Milke Rostys – Medieval Fried Custard

Milke Rostys – Medieval Fried Custard

Originally published October 20, 2015. Updated June 7, 2026.

Milke Rostys, a medieval fried custard from Harleian MS. 279. Image © Give It Forth.

Milke Rostys are one of the more delightful dairy dishes found in Harleian MS. 279, a fifteenth-century English cookery manuscript copied around 1430. The recipe begins with sweet milk, eggs, and saffron, cooked until thickened, strained, pressed, sliced, and then browned on a griddle. The result is somewhere between a firm custard, a fresh cheese, and a golden fried pudding.

This is not a modern custard baked gently in a dish. It is a cooked and pressed dairy preparation, firm enough to slice, sturdy enough to fry, and delicate enough to serve as a transitional dish between the heavier meats of a feast and the sweeter dishes that might follow. In feast terms, Milke Rostys works beautifully as an entremet: a refined, interesting dish that appears between larger courses and gives diners a change in texture, richness, and presentation.

The word rostys may look like “roasts,” but in this recipe the final cooking is done on a greddelle, or griddle. The custard is not roasted in the modern oven sense. It is sliced and browned on a hot surface with fat, creating a crisp golden exterior and a tender interior.

Sekanjabin: Medieval Persian Mint Drink (Sweet & Sour Sharbat Recipe)

Sekanjabin: Medieval Persian Mint Drink

Originally published September 14, 2015. Updated June 7, 2026.

Sekanjabin, also spelled sikanjabin, sekanjubin, or sikandjabin, is one of those wonderfully practical historic drinks that still makes perfect sense in a modern kitchen. At its simplest, it is a sweet-and-sour syrup made from vinegar and sugar or honey, then diluted with water before serving. Add mint, and the result is sharp, refreshing, fragrant, and very welcome on a hot day.

This is a drink many people first encounter at SCA events, camping weekends, and outdoor feasts. It is inexpensive, easy to make in quantity, and simple to transport as a syrup. The concentrate can be diluted as needed, which makes it especially useful for camp cooking or feast service. Vinegar in a drink may sound surprising at first, but when balanced with sugar and water, it becomes bright and cooling rather than harsh.

The recipe below is adapted from An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century, translated by David Friedman. The historic recipe is for a simple sikanjabîn syrup, also called an oxymel, made from vinegar and sugar or honey. The mint version commonly served today is a modern adaptation inspired by this family of medieval sweetened vinegar drinks.

Medieval Spiced Pomegranate Drink (Historical Pomegranate Syrup Recipe)

Medieval Spiced Pomegranate Drink (Historical Pomegranate Syrup Recipe)

When people think of medieval beverages, the first things that often come to mind are ale, beer, mead, and wine. Those drinks certainly belonged at many medieval tables, but they were not the whole story. Medieval cooks also prepared fruit syrups, herbal drinks, spiced waters, medicinal beverages, and cooling drinks that could be diluted with water when needed. These are the drinks that fascinate me as a feast cook, because they solve so many modern event problems while remaining beautifully rooted in historical practice.

This medieval spiced pomegranate drink is one of my favorite syrups to serve at feast. It is bright, tart, lightly spiced, beautifully colored, and always well received. It gives guests a festive non-alcoholic option that feels intentional rather than like an afterthought.

Feast Cook Wisdom: I love syrups for feast because they are inexpensive to make, easy to transport, and can be added to water to taste. A small bottle can flavor a surprising amount of beverage, and guests can decide whether they want a delicate hint of fruit or a stronger, richer drink.

This recipe is based on a pomegranate syrup from An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century. The syrup is very similar in concept to grenadine, though homemade pomegranate syrup has a deeper, more complex flavor than most commercial grenadine available today. Where modern grenadine is often very sweet and brightly colored, this syrup keeps the tart edge of pomegranate and balances it with sugar and, in my version, a little warm spice.

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

---

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.