An Onion Pottage, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May


An Onion Pottage

Fry good store of slic’t onions, then have a pipkin of boiling liquor over the fire, when the liquor bils put in the fryed onions, butter and all, with pepper and salt: being well stewed together, serve in on sops of French bread.

Interpreted Recipe

3 tbsp. olive oil
½ pound of onions peeled and sliced 1/4 “thick
4 cups vegetable stock
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

Melt butter in a large skillet, add sliced onions and sauté for about 10 minutes or until golden brown stirring occasionally. Bring broth to boil, add onions and cook over medium heat for ten minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Put toasted bread in individual bowls, pour broth over the onions and serve immediately.

To Marinate Salmon to Be Eaten Cold The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May


To Marinate Salmon to Be Eaten Cold


Take a Salmon, cut it into joles and rands, & fry them in good sweet sallet oyl or clarified butter, then set them by in a charger, and have some white or claret-wine, & wine vinegar as much as will cover it, put the wine & vinegar into a pipkin with all manner of sweet herbs bound up in a bundle as rosemary, thyme, sweet marjoram, parsly winter-savory, bay-leaves, sorrel, and sage, as much of one as the other, large mace, slic’t ginger, gross pepper, slic’t nutmeg, whole cloves, and salt; being well boil’d together, pour it on the fish, spices and all, being cold, then lay on slic’t lemons, and lemon-peel, and cover it up close; so keep it for present spending, and serve it hot or cold with the same liquor it is soust in, with the spices, herbs, and lemons on it.

If to keep long, pack it up in a vessel that will but just hold it, put to it no lemons nor herbs, only bay-leaves; if it be well packed, it will keep as long as sturgeon, but then it must not be splatted, but cut round ways through chine and all.

To Marinate Salmon to be Eaten Cold

1 ½ -2 pounds salmon
4 tbsp. butter or oil
¼ c minced parsley
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. peppercorns
4 cloves
1 bay leaf
½ nutme g broken up
1 large piece whole mace
¼ tsp . each thyme, rosemary, marjoram, savory and sage
6 tbsp. wine vinegar
1 ¼ cup wine
1 lemon sliced thin and seeded

Rinse the salmon under cold water and pat dry with a towel. Cut into squares. Melt the butter in a pan, or heat the oil and saute the fish until it is cooked.

Heat the herbs, spices, vinegar and wine in a pot until it boils. Lower heat and cook for ten minutes.

Layer the salmon in a deep bowl and pour the hot marinade over the salmon. Arrange the lemon slices over the top, pushing a few down at the sides of the bowl. Cover and set aside until the marinade has cooled.

Refrigerate until needed. Serve cold with some of the marinade poured over it.

To Broil Bace, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May



To Broil Bace, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May 

Take a bace, draw it and wash it clean, broil it with the scales on, or without the scales, and lay it in a dish with some good sallet oyl, wine-vinegar, salt, some sprigs of rosemary, tyme, and parsley, then heat the gridiron and lay on the fish, broil it on a soft fire on the embers, and baste it with the sauce it was steeped in, being broild serve it in a clean warm dish with the sauce it was steeped in, and the herbs on it, and about the dish, cast on salt, and so serve it with slices of orange, lemon , or barberries.


Or broil it in butter and venegar with herbs as above-said and make sauce with beaten butter and vinegar.

To Broil Bass

2 pound fresh water bass
½ cup white wine vinegar
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp thyme and rosemary
¼ c minced parsley
4 tbsp butter melted
½ lemon sliced thin

Make a marinade of the vinegar, salt, thyme, rosemary and parsley. Place the fish in a shallow baking dish and pour the marinade over it. Marinate for at least half an hour. Sprinkle half the butter over the fish and bake at 350 degrees until cooked. Garnish and serve.

To make a Peasecod Dish, in a Puff Paste, Two Ways, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May


To Make a Peasecod Dish in Puff Paste, Two Ways

Take a pound of almonds, and a quarter of a pound of sugar, beat the almonds finely to a paste with some rose-water, then beat the sugar amongst them, mingle some sweet butter with it, and make this stuff up in puff paste like peasecods, bake them upon papers, and being baked, ice it with rose-water, butter, and fine sugar.

In this fashion you may make peasecod stuff of preserved quinces, pippins, pears, or preserved plums in puff paste.

For the Almond Filling

1 1/2 cups almond flour
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. rosewater
1/4 cup butter

Mix together all the ingredients , cover and set aside until needed. When ready to cook, place filling into puff paste, shape like a peas cod and bake until browned.

For the Icing:

2 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp. rosewater (or to taste)
1 tbsp. butter
Water

Mix together butter and sugar, add rosewater. Add additional water until you get the desired consistency. Drizzle over peascods or serve on the side.


For the fruit filling:


To make a slic’t Tart of Quinces, Wardens, Pears, Pippins, in slices raw of divers Compounds.The foresaid fruits being finely pared, and slic’t in very thine slices; season them with beaten cinamon, and candied citron minced, candied orange, or both, or raw orange peel, raw lemon peel, fennil-seed, or caraway-seed or without any of these compounds or spices, but the fruits alone one amongst the other; put to ten pippins six quinces, six wardens, eight pears, and two pound of sugar; close it up, bake it; and ice it as the former tarts.


Thus you may also bake it in patty-pan, or dish, with cold butter paste.


For the Fruit Filling

4 apples
3 quinces
3 cooking pears (wardens)
4 pears
2 cups of sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
Opt. Candied citron or orange peel

Peel, core and slice your fruit thinly, mix it with the sugar and spices (note you may want to add a tablespoonful of flour to the mixture to thicken it as it cooks). Arrange the fruit in the pastry and close it. Bake at 375 degrees until fruit is tender and crust is browned. Let cool before serving.


Puff Paste, the Third Way

Break two eggs into three pints of flour, make it with cold water and roul it out pretty thick and square, then take so much butter as paste, lay it in ranks, and divide your butter in five pieces, that you may lay it on at five several times, roul your paste very broad, and stick one part of the butter in little pieces all over your paste, then throw a handful of flour slightly on, fold up your paste and beat it with a rowling-pin, so roul it out again, thus do five times, and make it up.

Puff Paste

6 cups flour
2 eggs
1 pound of butter, frozen
1 tsp.
Ice Water

Put your flour and salt into a bowl, and add eggs, add water until it becomes a dough. Roll your pastry dough out till it is about ¼” thick.

Grate 1 stick of butter and strew it over your dough. Fold the dough into thirds and roll it out again. You will need to work quickly so the dough does not get too warm. Continue to do this until all of the butter has been incorporated into the dough. Being sure to fold it and roll it up at least five times. Refrigerate overnight.



To Make a Made Dish of Curds, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May




To Make a Made Dish of Curds

Take some tender curds, wring the whey from them very well, then put to them two raw eggs, currans, sweet butter, rose-water, cinamon, sugar, and mingle all together, then make a fine paste with flour, yolks of egs, rose-water, & other water, sugar, saffron, and butter, wrought up cold, bake it either in this paste or in puff-paste, being baked ice it with rose-water, sugar, and butter.

Interpreted Recipe

1 cup cream
1 ½ cups cottage cheese or fresh made cheese
2 eggs
½ cup sugar
1 tbsp. rosewater
1 tbsp. lemon juice
¼ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
2 tbsp. currants

Beat eggs, sugar, rosewater, lemon juice, spices, salt and cream together in a bowl. Add cheese and currants and pour into your puff pastry shell. Bake 350 degrees until cooked through, and serve.

Soops of Turnips, Buttered Colliflowers, Buttered Wortes (Cabbage), The Accomplisht Cook


Soops or butter’d Meats of Spinage.

Take fine young spinage, pick and wash it clean; then have a skillet or pan of fair liquor on the fire, and when it boils, put in the spinage, give it a warm or two, and take it out into a cullender, let it drain, then mince it small, and put it in a pipkin with some slic’t dates, butter, white-wine, beaten cinamon, salt, sugar, and some boil’d currans; stew them well together, and dish them on sippets finely carved, and about it hard eggs in halves or quarters, not too hard boil’d, and scrape on sugar. 

Soops of Carrots

Being boil’d, cleanse, stamp, and season them in all points as before (soops of butter'd Meats of Spinage; dates, butter, white wine, cinnamon, salt, sugar, and currants); thus also potatoes, skirrets, parsnips, turnips, Virginia artichocks, onions, or beets, or fry any of the foresaid roots being boil’d and cleansed, or peeled, and floured, and serve them with beaten butter and sugar.

Interpreted Recipe

1 ½ pounds turnips
4 tbsp. butter
1 ½ cups broth
¼ cup white vinegar
¼ tsp. ginger
¼ tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. salt

Peel your turnips and slice them crosswise ¼” thick. Bring the butter, broth, vinegar, and seasonings to a boil in a saucepan and add your turnips. Lower the heat and simmer until the turnips are almost tender, stirring them every 15 minutes.

Buttered Colliflowers

Have a skillet of fair water, and when it boils put in the whole tops of the colliflowers, the root being cut away, put some salt to it; and being fine and tender boiled dish it whole in a dish, with carved sippets round about it, and serve it with beaten butter and water, or juyce of orange and lemon.

Interpreted Recipe

1 pound  cabbage, turnips or cauliflower, cleaned and cut into bite sized pieces
Water
1 pound butter cut into pieces
Sugar to taste

Place turnips (or cauliflower) into a large saucepan and cover with water. On medium-high heat, bring turnips to a boil. Lower heat, cover, and simmer about 30 minutes or until tender. Drain into a colander and set aside.

Bring 4 tbsp. water to a boil, immediately reduce the heat to low and whisk in the butter, one tablespoon at a time. Butter and water mixture will start to emulsify. Once the sauce has emulsified, you can continue to add remaining butter until all butter has been added to the mixture.

To serve: Pour butter over boiled vegetables, sprinkle with sugar to taste.

Note: Sauce may break if allowed to get too warm.

Buttered Wortes (Cabbage),  Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, Thomas Austin

Take al manor of good herbes that thou may gete, and do bi ham as is forsaid; putte hem on þe fire with faire water; put þer-to clarefied buttur a grete quantite. Whan thei ben boyled ynough, salt hem; late none otemele come ther-in. Dise brede small in disshes, and powre on þe wortes, and serue hem forth.

Interpreted Recipe

1 head of cabbage
2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. unsalted butter

Bring a pot of water to a boil and season with salt. Add cabbage and parboil five minutes, drain, and then bring another pot of water to boil, add cabbage and lower heat to a simmer. Simmer until cabbage is tender. Drain and serve with butter.





Sausages, Otherways, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

 


Otherways.

Mince pork with beef-suet, and mince some sage, and put to it some pepper, salt, cloves, and mace; make it into balls, and keep it for your use, or roll them into little sausages some four or five inches long as big as your finger; fry six or seven of them, and serve them in a dish with vinegar or juyce of orange.

Thus you may do of a leg of veal, and put nothing but salt and suet; and being fried, serve it with gravy and juyce of orange or butter and vinegar; and before you fry them flower them. And thus mutton or any meat.

Or you may add sweet Herbs or Nutmeg: and thus Mutton.

Interpreted Recipe

2 pounds ground pork for sausage
½ tsp. Ground pepper mix
½ tsp. Mixed spices (sage, clove, mace)
1 tsp. Salt
1 small onion grated

In a large bowl combine pork, spices, salt and onion and mix well.  Shape by rounded tablespoonfulls into balls, or, roll them into small sausage shaped logs the size of your finger. 

To serve: Cook until done, and serve with a sprinkling of orange juice or vinegar.  

Note: These make an excellent and economical way of rounding out a meat course.  

For Gusset that may be another potage, A Proper Newe Booke of Cookerye, Anonymous

 


Note: For this dish the chicken was poached in the seasoned broth.  Sliced and then served over sippets of bread.  It was very well received. 

For Gusset that may be another potage.

Take the broathe of the Capons and put in a fayre chafer, then take a dosen or syxtene egges and stere them all together whyte and all, then grate a farthynge whyte loafe as smale as ye canne, and mynce it wyth the egges all togeather, and putte thereto salte and a good quantite of safiron, and or ye putte in youre egges, putte into youre brothe, tyme, sauerye, margeron and parseley small choppd, and when ye are redye to your dynner, sette the chafer upon the fyre wyth the brothe, and lette it boyle a lyttle and putte in your egges and stere it up well for quaylinge the less. The less boylynge it hathe the more tender it wyll be, and then serve it forthe two or three slyces upon a dysshe.

Interpreted Recipe

4 C clear chicken broth
1 tbsp. Minced parsley
1 tsp. Salt
Pinch of saffron
⅛ tsp. each marjoram, thyme, savory
2 eggs
2 tsp . bread crumbs
3 slices hot buttered toast


Add parsley, salt, saffron,marjoram, thyme, and savory to chicken broth and simmer for 15 minutes. Beat the eggs with the bread crumbs and stir them into the broth. Turn off the heat and let the broth simmer for a minute or two, stirring constantly. Divide the toast among individual soup bowls and pour the hot broth over it immediately.

An Oatmeal Pudding - Otherways, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May



An Oatmeal Pudding - Otherways.

Take good store of parsley, tyme, savory, four or five onions, and sweet marjoram, chop them with some whole oatmeal, then add to them pepper, and salt, and boil them in a napkin, being boil’d tender, butter it, and serve it on sippets.

Interpreted Recipe

1 cup whole milk
2 cups steel cut oats
1/4 cup butter
1 onion chopped
1 tbsp. parsley
3/4 tsp. dried thyme, marjoram and savory
1 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. pepper
2 eggs

Soak oats overnight in milk and butter that has been heated to a simmer. The next day add remaining ingredients, and boil as for Eisands.

A Hash of Beef, Otherways, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May



A Hash of Beef Otherways

Stew it in Beef gobbets, and cut some fat and lean together as big as a good pullets egg, and put them into a pot or pipkin with some Carrots cut in pieces as big as a walnut, some whole onions, some parsnips, large mace, faggot of sweet herbs, salt, pepper, cloves, and as much water and wine as will cover them, and stew it the space of three hours.

Interpreted Recipe

2 pounds chuck roast cut into slices
1 medium onion
2 carrots
2 parsnips
1/2 tsp. each thyme marjoram and winter savory
1 tbsp. parsley
2 cups red wine
1/8 tsp. mace
Salt and Pepper to taste

Lightly fry slices of beef in butter and then stew beef in a pan with water for about an hour and then skim it clean. Add salt, pepper, clove, mace, carrots, parsnips and whole onions and cook till tender. Add Parsley, thyme, sweet marjoram, spinach, sorrel and winters savory and some when then dish it up on sippets serve it hot.

Pickled Mushrooms, The whole Body of Cookery Dissected, William Rabisha

 



Take a bushel of mushrooms, blanch them over the crown, barm them beneath; if they are new, they look read as a Cherry; if old, black; this being done, throw them into a pan oif boyling water, then take them forth and let them drain; when they are cold, put them up into your Pot or Glass, put thereto Cloves, Mace, Ginger, Nutmeggs, whole Pepper; Then take white wine, a little Vinegar, with a little quantity of salt, so pour the Liquor into your Mushrooms, and stop them close for your use all the year.


Interpreted Recipe

1 pound small mushrooms
½ cup water
1 ½ - 2 tsp. salt
1 tsp peppercorns
5 cloves
1/2 tsp. mace and nutmeg
1 slice of fresh root ginger
1 ½ Cups white wine
2 tbsp vinegar

Clean the mushrooms and slice or quarter as you desire. Place mushrooms in a pan and cover with the water. Add salt. Bring mushrooms to a boil; boil for approximately two minutes and then drain. Place the mushrooms in your jar, add the remainder of spices, wine and vinegar. If you find that you do not have enough liquid to cover the mushrooms, add more wine. Once a day invert the jar. Note: The mushrooms were made several weeks prior to the event. I canned them. I did reheat the mushrooms to remove the alcohol content prior to serving. This was a very good make ahead dish. 1 pound of the mushrooms made 2 jars of pickles.