter, cheese, eggs, parsley, sage, ginger, and galingale.
• It sits in Harleian MS 279 among the Potages dyuers, which strongly supports a spoonable interpretation.
• The title links it to a broader medieval family of herb dishes, but this version takes the idea in a richer dairy direction.
• The original 2016 reconstruction was tested and loved by even a skeptical taste tester.

Jump to the Recipe

Historical Integrity: Harleian MS 279 explicitly gives milk, butter, cheese, eggs, parsley, sage, powdered ginger, and galingale. It tells the cook to boil the milk, butter, and cheese together, add the eggs, then the herbs and spices, and serve the dish. It does not give quantities, tell us whether the eggs are whole or separated, specify the cheese, or define the final consistency. The reconstruction below is a source-led working interpretation built from the manuscript sequence, the recipe's placement among the Potages dyuers, and comparison with related medieval herb-and-egg dishes.

Quystis Scun: Medieval Wood Pigeon Pottage from Harleian MS 279 (c. 1430)

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Quystis Scun: Medieval Wood Pigeon Pottage from Harleian MS 279

AI-generated visualization of Quystis Scun for the 2026 revision. The original 2016 food photograph was deliberately retired because it did the dish no favors. This image is illustrative rather than documentary.

Quystis Scun is a fifteenth-century English pottage of wood pigeons cooked in a broth of beef or mutton, wine, and water. The birds are filled with whole pepper and marrow, cooked in the covered pot, then finished with ginger, verjuice, and salt. At service, the cook places a pigeon or two into each dish and adds a little of the broth "in the manner of a pottage."

I first reconstructed this recipe on November 17, 2016 because pigeon was difficult for me to obtain. I substituted a Cornish game hen, used prepared beef broth instead of beginning with a piece of beef or mutton, and used vinegar in place of verjuice. The result tasted much better than it photographed. The wine-stewed chicken skin became gray-purple and deeply unhelpful to anyone trying to imagine how good the dish actually was.

Nearly ten years later, returning to the source revealed a more important problem than the photograph. My original interpreted recipe accidentally omitted the marrow that is explicitly named in the manuscript. The 2026 revision restores that ingredient, returns the broth-making step to the manuscript sequence, separates verjuice from the vinegar substitution, and makes a clearer distinction between what I actually tested in 2016 and what the surviving evidence now supports.

Why You'll Love This Recipe

• It is a compact but unusually informative recipe from Harleian MS 279.
• The manuscript gives us the bird, cooking liquid, stuffing, seasonings, cooking method, and serving style.
• Whole pepper and marrow are placed inside the birds rather than simply stirred into the broth.
• Verjuice gives the finished pottage a bright sour edge against the wine and rich meat broth.
• The original Cornish hen adaptation was genuinely delicious, even if its photograph was not.

Jump to Historical Reconstruction

Historical Integrity: The main recipe below is a source-led reconstruction of Harleian MS 279. The manuscript explicitly gives beef or mutton, wine, water, wood pigeons, whole pepper, marrow, ginger, verjuice, salt, covered cooking, and brothy service. It does not provide quantities, cooking times, wine type, bird size, marrow amount, or exact proportions. The original 2016 Cornish hen adaptation was tested and enjoyed. The fully restored 2026 version has not yet been cooked as a separate controlled test, so source-led corrections are identified as such rather than presented as new kitchen results.

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Beren Briw: Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Barley Pottage from the Lacnunga to Mary Savelli

Beren Briw entered my kitchen more than twenty years ago as a barley “polenta” from Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. Whole barley was soaked, then simmered with butter, minced radish, beef broth, salt, and a whisper of cinnamon. It was mild enough to sit beside a richly seasoned beef dish, sturdy enough for feast service, and unusual enough to remain memorable.

It also left a question simmering at the back of the pot:

Where did the broth and cinnamon come from, and how closely does this recipe follow the Old English evidence?

The answer is more generous than a simple verdict of “authentic” or “invented.” The Lacnunga preserves genuine Old English instructions for thick briw made with barley meal, butter, radish, crop-leek, elecampane, salt, and prolonged cooking. Bald’s Leechbook assumes that cooks already knew how to turn fresh barley meal or groats into pottage. Later medieval and Renaissance sources then show barley flour or hulled barley entering preparations made with poultry broth, meat broth, beef-boiling liquor, almond milk, sugar, and cinnamon.

Mary Savelli’s recipe stands where those trails meet. It is not a transcription of one Anglo-Saxon recipe. It is better understood as a historically informed composite: an approachable modern dish built from a direct Old English core, later barley-pottage traditions, and the practical decisions required by a modern kitchen.

This article preserves Savelli’s recipe exactly as I received and cooked it, traces its evidence backward and forward, and offers a second reconstruction that begins with the ingredients and texture most securely supported by the Old English texts.

Why This Article Matters

• It preserves Mary Savelli’s influential recipe rather than quietly replacing it.
• It identifies the barley, radish, butter, salt, long cooking, and hot service that are directly supported by the Lacnunga.
• It explains why briw is better understood as thick cereal pottage than thin broth.
• It follows beef broth and cinnamon into later barley dishes without backdating them into the Anglo-Saxon source.
• It separates a medicinal text, ordinary cooking knowledge, comparative evidence, and modern reconstruction.
• It provides a conservative feast-table version for continued kitchen testing.

Mary Savelli’s Recipe Give It Forth Reconstruction

Historical Integrity Statement

No complete culinary recipe titled Beren Briw survives from Anglo-Saxon England. The phrase is a modern descriptive title assembled from genuine Old English vocabulary and can be understood approximately as “barley pottage.” The closest direct evidence is a cluster of medicinal briw instructions in the Lacnunga. These support barley meal, butter, radish, crop-leek, elecampane, white salt, long cooking, a thick consistency, and hot service. Beef broth and cinnamon are not named in those passages. They enter through later comparative barley cookery and Savelli’s modern reconstruction.