8 Medieval Dishes You Might Not Want to Try
Miscellaneous / / June 25, 2022
You'll be amazed at what you can cook with just chicken, pork, and almonds.
1. almond eggs
These days, vegetarians drink almond milk and eat almond milk products for ethical reasons. But medieval people had a more pressing reason for sticking to such a diet: to avoid going to hell! If you break the fast by eating an ordinary egg on the wrong day, the gates of paradise will forever slam shut, and not everyone had money for indulgence. So I had to get out.
For Those Who Wanted Eggs, Manuscript with recipesmock food no. 3/The Old Foodies 1430 from the Harlean Library in London recommended doing the following: blow out the contents of the eggshell, and then fill it with jelly from almond milk instead of protein.
The yolk imitated almond flakes, tinted with saffron, cinnamon and ginger.
fake egg worked outHow Medieval Chefs Tackled Meat‑Free Days / Gastro Obscura tasteless and the consistency was more like baby food. But if you turn on your imagination and imagine that this is still the brainchild of a chicken, and not a crazy cook, you could even get some pleasure from eating it.
If you think eggshells are too much of a chore to handle, here's another option: stuff an entire pig or bovine bladder with the almond mixture. And then give it to your lady and say it's an egg dragonobtained in battle. She gasps.
2. Porpoises and dolphins
As you can imagine, even during Great Lent I wanted to eat delicious food. But the church demanded to be limited only to seafood, so I had to eat modestly. Here, for example, what kind of ear filedRegional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays in 1526 to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon: with cod, herring, lamprey, pike, salmon, blue whiting, haddock, flounder, bream, porpoise, seal, carp, trout, crabs and lobsters.
And that's just the first course! And for dessert they gave custard, pie, pancakes and fruit.
You understood everything correctly: from the point of view of medieval cuisine, seals, dolphins and porpoises (this is such an aquatic mammal) were considered fish, which means they could be eaten in fasting. One of the oldest culinary booksThe Forme of Cury / Project Gutenberg (late 14th century) The Forme of Cury offers, for example, a recipe for sweet millet porridge with almond milk and dolphin meat.
fish also was consideredRegional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays and beaver, which the fasting monks consumed with appetite, flavored with horseradish. Seafood also included frogs, which were also allowed to be eaten during fasting.
Yes, and whale meat nobles and monks in the Middle Ages would not refuse tryRegional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays. Milk expressed from the whale's nipples also did not disappear on the farm. It's creamy, monstrously oily, like salo, and dense, like cheese, - you can immediately spread it on bread.
And finally, King Charles II of England recommended to complete all this splendor with ambergris - whale burp, which can be added to scrambled eggs or coffee, hot chocolate or booze.
3. Fried hedgehog
The meat of rabbits and hares is quite a normal snack. And what about the hedgehog? In the Middle Ages, game hunters did not disdain these prickly representatives of the forest fauna.
Recipes for cooking hedgehogs in an Italian cookbook of the 15th century were severalRegional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays. One is striking in its simplicity: “Get a hedgehog and cut its throat. Then gut it and either bake it in dough or fry it.” Even a living hedgehog could be wrapped in clay and baked. Or put on a spit.
German authors notedRegional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays benefits of hedgehog meat for lepers. And the dried intestines of the animal, crushed into powder and eaten, allegedly had a diuretic effect.. So hedgehogs served not only as food, but also as medicine.
If a prickly predator curled up and refused to participate in gutting, the good-natured medieval hostess the authors of the culinary manuscripts advised putting it in hot water to make it straighten.
And if there was no hedgehog at hand, this is a sign of a very bad hostess. In this case, it could be replaced by a badger, only take account ofRegional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essaysthat badger meat is tough and must be soaked in salt water for at least 10 days, and then boiled for at least five hours.
4. Rooster ale
If you have ever traveled around Europe and in particular England, you might have noticed that a huge number of pubs and bars there contain the word “rooster” in their names. You might even think that they staged cockfights. But the real reason is even more extravagant.
A 1669 cookbook by English diplomat Kenelm Digby describes recipeK. Digby. The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened so-called cock ale - a popular drink of that era:
“Take eight gallons of ale; take a rooster and boil it; then take four pounds of pitted raisins, two or three nutmegs, three or four pinches of nutmeg, half a pound of dates; crush it all in a mortar and add two quarts of the best white fortified wine; mix, put it all in ale and leave it to brew for six or seven days, and then bottle it, and after a month it can be drunk.
Infuse beer on boiled chicken — what could be even better? Obviously, useE. Smith. The Compleat Housewife: Or, Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion not cooked, but a live rooster. In another recipe, it was instructed to tear out the unfortunate feathers and throw them alive into hot ale at the brewing stage.
The presence of the rooster was supposed to give the beer its aphrodisiac properties and make its drinkers as lively and active as a bird. In addition, rooster ale allegedly helped against consumption.
5. Pies with a surprise
Remember the scene in Game of Thrones when Joffrey and Margaery were served a cake at their wedding that had live doves flying out of it? Is not fiction writers, but a very real fun of the nobility of medieval Europe.
French court cook Guillaume Tirel in the 14th century in his collection of recipes Le Viandier describedM. W. Adamson. Food in Medieval Timeshow to make a pie with live birds. In his version, however, there were not pigeons, but thrushes.
To repeat this, you need to bake a large wide cake and a separate dough dome lid. When ready, plant a dozen or two thrushes on the bakery product (in popular English songLive "blackbird pie" thankfully no longer in fashion / Independent.ie of that time, the number 24 appears), cover them with a lid over a wooden scaffold and serve a dish with a surprise on the table. It remains only to enjoy the faces guestswhen they start cutting off pieces of the pie for themselves, and birds fly out of there.
Such fancy dishes were called "entremets", and their serving was accompanied by theatrical performances.
For example, could cook pastriesM. W. Adamson. Food in Medieval Times in the form of a castle, and then with actors, mummers, singers and dancers to portray its capture. Sometimes not birds were stuffed into the pie, but live ones. frogsto croak and jump around the table - such a medieval aristocratic humor. They were optional, don't worry.
Some of the surprise dishes were, shall we say, a little cruelM. W. Adamson. Food in Medieval Times. For one of these, they took a chicken, plucked it alive, dipped it in hot water, gave it alcohol to make the bird faint, and poured icing on it to make it look like it was fried. And they put it on the table.
Now imagine: the guests are trying to cut off a piece for themselves, the chicken comes to its senses and starts running around the table with frantic screams, turning the dishes over and frightening the ladies of the court.
6. Cockentries
Another curious feature of medieval feasts was the composite meat dishes, which were called cockentryce - from the words cock ("rooster") and grys ("pig"). For their preparation, the upper part of the piglet sewn onThe History of the Cockentrice / Godecookery.com to the bottom of the rooster to make a kind of pig on chicken legs. It was baked with eggs, pepper, cloves, saffron, salt and currants. And then for beauty covered "gildedT. Scully. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages"- a mixture of egg yolk and saffron.
The court ladies could be told that this was a cub of a basilisk or other monster, which the knight personally stabbed in battle with a sword.
Sometimes others were used for cokentris combinationsT. Scully. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages animals - it turned out a pig with wings, with a rooster's head, or a hare's, or with deer horns. A piglet could have alcoholized cotton wool inserted into its mouth and set on fire to give the impression that the animal was breathing fire.
Another cool one optionT. Scully. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages - put a bird on a pig, put a helmet on it, give it a shield and a banner with a coat of arms at the peak. And let it ride knightly tournament for the honor and glory of a noble house.
And a special chic: to shove a feathered steel whistleT. Scully. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages or fill it with mercury. The hot air in the carcass will provoke eerie sounds, as if the bird is alive and emits a battle cry. The main thing is not to tell guests that mercury is poisonous.
7. royal roast
This dish appearedL. G. de La Reyniere. Almanach des gourmands: huitieme annee also in Ancient Rome, was served at the royal table in the late Middle Ages, and gained popularity in America in modern times. Now Americans (most often for Thanksgiving) prepare the so-called turducken: they put boneless chicken in a duck, and a duck in a turkey.
But this is an option for ordinary people. Real noblemen demanded a bustard to their table, into which a turkey, a goose, pheasant, duck, hen, guinea fowl, teal, woodcock, partridge, plover, lapwing, quail, thrush, lark, bunting and warbler. In total, up to 17 birds were rammed into a poor bustard, like a nesting doll.
This work of art was called "royal roast", or "hot, which has no equal."
Impressive, right? I immediately want to get an appointment with some duke to try. It’s just that it is recommended to eat only the upper layers in such a multi-layered dish, because domestic birds are bad bakedL. G. de La Reyniere. Almanach des gourmands: huitieme annee and remained half-baked.
8. Swans and peacocks in their own feathers
A popular dish for English aristocrats of the 14th century. In the cookbook Utilis Coquinario, writtenH. notaker. A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page Over Seven Centuries by an unknown author, there is the following recipe.
The swan must be plucked and cooked on a spit. Then put on a platter with sauceH. notaker. A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page Over Seven Centuries from crushed boiled swan entrails, mixed with bread and powdered ginger. All the feathers had to be returned to the cooked carcass so that the game looked like it was alive. And be sure to paint all this stuff with bird blood, because red and white go well together.
If desired, it was possible to sprinkle the feathers with dried hare or even children's blood (of course, donated voluntarily by some servant).
The bird, prepared according to the recipe, was spread its feathered wings and fixed the neck with wire, putting it in a natural pose. The swan could be replaced by a stork, a peacock, or any other pretty bird. Author emphasizesH. notaker. A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page Over Seven Centurieswhat dish you need spice up yellow pepper. Apparently it's important.
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- 12 Most Disgusting Foods You Can Eat
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