Dent-de-Lion: Medieval Dandelion Recipes (Buttered Wortes & Joutes)

Dent-de-Lion: The Dandelion in Medieval Cuisine (Buttered Wortes & Joutes)

Dent-de-Lion: The Dandelion in Medieval Cuisine

“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Originally published May 22, 2015 | Updated June 5, 2026

Updated 6/5/2026: This post has been expanded to current Give It Forth standards with additional historical context, medieval herb use, Harleian MS. 279 interpretation, foraging safety notes, humoral discussion, feast applications, FAQ, and structured recipe data.

Family: Asteraceae
Usage: Culinary, Medicinal
Common names: Dandelion, dent-de-lion, lion’s tooth, blowball, cankerwort, priest’s crown, wild endive

What is dent-de-lion? Dent-de-lion, “lion’s tooth,” is an old French name for the dandelion, referring to the toothed shape of its leaves. In medieval and early modern foodways, dandelion was valued as both a bitter spring green and a useful medicinal herb.

Before dandelions became lawn enemies, they were supper.

Medieval cooks gathered a far wider variety of greens than most of us eat today, and among them was the humble dandelion, known in French as dent-de-lion, or “lion’s tooth,” for the jagged shape of its leaves. Long before people cursed them in tidy lawns, dandelions were gathered deliberately for the kitchen, the physic garden, and the stillroom.

Whether called blowball, lion’s tooth, cankerwort, priest’s crown, or wild endive, the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) appears in culinary and medicinal traditions stretching through Arabic, Greek, Welsh, French, and later English sources. Europeans intentionally carried dandelions to North America, likely as early as the colonial period, for use as a potherb, medicinal plant, and valuable forage for bees.

In medieval cookery, bitter greens mattered. After long winters and preserved foods, spring herbs and fresh leaves brought color, nourishment, and welcome sharpness back to the table. Dandelions, with their pleasantly bitter leaves and edible flowers, fit naturally into pottages, salads, herb mixtures, and cooked greens.

Dandelion as Food and Medicine

The boundary between food and medicine was not always firm in medieval and early modern households. A useful plant might appear as a salad herb, a boiled green, a tonic, a cooling preparation, or part of a compound medicine. Dandelion belongs in that overlap. Its leaves are edible, its flowers are useful, and its roots appear repeatedly in medicinal traditions.

Historical texts show the dandelion’s importance across several centuries:

• 1562 – Bullein’s Bulwarke: Dandelions mixed with roses and vinegar were described as cooling and useful against excess heat.
• 1587 – The Good Husvvifes Iewell: Dandelion roots appear in a preparation for tissick, or lung complaints.
• 1629 – Parkinson’s Paradisi in Sole: Dandelion is noted among plants used in compound medicines, especially those concerned with cleansing and liver complaints.

That medical reputation helps explain why the plant remained useful. Bitter herbs were valued not only for flavor, but also for what they were believed to do in the body. Dandelion’s bitterness made it part of the wider world of spring greens, cleansing herbs, and plants used to restore balance after winter’s heavier foods.

⚖️ Humoral note: Later medieval and early modern herbals often understood bitter greens through the language of cooling, cleansing, and correcting excess heat or heaviness. Dandelion’s sharp, bitter leaves fit comfortably into this logic, especially as a spring green eaten after the preserved and salted foods of winter.

Medieval Greens at the Table

Medieval people ate a much wider range of greens than many modern households. The word “wortes” could refer broadly to edible herbs, greens, and vegetable matter cooked together. A medieval cook did not need a single fixed mixture. The recipe depended on the season, garden, market, and what could be gathered.

Dandelion leaves are especially plausible in this world of flexible greens. Young leaves are tender and less bitter. Older leaves are stronger and better suited to cooking. Like sorrel, nettles, beet greens, cabbage leaves, leeks, parsley, and other potherbs, dandelion could be used where a recipe called for “good herbs” rather than a fixed list.

This matters because medieval recipes often assume a cook who already understands the kitchen. They do not always specify every plant, measurement, or timing. Instead, they offer a method: gather good greens, boil them, season them, enrich them, and serve them with bread.

Buttered Wortes from Harleian MS. 279

One of the best places to see this flexible medieval approach is Buttered Wortes from Harleian MS. 279, a fifteenth-century English cookery manuscript.

Original Recipe:
“Take al maner of good herbes that thou may gete... putte hem on fire with faire water; put þer-to clarefied buttur a grete quantite. Whan thei ben boyled ynogh, salt hem... Dise brede small in disshes, and powr on the wortes, and serue hem forth.”

The phrase “all manner of good herbs that thou may get” is the heart of the recipe. It gives the cook permission, and perhaps an expectation, to use what is available. Dandelion does not need to be named specifically to fit the dish. It belongs to the same family of edible, seasonal greens a medieval cook might gather, especially in spring.

The method is simple but effective. Greens are boiled in clean water, enriched with clarified butter, salted, and served with diced bread. The bread matters. It turns a pot of greens into a filling dish, catching the buttery cooking liquid and making the pottage more substantial.

🌿 Medieval kitchen note: Buttered Wortes is not a single-vegetable recipe. It is a method for seasonal greens. Dandelion can be one part of the mixture rather than the entire dish.

Welcome to Give It Forth – Medieval Cooking, Historical Recipes & Manuscript Interpretation

Welcome to Give It Forth – Medieval Cooking, Historical Recipes, and Manuscript Cookery

Originally published in 2015 | Updated June 2026

Welcome to Give It Forth. If you found your way here, I am guessing you have an interest in food, history, old recipes, feast tables, herbs, gardens, or some wonderful combination of all of those things. Pull up a chair. There is usually something simmering.

In the Society for Creative Anachronism, I am known as Mistress Bronwyn ni Mhathain. When this blog began, I was still finding my way through the recipes, feasts, and historical food questions that had captured my imagination. Since then, I have become a Laurel in Cooking Research in the SCA, and I host the Historic Cookery group on Facebook, where cooks, researchers, reenactors, and curious food-history people gather to ask questions, share sources, and puzzle through old recipes together.

Give It Forth began in 2015 as a place to keep track of what I was doing: experiments, feasts, almost-feasts, ideas, gardens, herblore, herbcraft, and my ongoing attempts to make historical recipes understandable for modern cooks. Over the years, it has grown into a long-running historical cookery project focused on medieval recipes, early historical foodways, manuscript interpretation, feast planning, redactions, and practical cooking for real kitchens and real events.

Where This Project Began

I learned to cook with my grandmother and my mom. That matters, because this project has always lived somewhere between the kitchen table and the manuscript page. It is research, yes, but it is also memory, practice, curiosity, and the stubborn belief that old recipes deserve to be cooked, tasted, questioned, and shared.

One of the central texts behind this blog is Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books: Harleian MS. 279 (ab 1430), and Harl. MS. 4016 (ab. 1450), with extracts from Ashmole MS. 1439, Laud MS. 553, and Douce MS. 55, edited by Thomas Austin. This book was the last book my mom gave to me before she passed. She had helped me when I was creating feasts in my earliest years in the SCA, and we had wanted to work through these recipes together. At the time, neither of us was able to interpret them confidently.

Give It Forth became, in part, my way of continuing that work.

Why the name Give It Forth? Historical recipes do not truly come alive until they are tested, tasted, shared, and discussed. This blog is about taking what survives in manuscripts and early printed books, working through it in a modern kitchen, and giving it forth again.

What You Will Find Here

This blog is not only a recipe collection. It is a working notebook, feast archive, research cabinet, kitchen diary, and historical rabbit hole with crumbs in the margins.

Here you will find:

• Medieval and early historical recipes translated, interpreted, and adapted for modern kitchens.
• Harleian MS 279 and other manuscript cookery projects with attention to wording, ingredients, method, and context.
• SCA feast planning and feast documentation including menus, service notes, scaling, and lessons learned.
• Ancient, medieval, Tudor, Renaissance, and early modern foodways explored through practical cooking.
• Herbs, gardens, and seasonal food preservation because the kitchen does not begin at the stove.
• Camp and event cooking notes for people trying to serve historical food under less-than-perfect conditions.

Research, Redaction, and Real Food

My goal is to make historical recipes approachable without flattening them into modern food with old-fashioned names. A good redaction should ask what the source says, what the words meant, what ingredients were likely intended, what techniques were available, and how a modern cook can responsibly bring that dish to the table.

Sometimes that means keeping a dish simple. Sometimes it means admitting uncertainty. Sometimes it means revisiting an older interpretation and saying, “I would do this differently now.” That is not failure. That is how living research works.

Historical cooking is full of small mysteries: a verb that could mean more than one thing, a spice mixture that shifts by source, a manuscript recipe with no measurements, a dish that makes sense only when placed back into its course or feast setting. Those are the puzzles I love.

📜 Manuscript cookery note: Many medieval recipes are instructions written for cooks who already knew the kitchen. They often omit quantities, temperatures, and detailed steps. The work of redaction is not just translation. It is interpretation, testing, and practical judgment.

For Cooks, Researchers, and the Historically Curious

Whether you are an SCA cook planning a feast, a home cook curious about medieval food, a reenactor looking for practical dishes, a gardener interested in herbs, or a researcher chasing down one stubborn ingredient, I hope you find something useful here.

I try to write for the person standing between a source text and a cutting board. That means I care about historical context, but I also care about whether the dish can be cooked, served, transported, scaled, and eaten by real people.

Some posts are polished recipes. Some are feast records. Some are experiments. Some are old posts being revisited with better tools, better sources, and a few more years of cooking behind me. The archive is part research trail, part kitchen road map, and part invitation.

A Note of Thanks

I am still pleasantly surprised by how this blog has grown. To those who have subscribed, shared interpretations, cooked from the recipes, asked questions, pointed me toward sources, or helped make this project better: thank you.

Give It Forth began as a personal project, but it has become a community-facing one. Every question, feast, class, conversation, correction, and kitchen experiment has helped shape it.

Here is to the next chapter, the next manuscript puzzle, the next feast table, and the next dish worth giving forth.

Enjoy!

Yonnie

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New here?

You may enjoy starting with these areas of the blog:

• Start Here: Historical Recipes for the Modern Cook
• Harleian MS. 279 (ab 1430)
• Browse Recipes by Era
• Feast Planning Resources and Downloads
• Historical Herbal and Culinary Resources

AI Assistance Disclosure: This updated introduction was revised with the help of AI tools for structure, clarity, formatting, and SEO support. The personal history, research direction, historical interpretation, and final editorial choices are by the author of Give It Forth.

Moretum Recipe – Ancient Roman Herbed Cheese Spread

Moretum – Ancient Roman Herbed Cheese Spread (Roman Feast Recipe)

This dish was served as part of the Push for Pennsic 2004 – Early Roman Feast.

Originally published: June 29, 2025 | Updated: June 5, 2026

Updated 6/5/2026: This post has been expanded to current Give It Forth standards with additional historical background, Roman dining context, feast and camp service notes, a recipe scaled for 8 diners, dietary notes, FAQ, internal feast links, and structured recipe data.

What is Moretum? Moretum is an ancient Roman herbed cheese spread made by pounding cheese, garlic, herbs, vinegar, and olive oil together in a mortar. It is pungent, salty, green, sharp, and excellent with bread as part of a Roman gustum, or appetizer course.

Moretum – Roman Herbed Cheese Spread

Course: Gustum (Appetizer)
Origin: Ancient Rome
Served: Cold or Room Temperature
Event: Push for Pennsic 2004 – Early Roman Feast

Moretum is one of those ancient dishes that feels startlingly immediate. Garlic, salty cheese, fresh herbs, vinegar, and olive oil are pounded together until they become a spread strong enough to wake the appetite and simple enough to serve with bread. It is not delicate food. It is rustic, fragrant, sharp, and lively, the kind of dish that makes a table feel inhabited rather than merely decorated.

For a Roman feast, Moretum works beautifully as a first taste. A small spoonful spread onto flatbread gives diners salt, fat, acid, herb, and heat all at once. It is also deeply practical for modern feast cooks: no stove is required, it can be made ahead, and it travels well if kept cold. That makes it especially useful for camping events, dayboards, and Pennsic-style service, where flavor, safety, and simplicity all have to sit at the same table.

Historical Background

Moretum was a common Roman dish combining fresh herbs, garlic, cheese, vinegar, and olive oil. The recipe appears in a short Latin poem once attributed to Virgil, describing a farmer preparing this flavorful spread as part of his daily breakfast. Its name likely comes from the mortar used to pound and mix the ingredients.

Did You Know?
The Moretum poem details the rustic preparation of this dish and includes an ode to garlic. It offers a vivid look into the humble meals of rural Romans.

For an English translation of the Moretum poem, see the Poetry in Translation version here.

The poem gives us more than a list of ingredients. It preserves a small domestic scene: a farmer rising early, grinding garlic and herbs, mixing cheese with oil and vinegar, and eating the finished spread with bread before beginning his work. That makes moretum especially useful for interpretation. It is not an elite showpiece dish, but a practical food with strong flavors, simple ingredients, and deep roots in everyday Roman eating.

This is part of what makes Moretum so valuable for historical cooking. Many surviving Roman recipes are associated with elite households, banquet culture, or the literary world of refined dining. Moretum, by contrast, feels close to ordinary life. It belongs to bread, work, garden herbs, dairy, and the mortar. It reminds us that historical food is not only peacocks, sauces, and spectacle. Sometimes it is a bowl of cheese and garlic eaten before a long day begins.

Garlic, Mortars, and the Roman Table

The name moretum is generally connected to the mortar, or mortarium, used to pound the ingredients together. This matters because texture is part of the dish. Moretum is not meant to be a delicate modern dip whipped into perfect smoothness. It is a pounded spread: coarse enough to show herbs and cheese, but unified by olive oil and vinegar into something that can be scooped up with bread.

A mortar changes how the ingredients behave. Garlic becomes softer, stronger, and more aromatic as it is crushed. Herbs bruise and release their oils. Cheese breaks down and absorbs the sharper flavors. Vinegar brightens the mixture, while olive oil softens the edges and helps bind everything together. A food processor is very useful for feast preparation, but the mortar helps explain the original character of the dish.

The flavor should be bold. Garlic gives the dish its heat. Cheese provides salt and body. Herbs bring freshness and color. Vinegar keeps the spread from becoming heavy. Served beside flatbread, olives, cucumbers, sausages, vegetables, and wine, Moretum makes a Roman appetizer board feel complete.

🏛️ Roman feast note: Moretum works beautifully as the flavorful center of a Roman dayboard. A small amount goes a long way, especially when paired with Piadina, olives, cucumbers, sausages, and other gustum dishes.

Moretum in the Gustum Course

In a Roman meal, the gustum served as the opening course, meant to wake the appetite and prepare diners for what followed. Dishes in this part of the meal might include eggs, olives, salads, cucumbers, small sausages, fish sauces, herbs, and bread. Moretum fits beautifully here because it is assertive without being heavy.

For modern diners, it also has an advantage: it is familiar enough to invite tasting, but different enough to feel historical. People understand bread and cheese. The surprise comes from the intensity of the garlic, the green herbs, and the vinegar. That balance makes Moretum a useful teaching dish. It lets the cook introduce Roman food through something approachable while still preserving a flavor profile that feels older than a modern cheese ball or party dip.

At the Push for Pennsic Roman feast, Moretum helped establish the tone of the meal. It gave the table a rustic, herbal, communal beginning and worked well beside the other opening dishes. Diners could take a little, spread it on bread, taste it with olives, or use it as a sharp counterpoint to richer foods. That is exactly where this dish shines.

Modern Interpretation

This version uses pecorino romano and fresh herbs like coriander and celery leaf to evoke the original blend. It is simple, pungent, and perfect with bread.

Pecorino romano is salty and assertive, which makes it a good modern choice for this dish. Fresh coriander, or cilantro, gives the spread a bright green herbal quality, while celery leaves echo the bitter-green flavors often found in older herb mixtures. If cilantro is not liked by your diners, parsley may be substituted, though the flavor will be milder.

The goal is a spread that tastes alive: garlicky, salty, herbal, tangy, and rich. If it tastes flat, add a little more vinegar. If it feels too harsh, add olive oil or a bit more cheese. If the garlic seems overwhelming, let the spread rest overnight. The flavors will settle and knit together, though the garlic will still remain the herald at the gate.

⚖️ Humoral note: In later medieval dietary theory, garlic was considered strongly heating and drying, while cheese could be heavy and moist depending on age and type. Vinegar and fresh herbs help sharpen and balance the dish. Although Moretum is Roman rather than medieval, the practical flavor balance is clear: rich cheese, hot garlic, bright herbs, sharp vinegar, and smoothing olive oil.

Krambe – Roman Cabbage with Caraway, Fish Sauce, and Herbs

Course: Mensa Prima (Main Course / Vegetable Side)
Origin: Ancient Rome
Served: Warm or cold
Event: Push for Pennsic 2004 – Early Roman Feast

Originally published: June 29, 2025 | Updated: June 3, 2026

Updated 6/3/2026: This post has been refreshed to current Give It Forth standards with expanded historical context, clearer recipe formatting, feast service notes, dietary notes, FAQ, internal links to the Roman feast series, and updated structured recipe data.

What is Krambe? Krambe is cabbage, a humble but important vegetable in the Roman diet. This Roman-inspired version is boiled until tender, chopped, and dressed with olive oil, wine, liquamen or fish sauce, caraway, onion, coriander, salt, and pepper.

Krambe in the Roman Feast

This cabbage dish was served as part of the Push for Pennsic 2004 – Early Roman Feast, where it appeared in the mensa prima, the more substantial part of the meal. After the opening course of olives, flatbread, sausages, cucumbers, and cheese spread, dishes like cabbage, chickpeas, and smoked ham gave the feast its heartier center.

Krambe works especially well for large feast service because it is inexpensive, sturdy, and flexible. It can be served warm, cooled, or chilled, and its dressing gives a plain vegetable enough brightness to stand beside richer Roman-inspired dishes.

The combination of olive oil, wine, fish sauce, onion, caraway, and herbs gives the cabbage a sharp, savory flavor. It is not a modern mayonnaise-based cabbage salad. It is closer to a dressed cooked vegetable: tender, seasoned, aromatic, and practical for event cooking.

🏛️ Roman feast note: Krambe pairs well with Lucanicae, Erebinthoi Knakosymmigeis, and Petaso paro Mustacei. Its acidity and herbs help balance the richer dishes on the table.

Historical Background

“Krambe,” from Greek krambē, refers to cabbage, a vegetable that appears frequently in discussions of ancient food and medicine. Cabbage was a common food, but it also carried a strong reputation as a useful household remedy.

Roman authors such as Cato the Elder praised cabbage for its supposed medicinal properties. In De Agricultura, Cato gives cabbage an almost heroic place among garden plants, treating it as useful for digestion, health, and recovery. Whether or not we accept those claims today, they show how seriously Romans could regard an ordinary vegetable.

Apicius also includes cabbage preparations, reminding us that cabbage was not only medicinal or humble. It could be dressed, seasoned, and brought to table as part of a flavorful meal. Roman cooks often relied on combinations of oil, wine, vinegar or wine-based liquids, herbs, spices, and liquamen to make simple ingredients lively.

This version reflects that Roman habit of treating vegetables with strong seasoning. The fish sauce provides salt and depth, the wine sharpens the dressing, the olive oil enriches the cabbage, and the caraway gives a warm aromatic note.

⚖️ Humoral note: Later medieval dietary theory often treated cabbage as a vegetable that could be heavy or windy if poorly prepared. Boiling, draining, seasoning, and dressing it with warming spices and sharp liquids would have made practical sense to later cooks, even though this recipe is Roman-inspired rather than medieval.

Roman Chickpeas with Saffron (Erebinthoi Knakosymmigeis) – Ancient Roman Recipe

Roman Chickpeas with Saffron – Erebinthoi Knakosymmigeis

Course: Mensa Prima (Main Course / Legume Side)

Origin: Ancient Rome
Served: Warm
Event: Push for Pennsic 2004 – Early Roman Feast

Originally published: June 29, 2025 | Updated: June 3, 2026

Updated 6/3/2026: This post has been refreshed to current Give It Forth standards with expanded historical context, clearer recipe formatting, feast service notes, dietary notes, FAQ, internal links to the Roman feast series, and updated structured recipe data.

What are Erebinthoi Knakosymmigeis? Erebinthoi are chickpeas, and this Roman-inspired preparation simmers them simply with saffron and salt. The dish is warm, fragrant, filling, and useful as a legume-based side in an Early Roman feast.

Erebinthoi Knakosymmigeis in the Roman Feast

These saffron chickpeas were served as part of the Push for Pennsic 2004 – Early Roman Feast. They belong naturally in the mensa prima, the more substantial part of the meal, where legumes, cooked vegetables, and meats helped anchor the feast after the opening gustum.

Chickpeas are practical feast food. They are inexpensive, filling, easy to scale, and able to hold flavor without needing complicated service. For a primitive or outdoor event, a warm legume dish can be especially useful because it brings substance to the table without relying on fragile last-minute plating.

This recipe is intentionally simple. The chickpeas are soaked, simmered, seasoned with salt, and colored and perfumed with saffron. The result is not a heavily sauced dish. It is a minimalist preparation that lets the creamy texture of the chickpeas and the fragrance of saffron stand forward.

🏛️ Roman feast note: Erebinthoi Knakosymmigeis pairs especially well with Krambe, Lucanicae, and Petaso paro Mustacei. It gives the meal a sturdy legume component and balances richer meat dishes.

Historical Background

Chickpeas, known in Greek as erebinthoi, were a familiar food in the ancient Mediterranean. They could be eaten in a variety of ways: boiled, roasted, seasoned, used in porridges, or served as part of broader vegetable and legume dishes.

Roman and Greek medical writers discussed legumes in terms of digestion, nourishment, and bodily effect. Authors such as Galen and Celsus refer to foods not only as ingredients, but as part of a wider understanding of health and diet. Chickpeas, like other legumes, were valued because they were sustaining, accessible, and substantial.

The addition of saffron makes this otherwise humble dish feel more refined. Saffron was an expensive aromatic spice, valued for its color, fragrance, and association with luxury. In the Roman world, saffron could appear in food, scent, ceremony, and elite display. Even a small pinch changes the dish: the chickpeas take on a golden hue and a warm, floral aroma.

Did You Know?
Saffron was so precious in Roman times that it was sometimes used as perfume, scattered in public spaces, or associated with elite entertainments. In this dish, it elevates a humble legume into something suitable for a feast table.

This contrast between ordinary chickpeas and costly saffron is part of the appeal. The dish remains simple and nourishing, but the saffron adds a small golden flourish, turning a basic legume into a feast-worthy side.

⚖️ Humoral note: Later medieval dietary theory often treated legumes as substantial and sometimes difficult to digest if poorly prepared. Soaking, simmering until tender, and serving warm would all make practical sense. Although this is a Roman-inspired recipe rather than a medieval one, the concern for digestibility and balance carries forward into later food writing.