Research Dumping Grounds

The magazine “Medieval History” had an article about making meat pies in.. issue 5 I think (NOTE: Article by same author here: http://cunnan.sca.org.au/upload/1/18/Pyes_de_pares.pdf). It was a very interesting article. The author said that in period pies or coffins were used instead of canning. Essentially, the pie shell was so thick and totally sealed that it kept the food good for -weeks-. That’s very cool. I want to try camping without a cooler.. and keeping a pie good for a couple weeks seems like a good way to do it.

Before March Crown I attempted to follow their pie crust recipe. I ended up with something equivalent to moderately wet sand. It wouldn’t roll out. It wouldn’t mold into a reasonable pie shell. All in all it was a very very big let down.

I’m still very interested in trying it. I decided I’d start out with Mom’s pie crust(the pie crust I’ve made for years and is very very dependable).. and modify that as seems appropriate. So this last weekend I started with Mom’s pie crust.. and a general pie recipe found in “The Good Huswifes Jewell” found here:
http://infotrope.net/sca/texts/good-huswifes-jewell/book1.html

To make a pie
First perboyle your flesh and presse it and when it is pressed, season it with pepper and salt whilest it is hot, then larde it make your paste of Rie flower: it must bee verye thick, or else it will not hold, when it is seasoned and larded laye it in your pie, then cast on it before you close it a good deale of Cloves and Mace beaten small, and throwe uppon that a good deale of Butter, and so close it up: you must leave a hole in the top of the lid, & when it hath stoode two houres in the oven, you must fill it as full of Vineger as you can, and then stoppe the hole as close as you can with paste, and then set it into the Oven againe: your Oven must be very whot as the first, and that your pies will keepe a greate while, the longer you keepe them, the better they will bee: when they bee taken out of the Oven and almost colde, you muste make them betweene your handes, and set them with the bottome upwarde, and when you set them into the Oven, bee well ware that one pye toucheth not an other my more than ones hand bredth: Remember also to let them stand in the Oven after the vineger be in two houres and more.

Steps I followed:
Boil water. Cut a flank steak up into 1″ square cubes. Boil for 1 minute. Drain and press. Salt and pepper to taste. Mix with lard (I made lard by making myself a bacon sandwich for lunch)(I’m not sure how much lard I used.. enought to coat all the meat with a little bit juicy left over). Set asside.

Mix up pie crust.
Mix 2 cups flour with 1 teaspoon salt. Cut 2/3 cup butter flavored crisco into dry mix until it resembles cornmeal. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time mixing until most of the wet mix forms a ball.

(I meant to add 3 egg yolks to the mix but I forgot until after I was done. The egg yolks yellow the crust more and makes it much more elastic)

Knead 2-3 times until it forms a solid ball. Divide dough in half. Roll dough out somewhat and then use finger to pinch sides up to form sides of pie. Keep pressing and pinching until the pie is big enough to hold your filling. Transfer coffin to cookie sheet for baking (I used a pizza pan with a lip to catch any drippings. There weren’t any drippings.. and if you do it right there won’t be any drippings.. but it’s better safe…). Put filling in coffin. Roll out the other 1/2 of the dough for the crust of the pie. Cover top of the pie. Pinch off the edges until the top fits the pie. Retain about a handful of dough for later. Pinch the edges of the coffin so it bonds tightly with the top crust(wet it if necessary to get a good seal). Put a hole in the top crust (needs to be big enough to pour into).

Bake at 225F for 2 hours. Pour vinegar in hole to fill pie. Jostle pie and keep filling until it can’t take any more (I used sherry cooking vinegar). Stop up hole with left over dough. Use a lot. It has to seal the pie closed. Cook for 30 mins at 350F. Cook for 30 mins at 225F. Shut off oven and leave pie in oven until it’s cool (approximately 1 more hour). Store pie upside down.

The recipe says this keeps for a while. I was hungry so I cut into it while it was still a bit warm. I found that the filling is very salty. I think this is because I used bacon grease and “cooking vinegar”. Next time I’ll try it with tallow instead and maybe verjuice (cooking vinegar is very high in salt). Although I filled the pie up with a lot of vinegar there really wasn’t very much juice left over when I cut into it. The meat which had started off as very tough and very tasteless when I boiled it is now tasty and falling apart.

I think I’ll try chicken later this week. Not sure where to find tallow though…

Prince Biskets of many colors
Prince-Bisket
Hugh Platt p. 14/94
Take one pound of very fine flower, and one pound of fine sugar, and eight egges, and two spoonfuls of Rose water, and one ounce of Carroway seeds, and beat it all to batter one whole houre: for the more you beat it, the better your bread is: then bake it in coffins, of white plate, being basted with a little butter before you put in your batter, and so keep it.

I got the redaction for this from Cariadoc’s website:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/desserts.html#3

4 c flour (1 lb)
2 c sugar (1 lb)
5 eggs
4 t caraway seeds (1 oz)
2 t rose water
Beat all ingredients together one whole hour (or do a fourth of a recipe at a time in a food processor, processing it for several minutes or until the blades stall). Spoon out onto a greased cookie sheet as 3″ biscuits and bake about 20 minutes at 325deg. .

For the feast I made 3 batches of cookies in half-batches and colored these with food coloring to get 6 total colors (plain, red, yellow, green, blue, purple). I’ve made prince biskets in the past and they’re always very very hard. So this time we rolled them very very thin (less than 1/4 inch thick). As expected, they baked up very very hard. They’re still very addictive and because they’re so hard you have to eat them very slowly.

Three batches made for lots of left over cookies. These keep well and I’ll take them camping until they’re all gone.

Bourblier of boar
43. Bourblier of fresh boar.
Taillevent, p. 22
Put it into boiling water, remove it very soon, roast it, and baste it with a sauce made of spices (to wit, ginger, cassia, cloves, grains of paradise and some grilled bread soaked with wine, verjuice and vinegar). When it is cooked, [cut it into bits and boil] everything together. It should be clearish and black.

Goodman of Paris
Bourbelier of WILD PIG. First you must put it in boiling water and take it out quickly and stick with cloves; put it on to roast, and baste with a sauce made of spices, that is ginger, cinnamon, clove, grain, long pepper and nutmegs, mixed with verjuice, wine and vinegar, and without boiling use it to baste; and when it is roasted it should be boiled up together, And this sauce is called boar’s tail, and you will find it later (and there it is thickened with bread: and here, not).

A BOAR’S TAIL SAUCE. Take pork numbles, rabbits and river-birds, and put them on the spit, with a dripping-pan beneath, with good wine and some vinegar. And take grain, ginger, clove, nutmeg and long pepper and cinnamon, and grind and remove from the mortar: then grind up toasted bread soaked in good wine, and pass it through the sieve; and then pour everything which is in the dripping-pan and the spices and bread into an iron pan or a pot with liquid from the meat, and add the roast you made it with, having already stuck it with cloves.
Thus you may make a sauce for breast of wild boar.
Note that nutmegs, mace, and galingale cause headaches.

Sylvie’s Redaction:
Whole cloves
1/4 tsp Ginger
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Grains of paradise
1/8 t nutmeg
1 cup Wine
1 cup Vinegar
Quickly parboil pork roast. Stud with whole cloves. Roast in 450 degree oven for 1 hr 45 mins for 3 lb roast(until meat thermometer reads greater than 170). Baste with sauce. At feast, warm covered in foil, slice and serve.

In the taste testing we found that the strength of the apple cider vinegar completely overwhelmed the verjuice. It was decided that since you couldn’t taste the verjuice, and verjuice is very expensive, that instead we’d use just apple cider vinegar. In retrospect I think I should have used 1/2 apple cider vinegar and 1/2 water (or more wine). The vinegar in this dish was very strong. Everytime I opened the oven I got a lung full of vinegar steam (not the most pleasant sensation).

Despite this the roasts turned out lovely and were very tasty.

When making this dish, be sure to get pork roasts that haven’t been enhanced with a saline solution. In our taste test we found that the enhanced pork was WAY too salty and bordered on unpleasant.

Cameline

152. To make Cameline [Sauce].
Taillevent, p. 47.
Take ginger, plenty of cassia, cloves, grains of paradise, mastic thyme and long pepper (if you wish). Sieve bread soaked in vinegar, strain [through cheesecloth], and salt to taste.

CAMELINE.
Goodman of Paris.
Note that at Tournais, to make cameline, they grind together ginger, cinnamon and saffron and half a nutmeg: soak in wine, then take out of the mortar; then have white bread crumbs, not toasted, moistened with cold water and grind in the mortar, soak in wine and strain, then boil it all, and lastly add red sugar: and this is winter cameline. And in summer they make it the same way, but it is not boiled.
And in truth, for my taste, the winter sort is good, but the following is much better: grind a little ginger with lots of cinnamon, then take it out, and have lots of toasted bread or bread-crumbs in vinegar, ground and strained.

Cameline Sauce
Libro per Cuoco
in “The Original Mediterranean Cuisine” by Barbara Santich, p. 61

XCI. To make the best cameline sauce, take blanched almonds and grind them and sieve them, take dried currants and cinnamon and cloves and a
little of the inside of the loaf, and grind all these together and mix with verjuice and it’s made.

Anahita’s version
Best Cameline

2 c. ground blanched almonds
2 c. currants
2 TB and 2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 TB and 1 tsp ground cloves
1 c. fine bread crumbs
2 c. verjus or Middle Eastern sour grape juice
water as needed

1. Grind almonds and sieve them
2. Grind together with currants, cinnamon, clove, and “a little of inside of loaf”
3. Moisten with verjus
4. Taste and adjust – you may want to add more verjus or some water,
to get the flavor you prefer.

This was enough for around 70+ diners.

Summertime Cerulean Blue Sauce
Medieval Kitchen, p. 168, From Libro de arte coquinaria.

Sapor celeste de estate
Piglia de li moroni salvatiche che noscono in le fratte, et un poche de amondole ben piste, con un pocho di zenzevero. Et queste cose distemperatai con agresto et passarale per la stamegnia

Sky-blue sauce for summer
Take some of the wild blackberries that grow in hedgerows and some thoroughly pounded almonds, with a little ginger. And moisten these things with verjuice and strain through a sieve.

Medieval Kitchen’s redaction:
1 quart (1 liter) blackberries
1/3 cup (50 g) unblanched almonds
2/3 cup verjuice, or a mixture of two parts cider vinegar to one part water
1/4-inch slice ginger, peeled
salt

Puree the blackberries in a food processor or food mill, and strain the juice, pressing to extract as much liquid as possible. In a mortar or in a blender, grind the almonds and ginger, then mix with the blackberry juice. Contact with the air will turn the mixture a dark blue. Add the verjuice and strain once more. Season with salt to taste.

This didn’t come out blue. It came out a very deep berry red. It -might- have turned blue if I’d added water to it and then strained out the berry meat. It just seemed a shame to waste all that berry meat so I left it in.

Savoury Tosted or Melted Cheese
Digby p. 228/177

Cut pieces of quick, fat, rich, well tasted cheese, (as the best of Brye, Cheshire, &c. or sharp thick Cream-Cheese) into a dish of thick beaten melted Butter, that hath served for Sparages or the like, or pease, or other boiled Sallet, or ragout of meat, or gravy of Mutton: and, if you will, Chop some of the Asparages among it, or slices of Gambon of Bacon, or fresh-collops, or Onions, or Sibboulets [green onions], or Anchovis, and set all this to melt upon a Chafing-dish of Coals, and stir all well together, to Incorporate them; and when all is of an equal consistence, strew some gross White-Pepper on it, and eat it with tosts or crusts of White-bread. You may scorch it at the top with a hot Fire-Shovel.

Cariadoc & Elizabeth’s Redaction

Anne’s Quick to Make Redaction of the Cheesey Goo for May Revel Pot Luck
1/2lb butter
1/2lb cream cheese
1 small plastic container of 100% brie, 5oz, no rind
White pepper to taste

Melt the butter. Dump in the cream cheese, and start whisking. It
will become rather nasty looking as the cream cheese melts, and the curds in the cream cheese refuse to talk to the oils in the butter. Just keep whisking.

When the cream cheese has fully melted into curds, add the brie. Just keep whisking. Ignore the desire to lick the last of the brie out of the plastic container. Just keep whisking.

As soon as the brie melts into the cream cheese/butter mess, it will start to turn the consistency of a good fondue.
Add pepper to taste. Serve ASAP.

Sylvie’s Redaction:
1 stick butter
16 oz cream cheese
16 oz brie

Melt butter until it browns. Add cream cheese. Keep whisking until it’s completely smooth and evenly mixed. Add Brie. Keep whisking until cheese is totally smooth. Serve with fruits (apples, pears, etc), vegetables (carrots, broccoli, asparagus, etc) and bread (sweet french, sour dough, etc). (I’ve also been told it’s good on chicken)

Interesting alternatives:
– Substitute half of the brie with blue cheese.
– Add another cheese (cheddar, blue cheese, etc).
– Start off with about ½ a pound of bacon. Cook until crispy. Then add butter. Use less butter.
– After adding butter add about ½ a sliced onion or scallions or leeks. Cook until “onions” starts to brown.
– Season with white pepper.

Citrus Sauce
To boile a Capon with Orenges and Lemmons
The Good Huswifes Jewell
Take Orenges or Lemmons pilled, and cutte them the long way, and if you can keepe your cloves whole and put them into your best broth of Mutton or Capon with prunes or currants and three or fowre dates, and when these have beene well sodden put whole pepper great mace, a good piece of suger, some rose water, and eyther white or claret Wine, and let al these seeth together a while, and so serve it upon soppes with your capon.

Sylvie’s Redaction:

4 cups lemon/lime juice
1 tsp whole cloves
2/3 cups currants
1 cup whole seeded dates
2 tsp peppercorns
2/3 cup sugar
2 cups white wine
2 cups water

Take the meat/juice of the lemons and limes from the candied fruit peel recipe and combine that with cloves, currants, dates. Boil until it’s all mushy and the dates disintegrate. Add peppercorns, sugar, white wine and water. Let it sit overnight. Strain out everything solid and serve.

For the feast I had a bunch of lemon/lime juice/meat from making the candied citrus peels. I wanted to use that somewhere and a sauce seemed to be the best bet. I wish I’d left out the lime juice. The sauce was a little bit more bitter than I would have liked.

Green Garlic Sauce
155. Green Garlic [Sauce].
Taillevent, p. 47.
Crush garlic, bread and greens, and steep together.

[Note: this is in a section titled "How to make unboilded sauces." So "steep" can’t mean boil.]

VERDE [1] SAWSE. XX.VII.
Forme of Cury.

Take parsel. mynt. garlek. a litul serpell [2] and sawge, a litul canel. gyngur. piper. wyne. brede. vynegur & salt grynde it smal with safroun & messe it forth.

[1] Verde. It has the sound of _Green-sauce_, but as there is no Sorel in it, it is so named from the other herbs.
[2] a litul serpell. Wild thyme.

WHITE OR GREEN GARLIC SAUCE
Menagier de Paris.
For Birds Or Beef. Grind a clove of garlic and white untoasted bread-crumbs, and soak in white verjuice; and if you want it green for fish, grind in some parsley and sorrel or one of these or rosemary.

Sylvie’s Redaction:
2 bottles of pre-pureed garlic
3 bunches of fresh parsley
2 cups apple cider vinegar>

Use food processor on parsley until it’s very finely chopped. Mix with garlic. Add vinegar.

When shopping I found that pre-pureed garlic was cheaper than the same amount of unprocessed garlic. Less work is good.

One of the bunches of garlic was also used to color the leach.

Honey Glazed Vegetables
For the honeyed veggies I used Vigdis’ recipe.

Turnips, carrots, squash, fennel root, parsley root: cook in a little water until almost tender. Add honey, and cook until liquid is mostly evaporated, coating all vegetables with the honey. (based on (MdP)
Turnips (6 lbs)
Carrots (7 lbs)
Squash (7 lbs)
Fennel root (4 lbs)
Parsley root (4 lbs)
Honey (4 cups)
Clean & chop all veggies. Cook in a little water until almost tender. Add honey, and cook until liquid is mostly evaporated, coating all vegetables with honey.

I couldn’t find any parsley root so we left it out. We also felt that the fennel root would be too much so we only used about 2 lbs of fennel root. At the feast we added the leftover pears and apples from the first course to the honeyed veggies at the same time we added the honey.