England
The First English Curry Recipe
Hannah Glasse’s enormously successful 1747 cookbook contained the first curry recipe to appear in an English cookbook. It didn’t make a notable splash in the moment, but 264 years later, curry is far and away the most popular dish on that flavor starved island, and the English and curry are inextricably linked. My copy of [...]
Eating Chaucer: The Cook
Just came across this nice engraving of Chaucer’s Cook in Urry’s 1721 edition of Chaucer (the first edition not printed in black letter or “gothic” style type). Chaucer, and my notion that I should eat every food mentioned in the Canterbury Tales, was the genesis of cruditas, and Chaucer’s cook, and his jakkes of Dover, [...]
Candie Carrots vs. Deadly and Stinking Carrots
More from Gerard’s Herball. In 1597 there were candie carrots “soveraigne remedy against…poison” not to mention that you could drink water fixed up with the seeds in it to prevent “the strangurie” (which, regrettably, is difficulty peeing. Still, it would be considerably more entertaining to go to the doctor and say “I’ve got a touch [...]
Turkey Wheate from John Gerard’s Herbal
The first in a series of posts celebrating Gerard’s 1597 masterpiece The Herball or Generall historie of plantes. Gerard’s Herball was one of the first publications to discuss the New World food basket that had been imported over the last century. Gerard, like most European farmers, was skeptical: These kinds of Graine were first brought [...]
Apple Fritters, Eden, and Ale Batter
It’s basically a beer batter with apples – I used a bit of saffron for color and added a touch of active dry yeast to a 1/4 cup of warmed beer to make sure that it would rise enough. You can also make the batter the night before and it will usually rise a bit. [...]
Thanksgiving: Wherein a chicken rides a turkey to dinner and a pumpkin pie is filled with cheese
I have a very understanding family: To make various mixtures with which to stuff every sort of commonly eaten animal, quadraped and fowl. Get four pounds of pork fat that is not rancid and with knives beat it finely together with two pounds of liver of a goat kid…adding in beaten mint, sweet marjoran, burnet [...]
Mortreux and a Pie
Originally published for “Eating Chaucer”, Mortreux is a definite one-off dish: Amusing, charming in its way, but not exactly screaming to be revisited. The pie, on the other hand, is genius and worthy of a place in any pie repertoire. Mortreux, as expected, was somewhat simpler to make than blank manger but more of a [...]
Blank maunger
Blancmange (no one knows how to spell it) is one of the rare medieval recipes that has survived to the present day, though not without some major revisions. What was once a chicken and rice suspension sweetened with sugar and flavored with cinnamon, anise, and almonds, is now a gelatin aided frequently almond custard. I [...]
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