Renaissance Cookery
A Very Good Stargazy Pie
I’ve been thinking that I should revive this, at least long enough to get through my folder of oddities, and what better day to delude yourself with good intentions? Last spring I cooked a fish pie from the classic 1654 cookbook by Elizabeth Talbot Grey, Countess of Kent, A True Gentlewoman’s Delight. Wherein is contained [...]
Introducing the Tomato: Madde Apples and Love Apples
Like with corn, the origin of the tomato had already been lost less than 100 years after it was discovered. Gerard cautions against eating the “Raging Apple” as he calls what I believe we’d refer to as a “Roma” tomato because they can be poisonous (because the tomato is in the same family as belladonna [...]
Quail Stuffed Grape Leaves
Game birds are more difficult to find for a reasonable price than you’d like – makes you think about buying a shotgun – but I turned up some lovely frozen quail at my local market (The Roslindale Fish Market for those in the Boston area) and did them up with a sort of composite recipe [...]
Crudifest, March 2010
Images from crudifest 2010 – in the excitement we seem to have missed taking any pictures of some lovely 1654 apple pyes, but so be it. I’ll give a blow by blow of the recipes and methods soon – the “wild yeast bread” was left overnight to attract wild yeasts to leaven it, but was [...]
Ancient pasta month continues with ravioli [and rauioles and rafioules]
Ravioli appears to pre-date most of its close relatives – the dumplings, perogis and other stuffed pastas that are found all over Europe. This delicious morsel makes a somewhat surprising early appearance in the late 14th century English cookbook, Forme of Cury, written by “the chief Master Cooks of King Richard II”. Although channels were [...]
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 [...]
Salt Cod is Usually Delicious
I’m a big salt cod proponent – it’s semi-cheap (once you factor in how you’re not paying for the water), much tastier than normal fish because the drying process concentrates the flavors, and it keeps forever. So, this recipe seemed like it would be a simple, pleasant success. It wasn’t a train wreck, but… This [...]
Roux, Making Sauce Saucy Since 1651
Before the roux – now a flour butter`mixture, originally a pork fat and flour mixture – sauces were thickened by the addition of bread crumbs, bread, or, famously (and regrettably) macaroons. In 1651 La Varenne gave us the first recipe for a roux, and sauce has never been the same. Roux tips: Hervé This (in [...]
Spit Roasting a Pheasant is Time Consuming
Bartolomeo Scappi is the second, after Maestro Martino di Como, of the great Italian Renaissance cooks (though it can be argued that Scappi was the first to make a break with medieval cookery dogma). He was the personal chef for two popes, and assembled his Opera to instruct his apprentices in their work. His cookbook [...]
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