Note: This was translated from the French edition of Jerome Pichon published in 1846. Footnotes marked JP are by him; those marked JH are by Janet Hinson, the translator; those marked DDF and EGC are by David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook, respectively.
(c) Janet Hinson
After these matters it is desirable to tell you of various general terms relating to cookery of any quality, and then you will be shown how to know and choose the foods with which you will work, as follows :
First, when you grind spices and bread for any sauces or soups, you must grind the spices first and remove them from the mortar, for as you grind the bread it will gather up any spices remaining; thus you do not lose any speck which would be lost otherwise.
Item, sauces and thickening agents for soups should never be strained, whereas for sauces they should be so that the sauces be clearer and also more pleasing.
Item, you should know that it is unlikely for peas or beans or other soups to stick to the bottom of the pot, if the burning logs do not touch the underside of the pot while it is on the fire. - Item, before your soup sticks, and so that it will not stick, stir the bottom of the pot often getting your spoon down to the depths, so that the soup does not lump there. And note that as soon as you see your soup is sticking, do not stir it at all but take it immediately off the fire and put in another pot.
Item, note that commonly any soup which is on the fire will boil up and over on to the said fire until you add salt and grease to the pot, and then it will not.
Item, note that the best soup there is, is cheek of beef washed in water two or three times, then boiled and well skimmed.
Item, you can tell if a coney is fat by feeling a tendon in the neck between the two shoulders, for there you can tell if it has much fat by the large tendon; and if it is tender, you can tell by breaking one of the hind legs.
Item, note that there is a difference between sticking and larding, for the first is with cloves and the other with bacon.
Item, with pike, the soft roe is better than the hard roe, unless you want to make rissoles, as you use the hard roe for rissoles, ut patet in tabula. With pike, we speak of "lanceron", the smallest, "pike" in the middle, and then "quarrel", the biggest.
Item, shad comes into season in March.
Item, carp must be well-cooked otherwise there is danger in eating it.
Item, plaice feel smooth to the hand, sole do not.
Item, in Paris the goose-sellers fatten their geese on wheat-flour, not the finest flour nor bran, but that which falls between the two, namely fine or double-milled: and to this flour they add an equal amount of oats, and mix it together with a little water, and this holds together like a paste, and they put this food in a four-legged feeding-trough, and nearby, water and litter fresh each day, and in fifteen days they are fat. And note that the litter enables them to keep their feathers clean.
Item, to age capons and hens, you should bleed them through their beaks and immediately put them in a pail of very cold water, holding them all the way under, and they will be aged that same day as if they had been killed and hung two days ago.
You can tell young ducks from old ones, when they are all the same size, by the quills which on the young ones are more tender.--Item, you have to know which ones are from the river, with delicate black toe-nails and red feet, while those from the stable-yard have yellow feet. Item, the crest of the head, that is to say the top, is green throughout its length, and sometimes the males have a white patch across their necks at the nape, and they all have very changeable plumage, including that on top of the head.
Item, wood-pigeons are good in winter, and you can tell the old ones in that the secondary wing-feathers are all black, whereas those of the young ones of a year old are grey and the remainder black.
Item, you can tell the age of a hare from the number of openings under its tail, for there will be as many openings as years.
Item, partridge whose feathers are tight and well joined to the flesh, and are neatly and well joined and are in excellent order, are freshly killed: and those partridge whose feathers lift up crosswise and fall out and lose their hold on the flesh and go every which way, were killed less recently.--Item, when pulling the feathers from the belly, smell it.
Item, carp with pale-coloured scales and no yellow or red, are from good water. One with large eyes starting out of its head, and whose tongue and the roof of the mouth are smooth and oily, is fat. And note, if you wish to carry a live carp for a whole day, wrap it in damp hay and carry it belly up, without giving it any air, that is to say in a sack or a bag.
Trout season begins in[1] ... and lasts till September. The white are good in winter, and salmon-trout in summer. The best part of the trout is the tail, and of the carp, the head.
Item, an eel with a small head, slender mouth, shiny, shimmering, sparkling skin, small eyes, a large body and pale belly, is the finest sort. The other sort has a big head, yellow belly, and coarse brown skin.
Hereafter follow some dinners and suppers for great lords and others, with notes on those you might choose, to collect and learn about those dishes which please you, according to the seasons and the foods available in the country where you will be, whether you have to serve dinner or supper.
I. Meat-day Dinner, Thirty-one dishes in Six Platters.
First platter. Grenache wine[2] and toast-rounds, veal pies, pompano[3] pies, black-puddings and sausages.
Second platter. Hare stew and ribs, strained peas, salted and coarse meat, smoked eels 12[4] and other fish.
Third platter. Roast: coneys, partridge, capons, etc., eel-pout, brill, and a soup of chopped meats 35,36,37.
Fourth platter. Water-fowl a la dodine[5], smothered rice 37, and a mold of eels with hot sauce 26.
Fifth platter. Shad pies, rissoles, sugared milk 41, sugared flans.
Sixth platter. Pears and~sugared almonds, medlars and shelled nuts. Hippocras and wafers[6].
II. Another Meat Dinner of Twenty-four Dishes with Six Platters.
First platter. Pies of veal chopped small in grease and marrow of beef, pompano pies, black-puddings, sausages, forcemeat, and rich pies de quibus[7] 41.
Second platter. Hare soup 16 and eel broth; strained beans, salted meats, coarse meats, that is to say beef and mutton.
Third platter. Roast: capons, coneys, veal and partridge, freshwater and saltwater fish, any chopped 36 and browned 39 [vegetables].
Fourth dish. River ducks a la dodine, tench both in soups and molded with hot sauce[8] 26, fat capons in soup with chicken-fat and parsley.
Fifth dish. A bacon gruel, smothered rice, jellied eels, any roast saltwater or freshwater fish, rissoles 41, thin pancakes and much sugar [or sugared sea-wife, a fish (JH)].
The sixth and last remove to be served. Little sugared tarts and sugared milk, medlars, shelled nuts, cooked pears and sugared almond. Hippocras and wafers.
III. Another Meat Dinner.
First dish. Beef pies and rissoles, black beet, lampreys in cold sage soup, a German meat soup, a white sauce of fish and an abarlester[9], and the coarse meat of beef and mutton.
Second dish. Roast meat, freshwater fish, saltwater fish, meat cracklings, little tarts, a roast of young rabbits and forcemeat in hot sauce, Pisan tarts of small birds--that is, from Pisa in Lombardy, and sometimes called Lombard tarts, and there are small birds amid the stuffing, and in several places hereafter they are called Lombard tarts.
Third dish. Tench soup, decorated fricassee, sugared milk with bread-crusts, boar's tail in hot sauce, capons a la dodine, salmon and bream pies, plaice in water and fried bread-slices and meat tarts.
Fourth dish. Frumenty, venison, roast fish, cold sage soup, jellied eels, fish jellies, capon pies with thick broth.
IV. Another Meat Dinner.
First dish. Rich pasties 40, a stew of meat, beef marrow fritters, smoked eels, loach in water and cold sage soup, coarse meat and saltwater fish.
Second dish. The best roast you can make and freshwater fish, a bacon gruel, a slab of meat, capon pies and thin pancakes, bream pies, eel pies, and fricassee.
Third dish. Frumenty, venison, lamprey in hot sauce 26, fried bread slices, bream roasted and meat tarts, sturgeon and jelly.
V. Another Meat Dinner.
First dish and platter. Beef and marrow pies, hare soup, coarse meat, a white broth of coneys, capons and venison in soups, white beet, turnips, salted olives and sciaenas [an edible fish (JH)].
Second dish. The best roast etc., a grill of shad, a fricassee, numbles and tail of boar with hot sauce 26, fat capons in pies, fritters and rich pasties.
Third platter. Frumenty, venison, browned [vegetables] of various kinds, olives and fat capons a la dodine, cream fritters and sugared fried bread slices, forcemeat in hot galantine 26, a jelly of capons, coneys, chicks, young rabbits and pigs.
Fourth platter. Hippocras and wafers to finish.
VI. Another Meat Dinner.
First dish. Fresh beans, a cinnamon broth 13, a stew of black hare 16, a green soup of eels 17, smoked herring, coarse meat, turnips, tench soups, salted sciaenas and olives, beef marrow rissoles 4 and skewers (kebabs) of beef ut pa[10].
Second dish. Roast the best that you can, sweetwater fish, saltwater fish, plaice in water, forcemeat in hot sauce like lampreys- 26, a shad soup g. i. g.[11] peach flower, portioned fricassee, Lombardy tarts, pies of venison and small birds, sweet chestnuts, fresh herring.
Third dish. Frumenty, venison, browned [vegetables], fish jellies, fat capons a la dodine, roast of fish, fried bread slices and meat tarts, jellied eels, crayfish, thin pancakes and little sausages.
VII. Another Meat Dinner.
First dish. White beet, beef kebabs, coarse meat, veal stew, marrow-bone soup.
Second dish. Roast meat, freshwater and saltwater fish, Lombardy tarts, sweet chestnuts.
Third dish. Lampreys, shad, a roast, sweetened milk with crusts in it, Pisan that is Lombardy tarts, cream fritters.
Fourth dish. Frumenty, venison, browned vegetables, bream and gurnard[12] pies, jellied eels, fat capons a la dodine.
The end is Hippocras and wafers.--Extra drink; wine and spices.
VIII. Another Meat Dinner.
First dish. Coarse meat, rich pasties, beef-marrow fritters, meat broth, smoked eels, loach in water, saltwater fish and cold sage soup.
Second dish. Roast the best that you can, freshwater fish, a slab of beef, bacon gruel with chervil [or with kid (JH)], capon pies, thin pancakes, pies of bream and eel and fricassee.
Third dish. Frumenty, venison, browned [vegetables], lampreys in a hot sauce, fried bread slices and meat tarts, roast bream, gruel with verjuice, sturgeon and jelly.
IX. Another Meat Dinner.
First dish. White beets, beef pies, olives and sciaenas, soup of hares and coneys, a pie of shad, coarse meat.
Second dish. Roast: boar's tail with hot sauce 26, decorated fricassee, olives, sweetened milk with crusts in it, venison, browned [vegetables], jellies, crusts in milk a la dodine, capon pies, cold sage soup, pies of cow and talemouse[13].
X. Another Meat Dish.
First service. Strained peas, herring, salted eels, black oyster broth, an almond broth, napkins, a gruel of pike and eels, cracklings, a green stew of eels, pies of silver.
Second service. Sea fish, freshwater fish, pies of bream and salmon, jellied eels, a brown arbalester, tench in a bacon gruel, a fricassee, thin pancakes, lettuce, lozenges, little ears and rich pasties, stuffed salmon and loach.
Third service. Frumenty, venison, browned apples and Spanish peas and young lampreys, roast of fish, jelly, lampreys, congers and turbot with green sauce, bream in verjuice, fried bread slices, meat tarts and a large side-dish.
XI. Another Dinner.
First service. Beef pies and rissoles, black beet, a stew of lampreys, a German meat broth, a Georgian meat broth, a white fish sauce, an arbalester.
Second service. Roast meat, sea fish, freshwater fish, meat cracklings, little tarts, a grill of young rabbits and small birds, forcemeat in hot sauce 26, Pisan tarts.
Third service. Tench in soup, portioned fricassee, bread-crusts in milk with sugar, boars' tails in hot sauce 26, capons a la dodine, salmon and bream pies, plaice in water, fried bread slices and meat tarts.
Fourth service. Frumenty, venison, browned [vegetables], roast fish, cold sage soup, jellied eels, fish jelly, capon pies.
XII. Another Dinner.
First service. Tender beans, a cinnamon broth, a stew of black hare or a green eel broth, smoked herrings, coarse meat, turnips, tench in soup, olives and salted sciaenas, beef-marrow rissoles.
Second service. Roast the best that you can get, freshwater fish, sea fish, plaice in water, forcemeat in hot sauce, a shad stew the colour of peach blossom, portioned fricassee, Lombardy tarts, pies of venison and little birds, Spanish crackling, fresh herrings.
Third service. Frumenty, venison, browned [vegetables], fish jelly, fat capons a la dodine, fish roast, fried bread slices and meat tarts, jellied eels, crayfish, thin pancakes and little sausages.
XIII. Another Meat Dinner.
First service. A German broth, a head of cabbage, smoked eels, turnips, beef pies, coarse meat.
Second service. Roast the best you can get, fat geese a la dodine, freshwater fish, fricassee, an arbalester, rich pasties, thin pancakes, sugared milk, milk tarts.
Third service. Capon pies a la dodine, smothered rice, boar's tail in hot sauce, fried bread-slices and sugared meat tarts.
Fourth service. Frumenty, venison, browned [vegetables], jellied eels, a roast of bream.
Boar's head as the side-dish.
XIV. Another Meat Dinner.
First service. White beets with capons, roast goose with sciaena and chitterlings, pieces of beef and mutton, a Georgian stew of hares, veal, coneys.
Second service. Capons, partridge, coneys, plovers, stuffed pigs, pheasants for the lords[14], jelly of meat and fish.
Side-dish. Loach and carp.
Raised side-dish. Swan, peacock, bittern, heron and other things.
The end. Venison, smothered rice, capon pies, cream flans, meat tarts, jellied eels, fruit, wafers, waffles and claret[15].
XV. Another Dinner of Twenty-four Services[16] with Three Platters.
First service. Strained peas, salted eels and herring, leeks with almonds, coarse meat, a yellow broth, a game stew, sea fish, oyster stew.
Second service. Roast, freshwater fish, saltwater fish, a Savoy broth, a larded gruel of jellied eels.
Third service. Roast of bream, galantine, swan, caponized falcon, jelly, portioned fricassee, plaice in water, turbot with cypress [herb], cream tarts, lampreys in hot sauce, browned [vegetables], smothered rice, etc,
XVI. Meat Supper with Four Platters.
First platter. Game stew, hens with herbs, a broth of verjuice and mint, a [?something with spikes or spines, possibly a sea-cucumber(JH)] of [or in (JH)] a bacon gruel, pike and loach in water, salted young lampreys and red mullet.
Second service. Roast as well you can meat and fish, and dredge with parsley and vinegar, fish galantine, a white sauce over fish, and mesentery of calf or lamb.
Third service. Capon pies, pike and eels in a crust, lettuces, tubers and an arbalester, fish, thin pancakes and little sausages.
Fourth service. Jelly, crayfish, plaice in water, various small freshwater fish in cold sage soup, numbles in hot sauce, tailemouse and cow pies.--Soup to finish, known as jelly.
XVII. Another Meat Supper.
First platter. Capons with herbs, a cominy, daguenet [?Danish (JH)], peas, loach in yellow sauce, venison in soup.
Second service. Get the best roast you can, jelly, portioned fricassee, little cream tarts well sugared.
Third service. Capon pies, cold sage soup, stuffed shoulders of mutton, pike in broth, venison with boar's tail, crayfish.
XVIII. Another Meat Supper.
First service. Three sorts of soup, whole capons in a white broth, a cauldron of [things dug up--root vegetables?(JH)], venison in soup, loach and eels cut lengthwise on top.
Second service. Roast, capons, coneys, partridge, plovers, whiting, small birds, kid, a sweet fricassee, etc., loach, carp and sea-perch, etc., jellied eels.--Pheasants and swans as side-dishes.
Third service. Venison with frumenty, pies of turtle-doves and larks, tarts, crayfish, fresh herrings, fruit, claret, small pastries, wafers, pears, shelled nuts.
XIX. Fish Dinner for Lent.
First service and platter. Cooked apples, large roasted Provence figs with laurel leaves [bay leaves] on them, cress and sorrel with vinegar, strained peas, salted eels, white herring, sauce over a grill of saltwater and freshwater fish.
Second service. Carp, loach, sole, mullet, salmon, eels.
XX. Another Fish Dinner for Lent.
First service. Cooked apples, etc., as above.
Second service. Carp, loach, sole, mullet, salmon, jellied eels a la boue[17] and an arbalester.
Third service. Roast pompano, fried whiting, porpoise sprinkled with water and frumenty, thin pancakes and rich pasties. To end: figs and grapes, hippocras and wafers, as is told above.
XXI. Another Fish Dinner.
First service. Strained peas, thick soup, oyster stew, a white sauce of pike and perch, thick soup of cress, herring, fat peas, salted eels, loach in water.
Second service. Freshwater and saltwater fish, turbot with cypress, chopped[18], crisp pastry, eels in a galantine.
Third service. The finest and best roast that you can get, white pies, "larras"[?][19], loach with "waymel"[20], crayfish, perch in parsley and vinegar, tench in soup, jelly.
XXII. Another Fish Dinner.
First service. Strained peas, herring, thick soup, salted eels, oysters, a salmi of pike and carp.
Second service. Freshwater fish, smoked eels, rich pasties and portioned fricassee, an arbalester, pies, fritters.
Third service. Roast the best, etc., smothered rice, tarts, fried bread slices and meat tarts, salmon and bream pies, a hotpot.
Fourth service. Chopped [vegetables], thin pancakes, little sausages, endive, fried loach, browned [vegetables], congers and turbot with sugar [or cypress, depending on which version of the manuscript you like]; Lombardy tarts, jellied eels.
XXIII. Another Fish Dinner.
First service. Cooked apples, fat figs, Grenache wine, cress and mint, strained peas, shad, salted eel, herrings and fat peas, a white broth over perch, and dried perch in a sauce over fried fish.
Second service. Freshwater fish the best you can get and saltwater fish, jellied eels, stuffed fish in hot sauce, tench in soup, crayfish, bream pies and plaice in water.
Third service. Frumenty with porpoise, rich pasties and roast mackerel, pompano in a roast and thin pancakes, oysters, fried dried fish with a crisp pastry of pike.
XXIV. Another Fish Dinner.
First service. Strained peas, herring, salted eels, a stew of black oysters, almond broth, napkins, a gruel of pike and eels, cracklings, a green stew of eels, silver pies.
Second service. Saltwater fish, freshwater fish, bream and salmon pies, jellied eels, a brown arbalester, tench in a larded gruel, a fricassee, thin pancakes, lettuces, lozenges, little ears and rich pasties, stuffed salmon and loach.
Third service. Frumenty with porpoise, browned apples and Spanish peas and young lampreys, a roast of fish, jelly, lampreys, congers and turbot in green sauce, bream in verjuice, fried bread slices, meat tarts and the side-dishes: then Dessert, the Final Service and the Extras.
First, the display which the priest of Lagny had prepared for a dinner he gave for Monseigneur de Paris, the President, Procurator and Advocate of the King and the other members of the King's Council, amounting to eight bowls[21].
First, array of cloths to lay, dishes for cleaning and for the kitchen, may, green herb to put on the table, ewers and footed goblets, two bowls for sugared almonds, silver salt-cellars, two-day-old bread for bread-crumbs and trenchers. For the kitchen: two large pans, two water-vats and two brooms.
Note that Monseigneur de Paris had three squires of his people to serve him, and was served alone and with covered dishes[22]. And the President, one squire, and was served alone but from uncovered dishes. Item, by order of the said President, the King's Procurator was seated above the King's Advocate.
The platters and dishes follow: Grenache, two quarts, that is two persons per half-pint[23], but that is more than ample, for one half-pint suffices for three and there would be enough for seconds. Hot canary-bread, roasted oak-apples and white sugared almond on top, one quarter-pound: fat roast figs, five quarter-pounds: sorrel and cress, rosemary.
Soups, that is to say salmis of six becket [a fish (JH)] and six tench, green leek, and white herring, a quarter-pound: six freshwater eels salted the day before and three cod soaked overnight.
For the soups: almonds, six pounds; powdered ginger, half a pound; saffron, half an ounce; small spices, two ounces; powdered cinnamon, a quarter-pound, sugared almonds, half a pound.
Sea fish: soles, gurnards, congers, turbot, salmon. Freshwater fish: mild-flavored[24] loach, mild-flavored carp from the Marne[25], bream.
Side-dishes: plaice, lamprey in clay. Roast: other slabs [of fish? or perhaps trenchers here (JH)] and sixteen[26] oranges, porpoise in its sauce, mackerel, sole, bream, shad with cameline or in verjuice, rice with fried almonds on top; sugar for rice and for apples, one pound; little towels.
For dessert: compete, with red and white sugared almonds placed on top: rissoles, flans, figs, dates, grapes, nuts [specifically nux abellana: JP.]
Hippocras and the wafer dish to finish. Hippocras two quarts, and this is more than enough as is said above of the Grenache, two hundred wafers and supplications [another sort of wafer or waffle (JH)]. And note, for each bowl one takes eight wafers and four supplications and four stirrups [yet another wafer (JH)], which is plenty; and cost eight deniers per bowl.
Wine and spices are the extras [actually a sort of hors-d'oeuvre at the end of a meal: JP] To the washing, the thanksgivings and go to the dressing-room; and then the servants dine, and quite soon after wine and spices; and then farewell.
Platter: butter, none because it is a meat day. Item, cherries, none, because none could be found; and so no platter.
Soups: capons in fricassee, pomegranate and red sugared almonds on top.
Roast: on each plate a haunch of kid: haunch of kid is better than lamb; a gosling, two young chickens and sauces for them, oranges, cameline, verjuice, and for this fresh towels or napkins.
Side dish: crayfish jelly, loach jelly, small rabbits and pigs. Dessert: frumenty and venison. End: hippocras and wafers. Extras: wine and spices.
The arrangements for supper done this day are for ten bowls.
Cold sage soup of halves of young chickens and little geese, and a vinaigrette of this same dish for supper on a plate. A pie of two young rabbits and two flans - it is said that at French weddings you must have meat pies - and on the other dish the kids' mesenteries and the half-heads, browned.
Side-dish: jelly as above. End: apples and cheese without hippocras, because it is out of season[27].
Dancing, singing, wine and spices and torches for light.
Now we shall talk about the quantities of the things spoken of above and what goes with them and the prices, and who provides them and sells them.
At the baker's, ten dozen flat white bread baked one day ahead and costing one denier each[28].
Trencher bread, three dozen of half a foot in width and four fingers tall, baked four days before and browned[29], or what is called in the market Corbeil bread.
Vintner: three pairs of wines.
At the butcher, half a sheep to make the soup for the companions and a quarter of bacon for larding; the master bone of a leg of beef to cook with the capons so as to get broth to make the fricassee; a forequarter of veal to serve in the fricassee. For the seconds[30] a hind leg of veal or veal feet, to make the liquid for the jelly. Venison, a hefty leg.
At the pastry-cook order: first, to serve the young women, a dozen and a half conical wafers stuffed with cheese, three sous; a dozen and a half long wafers, six sous; a dozen and a half porte[31] wafers, eighteen deniers; a dozen and a half stirrup wafers, eighteen deniers; one hundred sugared cakes, eight deniers.
Item, they shopped for twenty bowls, for the wedding-day dinner, and for six bowls for the servants, and this cost six deniers per bowl, and served each bowl eight wafers, four supplications and four stirrup wafers.
At the poulterer, twenty capons, two Paris sous[32] each; five kids, four Paris sous; twenty young geese, three Paris sous each; fifty young chickens, twelve Paris deniers each; that is to say forty to be roast for the dinner, five for the jelly and five for supper in the cold soup. Fifty young rabbits, that is to say forty for the dinner, which will be roasted, and ten for jelly, and cost twelve Paris deniers each. A thin pig, for the jelly, four Paris sous; twelve pairs of pigeons for the supper, ten Paris deniers the pair. One may enquire of him for venison.
In the market, trencher bread, three dozen. Pomegranates for fricassee, three costing... Oranges, fifty costing... [33] Six new cheeses and one old, and three hundred eggs.
You must realise that each cheese must furnish six tartlets, and also for each cheese you need three eggs.
Sorrel to make verjuice for the chickens, sage and parsley for the cold soup, two hundred pommes de blandureau.
Two brooms and a shovel for the kitchen and salt.
At the sauce-maker's, three half-pints of cameline for dinner and supper and a quart of sorrel verjuice.
At the grocer's: ten pounds of almonds, forty deniers a pound. Three pounds of blanched wheat, eight deniers a pound[34]. - One pound of columbine ginger, eleven sous. - one quarter-pound of mesche ginger, five sous[35]. - A half-pound of ground cinnamon, five sous. - Two pounds of ground rice, two sous. - Two pound of lump sugar, sixteen sous. - A quarter-pound of cloves and seed of garlic, six sous. Half a quarter-pound of long pepper, four sous. - Half a quarter-pound of galingale[36], five sous. - Half a quarter-pound of mace[37], three sous four deniers. - Half a quarter-pound of green laurel leaves [bay leaves], six deniers. - Two pounds of tall thin candles, three sous four deniers the pound, making six sous eight deniers, - Torches at three pounds apiece, six; smaller torches at one pound apiece, six; that is to say a cost of three sous a pound, and six deniers less per pound on the returns[38](l2).
For chamber-spices [goodies served in the drawing-room or dressing-room (JH)], that is to say, candied orange peel, one pound, ten sous. - Candied citron, one pound, twelve sous. - Red anise, one pound, eight sous. - Rose-sugar (white sugar clarified and cooked in rose-water (JP), one pound, ten sous. - White sugared almonds, three pounds, ten sous a pound. - Of hippocras, three quarts, ten sous a quart, and all will be needed.
These spices amounted to twelve francs, including returns on the torches[39], and a few spices left over; this works out to half a franc per bowl[40].
At Pierre-au-Lait, a sixth of full-cream milk without water added, to make the frumenty.
In the Place de Greve, a hundredweight of coal from Burgundy, thirteen sous two sacks of charcoal, ten sous.
At the Forte-de-Paris: may, green herb, violet, bread-crumbs, a quarter of white salt, a quarter of coarse salt, a hundred crayfish, a half-litre of loach, two clay pots, one of six quarts for the jelly, and the other of two quarts for the cameline.
Well, first we have the service in general, and secondly where things can be found: so it is meet, thirdly, to find out about the administrators and officials.
First you need a clerk or varlet to shop for the green herb, violet, bread-crumbs, milk, cheese, eggs, fire-wood, coal, salt, vats and tubs for the dining-room as well as for the pantry, verjuice, vinegar, sorrel, sage, parsley, fresh garlic, two brooms, shovel and such small things.
Item, a cook and his varlets who will cost two francs to hire, without their other rights, but the cook will pay the varlets and porters, and as they say: the more bowls, the more to hire.
Item, two bread-slicers, of whom one will crumb the bread and make trenchers and salt-cellars out of bread, and will carry the salt and the bread and the trenchers to the tables, and will provide for the dining-room two or three strainers for the solid leftovers such as sops, broken breads, trenchers, meats and such things: and two buckets for soups, sauces and liquid things[41].
Item, you need one or two water-carriers. Item, big strong sergeants to guard the door.
Item, two kitchen equerries and two helpers for the kitchen sideboard, one of whom will do the purchasing for the kitchen offices, for pastry and for linens for six tables; you will need two big copper pots for twenty bowls, two boilers, four drainers, a mortar and pestle, six large kitchen towels, three large clay pots for wine, a large clay pot for soup, four wooden bowls and four wooden spoons, an iron pot, four large buckets with handles, two trivets and an iron spoon. And also they will shop for pewterware: that is to say, ten dozen bowls, six dozen small plates, two and a half dozen large plates, eight quart pots, two dozen pints, two alms pots[42].
Item about the townhouse; on this head you should know that the Beauvais[43] house cost Jehan de Chesne four francs; tables, trestles benches and the like, five francs; and flowers for headdresses cost him fifteen francs.
And the other kitchen equerry or his helper will go with the the cook to the butcher, the poulterer, the grocer, etc., to shop, choose, arrange and pay for portage; and he will have a cupboard locked with a key for the spices, etc., and will distribute all by reason and measure. And afterwards, they or their helpers will retrieve and keep the surplus in packets, closed up in the cupboard to avoid spoiling or excessive use by the menials.
You need two more equerries for the dining-room sideboard[44], who will give out spoons and retrieve them: they will give out goblets, and pour out such wine as will be asked of them for those at table, and they will retrieve the vessels.
Two other equerries for the cellar, who will get the wine to be carried to the sideboard, to the tables and elsewhere; and they will have a varlet to draw the wine.
Two of the most honest and knowledgeable servants, who will accompany the bridegroom all day and will go to table with him.
Two butlers to order the service and seating of the guests, a seater and two servers for each table, who will serve and clear: they will pour out the leftovers into the baskets, the sauces and broths into the buckets or the tubs, and will retrieve and carry the rest of the dishes to the kitchen equerries or others who will be designated to take them, and will carry nothing elsewhere.
The job of the butler is to provide salt-cellars for the high table; goblets, four dozen; goblets, covered, gilded, four; ewers, six; silver spoons, four dozen; silver quart mugs, four; alms pots, two; candy dishes, two.
A florist to make the floral head-dresses for the inspection day[45] and the wedding day.
The job of the women is to make provision for the hangings, to order and tend them, and especially to prepare the chamber and the bed which is to be blessed[46].
A washerwoman for braiding[47].
And note that if the bed is covered with broadcloth, you need a quill with fine hair: but if it is covered with serge, embroidery-work or pettypoint, it is not needed.
Platter: Grapes and peaches in little pies.
Soups: broth, four hares and veal; or for fricassee twenty capons, two sous four deniers apiece, or hens.
Roast: five pigs, twenty starlings(?), two sous four deniers apiece; forty partridge, two sous four deniers apiece.
Jelly: ten young chickens, twelve deniers; ten young rabbits, a pig; crayfish, one and a half hundred.
Frumenty, venison, pears and nuts. Note that for the frumenty you will need three hundred eggs.
Tartlets and other things, hippocras and wafers, wine and spices.
Supper. - Soup of twelve dozen goslings or of ten ducks, or sweet gruel of fresh venison. Pies of forty young rabbits, twenty young chickens, forty pigeons; forty meat tarts or sixty tartlets.
Note that three goslings in one bowl are enough; always when you have capon gizzards, put three goslings and half a gizzard in the bowl.
At the baker, as above in the other preceding wedding.
At the pastrycook, as above.
At the vintner, as above.
At the butcher, three quarters of mutton to make the soups for the companions, a quarter of bacon for larding, a forequarter of veal for the fricassee; for the servants, venison.
At the waferer, a dozen and a half stuffed wafers, that is to say fine flour kneaded with eggs and thin slices of cheese placed inside, and eighteen other wafers kneaded with eggs and without cheese. Item, a dozen and a half large rolled wafers, that is to say flour kneaded with eggs and powdered ginger beaten together and made into the shape of cylinders, and as large as a sausage: and then put between two irons on the fire. Item, a dozen and a half other rolled wafers and as many flat ones.
Item, it is appropriate in this regard (besides the products of the said waferer) to send for fifty pommes de blandureau, headdresses and fiddlers.
Item, as to the said waferer, service on the wedding day as above in the preceding wedding.
At the poulterer, roasts and game and venison as above.
At the market and at Forte-de-Paris, the required things as above.
At the sauce-maker, a quart of cameline for the dinner, and for supper two quarts of mustard.
At the grocer, chamber spices: sugared almonds, rose sugar, candied nuts, citron and "manus-Christi" ("hand of Christ")[49], four pounds for all. Item, hippocras. Kitchen spices: white powder, one pound; fine powder, half a pound; powdered cinnamon, half a pound for fricassee. Small- spices, two ounces. Loaf sugar, three pounds; three
pomegranates; red and white sugared almonds, half a pound; almonds, six pounds; ground rice, one pound; a quart of blanched wheat.
At the chandler get torches and candles at three sous a pound, with two sous six deniers on returns.
Item, for rental of linens, including six tables, three big copper pots, for six dozen bowls, two boilers, two strainers, a mortar, a pestle, six big kitchen towels, three big clay pots for wine, one big clay pot for soup, four wooden bowls, four wooden spoons, an iron pot, four large iron pots with handles, two trivets and a pierced iron spoon; for this, fifty-six Paris sous.
Pewter vessels: ten dozen bowls, six dozen small plates, two and a half dozen large plates, eight quart mugs, two dozen pints, two alms pots; for this sixteen sous.
At Greve, as above in the other wedding.
Note that if they are widowed[50], they should marry in the morning in their black clothing and then change into others.
Note extraordinary expenses for the wedding of Jehan du Chesne. To the cook four and a half francs, and helpers and porters, one franc: for all, five and a half francs. To the Beauvais concierge, four francs: for tables trestles and such, five francs. To the headdress florist, fifteen francs. Water, twenty sous. Minstrels eight francs, without the spoons and other gifts to them during the meal; and they will play also on the day of inspection and acrobatics[51]. Sergeant two francs. Green herb, eight sous. Torches and candles, ten francs. Kitchen vessels, towels, napkins, and glassware, seven francs. Pewter pots, four francs.
So it is now appropriate to demonstrate the mechanics of the above foods, but, first, you should know some general terms which you can gather more broadly by various additions from here and there in this book, that is to say thickeners for soups, such as bread, eggs, starch, flour, etc., and all binding agents for soups.
Item, to keep your soup from sticking, stir it to the depths of the pot and watch that the burning logs do not touch it, and if it has already begun to stick, you must immediately change it into another pot.
Item, with milk, keep it from turning.
Item, that the pot does not boil over on to the fire.
In soups, you must add spices very well ground and not sieved, and at their sharpest. In sauces and in jelly the contrary.
To know spices, as in the fifth article above[52].
Item, to kill hogs. - They say that the males should be killed in November, and the females in December; and thus it is their season, as for example where they say: February pullet.
Item, to make black pudding, have the pig blood collected in a fair basin or pan, and when you intend to see your pig destroyed, have the lights washed very well and put on to cook, and as soon as it is cooked, take from the bottom of the pan the sticky lumps of blood and take them out; and then, have onions peeled and chopped to the amount of half the blood, with the amount of half the suet which is among the guts, which is called the "entrecercle" of the guts, chopped as small as dice, together with a little ground salt, and throw it in the blood. Then, have ginger, clove, and a little pepper, and grind it all together. Then, have the small guts well washed, turned inside out and all blood removed in a running river, and to remove the dampness, have them placed in a pan on the fire, and stir; then, add salt; and do this a second time, and yet a third time: and then wash, and turn inside out and wash them, then place to dry on a towel; and squeeze and wring them to dry. (They say the "entrecercle" and these are the large guts which have suet inside which you get out with a knife). After you have added and adjusted by the right amounts and quantities, so that you have half as much onions as blood, and a quarter as much suet as blood, and then when your black puddings are filled with this, put them to cook in a pan in the water from the lights, and prick with a pin when they swell, or otherwise they will burst.
Note that the blood keeps well for two days, in truth for three, since the spices are inside. And some for spices, have pennyroyal, great savory, hyssop, marjoram, gathered when they are in flower and then dried, ground, for spices. And as for the lights, put in a copper pot to cook on the fire, complete and without salt, and put the
length of the groove (throat) outside the pot, so that the liquid may be skimmed; and when it is cooked, take it out and consider it for making soup.
To make black puddings with liver, take two pieces of liver, two pieces of lung, a piece of suet, and place in a gut with blood: and with the remainder as above.
Note that you can make nice black puddings from a goose, but it will be thin, and because of the thinness the guts are bigger than the suet.
One may ask how the guts may be turned inside out for washing; I reply: with a linen thread and a piece of brass wire as long as a gauge-rod.
Note that some hang their pigs in the Easter season and the air yellows them; and it would be better for them to keep them in salt as they do in Picardy, even though the flesh is not so firm, it seems; nevertheless you get better service from bacon which is fair and white than from yellow, because however good the yellow may be, it is too repulsive and causes disgust when viewed[53].
To make chitterling sausages. Note that chitterling sausages are made with the lower gut and other large guts, the large ones are filled with the others to make regular sausages; and those small guts, when you want to make them into chitterling sausages, are split into four parts. Item, of the bits which are split into narrow slices, make them into chitterling sausages; item, of the meat beneath the ribs; item faggots and other things told above of guts for black puddings. And the other things told above, of the said lower gut and others with which chitterling sausages must be filled, will be first immersed and sprinkled with half an ounce of pepper, and with a sixth of (turnip-tops? withered- flowers? hay?), ground with a little salt and dampened, all ground small, with the spices; and when these chitterling sausages are thus done and filled, you take them to be salted with the bacon and on top of the bacon.
Shortribs freshly salted, roasted on the grill.
Backbones and hams salted for three days, natural, with peas.
Note that if a ham has been salted for as long as a month, it is appropriate to put it to soak the evening before in cold water, and the next day to scrape it and wash it in hot water before cooking it, or cook it first in water and wine, and throw out this first cooking-liquid, and then cook it in another water.
Here follow all the special names for the offal of a pig, which are sold at the triper's for seven blancs.
First when the pig is prepared, the blood and the guts come out first, and are made into black puddings if wanted. Item, first the lights and the upper abdomen, the short-ribs and then the lower abdomen.
The upper abdomen is that part which is between the guts and the short-ribs. The lights, these are the liver, the lungs, the heart and the tongue. The short-ribs is the spleen: and to this belongs half the liver and the kidneys; and the other half of the liver goes with the lights, between the heart and the lungs. The lower abdomen is the bowels called the "entrecercle", and are also the small bowels with which one makes black puddings and sausages, and here also is the pancreas.
To sheep lights belong the pancreas and the last stomach, the four feet and the head; and these all cost two Paris blancs at the triper's.
Veal innards cost at the triper, two blancs, that is to say the lights, along with the head, the crow, the pancreas and the four feet.
Note, the crow includes the last stomach, the pancreas and the guts, which the tripers sell all clean, washed and prepared, rinsing in good clean water; but those who buy them should not worry about the triper's work, but wash them in two or three changes of hot water, and again in hot salt water; and then put them to cook in unsalted water, until they are nice, then nourish with sheep's water, and add herbs, water, and saffron in a dish with the crow, and eat as tripe, with salt and verjuice.
Note, this great diversity of language, for what we call the lights of a pig is the liver, the lungs and the heart; and what we call the lights of a sheep, is the head, the pancreas, the last stomach and the four feet; and what we call the lights of a calf, is the head, the crow, the pancreas and the four feet; and what we call the lights of a beef, is the pancreas, the stomach, second stomach, spleen, lungs and liver and the four feet; and with venison, yet other words. (One wonders the reason for this diversity on the single word lights.)
Venison of Deer or Other Beast, If you wish to salt it in summer, it is appropriate to salt it in a wash-tub or bath[54], ground coarse salt, and after dry it in the sun. Haunch, that is the rump, which is salted, should be cooked first in water and wine for the first boiling to draw out the salt: and then throw out the water and wine, and after put to partly cook in a bouillon of meat and turnips, and serve in slices with some of the liquid in a dish and venison.
Item, if you have small young turnips, you should cook it in water and without wine for the first boiling, then throw out the water, and then partly cook in water and wine and with sweet chestnuts, or if you have no chestnuts, some sage: then serve as above.
In June and July, pieces of salted beef and mutton are good cooked in water and with scallions; salted from morning to evening or for a day or more.
The Paris butchers[55] hold that a cow, according to their style of talk, only has four principal members: that is to say the two shoulders, the two thighs, and the body at the front along its length, and the body at the rear along its length. For, with the shoulders and thighs removed, they cut the cow in two and make of the front one piece, and of the rear another; and thus the body of the cow is carried to the stall, if the cow is small or medium: but if it is large, the front part is cut in two lengthwise, and the rear part also, to carry it more easily, Thus we now have six parts of a cow,
from which the two briskets are removed first, and then the two supports that hold it which are a good three feet long and half a foot broad, coming from below and not from above. And then they cut the flanks: and then to the sirloin which is not much over three fingers thick or two. Then, to the loin which is closest to the spine, which
is as wide as a big fist; then to the fillet which is called the numble, which is about a foot long and no more; and one end is at the neck and the other is at the kidney, and it is the right of him who has the feet of the cow to flay it, and sell it in a little stall below the large Butcher's; and it is of small value.
Item, according to how large the cows are, they cut and sell at the Porte[56] more pieces from one section than from another. And they do not know the exact tally of the townspeople in account with the butchers, for the good beef costs twenty pounds where the other costs but twelve.
Item, beef offal costs at the triper's eight sous: that is to say the lights in which are included the pancreas, the stomach, the second stomach, the spleen, the lungs, the liver and the four feet.
Item, at Besiers, from St. Andrew's day [November 30] which is before Christmas, sheep are salted in quarters, by rubbing well with salt, and rubbing again, and so on and so on, and then piling the quarters on top of each other for eight days and then putting in the fireplace.
If you want to salt beef or sheep in winter, have coarse salt and dry it well in the pan, then grind it well, and salt.
And note that in June and July mutton should be soaked, then salted.
To Salt Beef Tongues. In the right season for salting, take a quantity of beef tongues and parboil them a little, then take them out and skin them, then salt them one after another, and lay them in salt for eight days or ten, then hang them in the fireplace, leaving them there for the winter: then hang them in a dry place, for one year or two or three or four.
Goose must be salted naturally for three days.
Coot salted for two days are good with cabbage.
Wood Duck also; note that they come every three years.
If a hare is taken two or three weeks before Easter, or at some other time when you want to save it, gut it and take out the entrails, then cut the skin on its head and break it, and make an opening in the head and remove the brain and fill the hole with salt and sew up the skin: it will keep for a month if hung by the ears.
Note that the best part of beef, whether for roasting or for cooking in water, is the kernel; and note that the beef kernel is that part below the neck and the shoulders. And also this piece is sovereign when sliced in strips, put in pastry; and when the pastry is cooked, throw on lamprey sauce.
Eel. Kill it in salt and leave it naturally for three whole days then it should be taken out of the pan, the mud removed, cut into chunks, cooked in water and with scallions. And if you want to salt it from evening to morning, skin it and gut it, then chop in chunks, and salt and rub well each piece with strong salt; and if you want to
advance it further, grind salt and rub each chunk and smother in salt between two bowls. Cook as above and eat with mustard.
Keg Herring should be put in fresh water and left three days and three nights to soak in plenty of this water, and at the end of three days should be washed and put to soak for two days in more fresh water, and each day change the water two times. And always the small herring need less soaking, and also there are some herring which by nature need less soaking than the others.
Red Herring. You know the good ones from the thin ones by their thick backs, round and green; and the other is greasy and yellow with a flat dry back.
And first a SOUP of OLD PEAS. It is appropriate to shell them, and to find out from the people the place the nature of the peas of the area (for commonly peas do not cook well in well-water: and in other places they cook well in spring-water and in river water, as in Paris, and in other places, they do not cook at all in spring-water, as at Besiers) and this known, it is appropriate to wash them in a pan with warm water, then put in a pot with warm water on the fire, and boil them until they burst. Then separate the liquid from the solid, and put the liquid aside, then fill the pea-pot with warm water and put on the fire and separate a second time, if you wish to have more liquid: and then put back without water, for they will produce enough. and boil in it; and it is not appropriate to put the spoon in the pot after the separating, but shake the pot and the peas together, and little by little feed them with warm water or a little more than warm but no cold, and boil and cook completely before you add anything except hot water, be it meat or anything else: do not add salt, nor bacon, nor absolutely anything whatsoever until they are fully cooked. You can add bacon water or meat stock, but you must not add any salt, nor even the tip of the spoon, until they are well cooked; you can always stir them by moving the whole pot.
On meat days, you should, after the separating, add water from bacon and from meat, and when it is almost cooked, you can put bacon in; and when you remove the bacon from these peas, you must wash it with meat-stock, so that it looks nicer to put in slices on the meat and so that it does not appear to have peas stuck to it.
On a fish day, when the peas are cooked, you should have onions which have been cooked as long as the peas in a pot and like the bacon cooked separately in another pot, and as with the bacon water you may nourish and serve the peas, in the same way; on fish days, when you have put your peas on the fire in a pot, you must put aside your minced onions in another pot, and with onion water serve and nourish the peas; and when all is cooked fry the onions and put half of them in the peas, and the other half in the liquid from the peas of which I spoke above, and then add salt, And if on this fish day or in Lent there is salted whale-meat, you must do with the whale-meat as with the bacon on a meat day.
When you have NEW PEAS, sometimes they are cooked on a meat day both in meat stock and with ground parsley, to make green soup, and this is on a meat day; and on a fish day, you cook them in milk, with ginger and saffron in them; and sometimes "a la cretonnee" of which I shall speak later.
With all these peas, whether old or new, you can force them through a sieve, or a fine or horsehair mesh; but the old peas must be yellowed with ground saffron of which the water may be put to boil with the peas and the saffron itself with the liquid from the peas.
There are other peas which are left in the pod with bacon added.
Item, cretonnee of new peas, you will find it in the next chapter.
The liquid from the peas on a meat day is of no account. On a fish day and in Lent, fry the onions as is told in the preceding chapter, and then put the oil in which the onions were fried and the onions in along with bread-crumbs, ginger, cloves and grain, ground: and sprinkle with vinegar and wine, and add a little saffron, then adorn the bowl with slices of bread.
Item, with the liquid make a broth on fish days. Do not stir it and take it soon from the fire, etc.
Item, mix the liquid with beet-leaves and it will be a very good soup, but do not add any more water; and this is for Lent.[57]
Note that if you see that your soup is sticking, make it thinner, because it sticks from being too thick; and stir it constantly to the bottom of the pot in which it is sticking, before you add anything else.
See here how onions are cooked: in water for a long time before the peas, and until the water is all used up in cooking; then add some pea-liquid to cook and to take away the flavor of the water.
Also oysters are first washed in hot water, then parboiled, then they must be partially cooked in the pea-liquid so that their flavor will stay in the liquid, and not allowed to froth, then remove the oysters and fry them if you wish, and put some of them in the bowls, and with the rest make a dish.
OLD BEANS which are to be cooked with their pods must be soaked and put on the fire in a pot the evening before and all night; then throw out that water, and put to cook in another water, then strain them like peas, to remove that first strong taste, and then cook in meat stock and with bacon as is told earlier of the liquid from the peas, or on a fish day in fresh water, and then afterward add oil: to the onion water and to the onions. And if you wish, do with them as with the peas.
Item, beans may be shelled at Easter in this wise, that is if you want them shelled, it is necessary to shell them; wash, and without soaking put the beans with the pods in a pot on the fire in simmering water, and let them boil until the pods are wrinkled and thin; and then place at the back of the fire, and dip them out with a spoon, and skin and scrape them while they are hot, one spoonful after another, and throw into cold water. After this, you must wash them in warm water like the peas, then put them to cook in cold water, and when they have boiled till they split open, separate them, and throw out the liquid, and fill with meat bouillon if it is a meat day, or with other water if it is a fish day; add oil and well-cooked onions, then fry: or add butter. And they can be garnished with chopped fresh bean leaves, wilted in hot water and drained; then do like the others, be it a meat day with bacon, or a fish day.
Item, a "cretonnee" of new beans is made as you will find in the next chapter.
Item, if you wish to eat beans having the smell and taste of new beans in every month of the year, have and plant beans each month, and of those which are the tenderest as they grow up from the soil take a handful, and chop and put with your beans, and your beans will lighten and have the color and taste of new beans.
Item, NEW BEANS must first be cooked until they burst, then separate them, and then boil in the liquid large pieces of brown bread two fingers thick, then put in each (bowl) two of these sops and salt over it.
Item, when they are burst and separated, you can fry them in the grease from meat, then put a little powdered spices on them.
You can tell beans from the marshes as they are flat, and those from the fields are round. - Item, in the mouth you will find them sweet and the pod tender, and the others the opposite.
Item, if you wish to shell new beans, you must first cut them lengthwise with a knife, and when completely cut, peel them by hand.
Note that in August people begin to eat strained beans and peas with salt meat; and note that a ham must be salted for three whole days, and then it is good.
BEET SOUPS. There are three kinds of beet-leaf soups according to cooks who speak of them, white, green, and black.
White beet-leaves soup is so-called because it is made from the white part of the beet-leaves, with backbone, with sausages, and with ham, in the seasons of autumn and winter, on meat days; and know that no other fat than that of pork is good with it. And first you clean, wash, and mince them, and blanch them, that is in summer when the beet-leaves are young: but in winter, when the beet-leaves are older and tougher, they should be parboiled instead of blanched, and if it is a fish day, after the above you must put them in a pot with hot water and so cook them, and also cook minced onions, then fry the onions, and then fry the beet-leaves with the onions which have already been fried; then put all to cook in a pot with cow's milk, if it is a fish day not in Lent; and if it is Lent, use milk of almonds. And if it is a meat day, when the beet-leaves are blanched, or winter beet-leaves are parboiled as told above, put them in a pot to cook in salted water, with pork and bacon in it.
Note that never with beet-leaves, do you add bread.
Item, WHITE SOUP of Beet-Leaves is made as above in mutton and beef stock together, but not with pork; and on a fish day, with milk of almonds or cow's milk.
CRESS in Lent with Milk of Almonds. Take your cress and parboil it with a handful of chopped beet-leaves, and fry them in oil, then put to boil in milk of almonds; and when it is not Lent, fry in lard and butter until cooked, then moisten with meat stock or with cheese, and adjust it carefully, for it will brown. Anyway, if you add parsley, it does not have to be blanched.
A species of beet is called spinach and has longer leaves, slender and greener than common beet, and it is eaten at the beginning of Lent.
New and First Beet-Leaves [probably means spinach: JP] Clean it, and while cleaning it remove the coarse leaves as you do with cabbage, then put into simmering water without chopping, and have in a pot clear bubbling water, and salt, and put the leaves in this pot to cook, and then arrange them and add olive oil or verjuice to the bowl, and no parsley.
At other times and most often you fry the raw leaves, and when they are well fried, add a little water, as though making a stock from the oil.
Again, soup of new beet-leaves may be made with blanched beet-leaves in summer when they are young, or parboiled in winter when it is right for old beet-leaves, never mind how old they may be.
Soup from beet-leaves washed, then minced and parboiled, is greener that those which are first parboiled and then chopped. But the greenest and best is that which is cleaned, then washed and then minced very small, then blanched in cold water, then change the water and moisten in another water then squeeze out handfuls and put in a pot to boil in a stock of bacon and mutton; and when it has boiled a little and you wish to garnish it, put in a little cleaned parsley, washed and chopped, and a few yellow turnip-tops, and boil only till it bubbles.
Everything considered, the beet boiled least and not parboiled is the greenest, and parsley must not be boiled at all, however slightly, for in boiling it loses its flavor.
GREEN BEET SOUP on a fish day. Have it cleaned, chopped, then washed in cold water without parboiling, then cook in verjuice and a little water, and add salt, and let it boil and thicken without clarifying it, then put in, at the bottom of the bowl, under the soup, butter either salted or fresh as you will, or cheese, or soft cheese or [or "with"] old verjuice.
Chopped beet-leaves are in season, from January to Easter, and after.
And note that to make beet soup using milk of almonds, the milk should not be strained; and for other soups or for drinking, it should.
BLACK BEET SOUP is made with bacon riblets; that is to say, the beet-leaves are cleaned, washed, then chopped and blanched in boiling water, then fried in bacon grease; and then hot simmering water is added to them (and some say who wash them with cold water, that they will be more ugly and black), then you should put on each bowl two strips of bacon.
CABBAGES are of five kinds: the best are those which have been touched with frost, and are tender and soon cooked; and in times of frost there is no need to parboil them, but in rainy times, yes. (And we start with these because they are the first grown of the year, then April, and then down through the year to grape-harvest, Christmas and Easter[58].)
White cabbage is at the end of August.
Heads of cabbage, at the end of grape-harvest. And when the head of this cabbage, which is in the middle, is removed, pull and replant the cabbage stalk in new ground, and there will come out large spreading leaves: and a cabbage holds great place, and these are called Roman cabbages, and eaten in winter; and from the stalks, if they are replanted, come little cabbages called sprouts which are eaten with raw herbs and vinegar; and if you have plenty, they should be well cleaned, washed in hot water, and put to cook whole with a little water: and then when they are cooked, add salt and oil, and stir it up thick without water, and put olive oil on in Lent. Then there are other cabbages known as Easter cabbage because they are eaten at Easter, but they are sown in August; and when after sowing they are seen to be of half a foot in height, you pluck them and replant elsewhere, and they should be frequently watered.
Also all the above cabbages are first sown, then when they are grown to half a foot in height, they are taken up and replanted.
And first the cabbage-heads, that is to say when these heads are defoliated, cleaned and chopped, you should parboil them very well, and longer than other cabbages, for Roman cabbages should have the green of the leaves torn into pieces, and the yellow, that is to say the backs or veins, crushed in a mortar, then all together blanched in hot water, then squeezed and put in a pot with warm water, which has a
little meat stock: and then serve with more grease and meat stock, and several pieces of bread ground up.
And know that cabbages like to be put on the fire early in the morning, and cooked very long and longer than any other soup, and with a good strong fire, and should be moistened with beef fat and no other, whether they be heads of cabbage or whatever, except for the sprouts. Know also that fat of beef and mutton are proper, but do not use pork; pork fat is not good except for beets.
Then, have the cabbages, on fish days, after they have been parboiled, cooked in warm water: and add oil and salt.
Item, with this, some add finest wheat flour. Item, in place of oil, some add butter.
On a meat day, you can add pigeons, sausages and hare, coot and plenty of bacon.
TURNIPS are hard and difficult to cook until they have been in the cold and frost; you remove the head, the tail and other whiskers and roots, then they are peeled, then wash in two or three changes of hot water, very hot, then cook in hot meat stock, pork, beef or mutton.
Item, in Beausse, when they are cooked, they are sliced and fried in a pan, and powdered spices thrown on.
SMALL FEET. Take gizzards and livers and put to cook in wine and water, first the gizzards and last the livers, then put in a dish with minced parsley and vinegar. Item, feet of beef, mutton and kid.
GRAMOUSSE is made from the cold meat of the hare left over from dinner and the stock of this meat also left over, in the following manner: first, beat four or six eggs, that is both white and yolk, and beat and beat until they flow like water, for otherwise they will curdle; and add as much verjuice as the eggs, and boil with the stock; and elsewhere cut the meat into strips, and put two pieces per bowl, and the broth over them.
UNPREPARED SOUP. Have parsley and fry it in butter, then throw boiling water on it and make it boil: and add salt, and garnish as any soup.
Again, if you have cold beef, cut it very small, then grind a little bread dampened with verjuice and put through a strainer; put on a dish with powdered spices on top. Heat over the coals. It is enough for three people.
Again, on a fish day, take water and make it simmer with almonds in it; then skin the almonds and grind them and moisten with warm water, strain and put to boil with powdered ginger and saffron, and arrange in bowls; and in each bowl, a piece of fried fish.
Again, on a meat day, take some meat from the cauldron, and have bread moistened with the non-greasy part of the meat stock, then grind, and six eggs: then strain and put in a pot with greasy stock, spices, verjuice, vinegar and saffron; boil till bubbling, then pour into bowls.
Item, and if you are in an inn, in a hurry, find meat stock and you can make soup, you can throw in spices and boil, then, at the last, add some eggs and serve.
Again, on a fish day, grind bread, and moisten with water, verjuice and vinegar, and put on the fire; and when it simmers, take off the fire, and add yolks: then put on the fire and keep the fire low and heat just till it boils, and add powdered spices, and garnish as you like.
Again, make a little bacon boil in a pot, and when it is half cooked, have a fresh mackerel, and cut it up and put it in to cook, and then take it all out, and add chopped parsley to boil till it bubbles and serve.
TO KNOW Good Cheese. Good cheese has six conditions. Non Argus, nec Helena, nec Maria Magdalena, sec Lazarus et Martinus, respondens pontifici.[59]
Not white like Helen,
Not weeping like Magdalene,
Not Argus, but completely blind,
And as heavy as an ox:
It is firm against the thumb,
And its coat is fine.
Without eyes, without weeping, not white,
Handsome, firm, well-weighted.
In July, ham or fresh pork cooked in yellow water and in grain verjuice, a little ginger and bread: with a grated sauce.
Item, at supper, meat salted in the morning, cooked in water and scallions, be it beef or mutton.
In new peas cooked to be eaten in the pod, you must add bacon on a meat day: and on a fish day, when they are cooked, you separate the liquid and add underneath melted salt butter, and then shake it.
First, note that all spices which are to be put in soups must be well ground and not sieved, except if for jelly; and in all soups you must use the sharpest spices you can, for they lose their savor when not used quickly: and bread crumbs must be sieved.
SOUP for a Fish Day, see the next preceding page.
Again, take almonds, blanch and skin and grind: mix into warm water; put to boil with fine powdered spices and saffron, and in each bowl put one half of fried sole and the soup over it.
GOURDS.[60] Let the rind be peeled, for that is best: and always if you want the insides, let the seeds be removed, though it is said that the rind is worth more, then cut up the rind in pieces, then parboil, then chop lengthways, then put to cook in beef fat: almost at the end yellow it with saffron or throw saffron thread by thread, one here, another there; this is what cooks call 'fringed with saffron'.
HARICOT of MUTTON. Cut it into small pieces, then bring it just to the boil, then fry in bacon grease, and fry with onions chopped small and cooked, and mix in beef stock, and add mace, parsley, hyssop and sage, and put it on to boil together.
Item MUTTON PIE in a POT. Take a thigh (of mutton), and grease or marrow of beef or veal chopped small and onions chopped small, and set to boil and cook in a well-covered pot in a small amount of meat stock or other liquid, then put to boil in it spices, and a little vinegar to sharpen it, and arrange it in a dish.
Item, if you want to salt mutton in hot weather, moisten beforehand, and sprinkle with coarse ground salt.
AUXERRE MUTTON (or Supper Mutton). Cut the mutton in pieces, then wash and put to cook in water, then grind plenty of parsley and bread, and sieve, and put in the pot with spices.
YELLOW MUTTON. Cut up the coarsest, and this is the flank; and cook it in water, then grind in a piece of ginger and some saffron, and add verjuice, wine and vinegar.
YELLOW TRIPE. If you want to cook tripe, you must not add salt while cooking, for it will turn dark. - Item, the feet, the tail and the blood, which are dark, should be cooked separately, and the pancreas and other light-colored parts separately also.
YELLOW LEG of BEEF. It should be cooked for a long time; and if you wish, poultry killed two days earlier or one day before should be boiled for a long time with it, and herbs, and then add saffron.
SOUP of SMALL GOOSE. Cook your small goose very well and fry: then grind ginger, clove, grain and long pepper, parsley and a little sage, moisten with stock from meat or from the small goose, and add grated cheese, and serve in each bowl three pieces of the small goose.
CAPON SOUP. Cook your capons in water and in wine, then dismember and fry in grease, then grind up the livers from your capons and livers and almonds, and mix with your stock and put on to boil, then take ginger, cinnamon, clove, galingale, long pepper and grains of Paradise, and mix with vinegar and put on to boil; and when serving, divide your meat among the bowls, and pour the soup over it.
HERBED CHICKEN. - VEAL with HERBS. In winter, killed chickens, dampened and then placed six days in the ice, and in summer dead for two days (without sun) or smothered under a mattress; put on to cook in water and with bacon to give appetite, and add parsley, sage, egg-shell(?) and hyssop, a little verjuice to sharpen it, and a very little ginger, and saffron to add color. This is a proper soup if it is served cold, but if served hot, you need neither chicken nor veal but only bacon and saffron.
SOUP of SMALL BIRDS or OTHER MEAT. Let them be plucked while dry, then have bacon fat cut into cubes, and put in the skillet and remove the grease from it and there fry them; then put on to cook in meat stock, then take bread browned on the grill or breadcrumbs moistened in meat stock and a little wine; then take ginger, clove, grain and powdered cinnamon and the livers, and grind them; and then sieve your bread and stock and the spices are not to be sieved but ground fine; and put on to boil with your small birds and a little verjuice. - Item, if you have no bouillon, use the water from cooking peas. - Item, it should not be too thick, but clear; so you only need the liver or bread for thickening.
SEEDED SOUP is a winter soup. Peel onions and cook them all chopped up, then fry them in a pot; it is appropriate to have your poultry split through the back and browned on the grill over a coal fire, or if it is veal, the same; and whether it is veal cut in pieces or chicken cut in quarters, put it with the onions in the pot; then have white bread browned on the grill and moistened with some other meat stock: and then grind ginger, clove, grain and long pepper, mix with verjuice and wine, without sieving, and set aside: then grind the bread and put through the sieve and add to the soup, and strain it all together and boil; then serve.
Note that we say 'sur-fry' when it is in a pot, and 'fry' in an iron skillet.
LOBSTER [or crayfish, same word (JH)] SOUP. Put your lobsters on to boil, and when they are boiled, let them be shelled as if they were to be eaten, and remove the bad parts, then have almonds peeled and ground, mixed with pea water passed through the sieve, and browned bread or breadcrumbs moistened in pea water, ground and sieved, then have ginger, cinnamon, grain and clove: grind and put all in a pot, with a little vinegar and boil together, then pour into bowls, and in each bowl should be put the lobsters fried in oil and other fried fish.
Item, if you want to make `tuile d'ecrevisses', do it thus, but shape the crayfish scales.
And if you wish to take great advantage of your mortar and pestle, dry the crayfish shells in an oven in a pot or a clay pan, then grind in your mortar, and sift through a fine mesh, then dry the pieces left over in the oven again grind and sift, and then add to soup; and believe what you will. [The l9th century editor believes this to be an aphrodisiac recipe. (JH)]
CONEY SOUP. First, Garenne coneys are known by the fact that the nape, that is to say from the ears to between the shoulders, is of a color between brown and yellow, and they are all white under the belly, and all four limbs on the inner side to the feet, and they must have no other white spot on their bodies, - Item, you will know if they are in their first year, by a little bone on the joint of the fore-leg closest to the foot, and it is sharp. And when they are too old, the bones in the joint are united; and it is the same for hares and dogs. - Item, you will know if they are freshly taken by the eyes not being sunken: you cannot open their teeth: they hold themselves straight on their feet; and when cooked, the belly remains whole. And if they have been long taken, they have sunken eyes: the mouth can easily be opened: you cannot hold them up straight; and when cooked, the belly falls to pieces: in winter, coneys taken eight days previously are good, and in summer, four days, as long as they have not been in the sun.
And when they have been well chosen and skinned, then cut them into square pieces, and put them on to parboil, then put into cold water: then on each piece, on each side, three bacon strips; then put on to boil in water and in wine afterwards. Then grind ginger, grain, a clove, and moisten in beef stock or in the rabbit stock, and with a little verjuice, and put in a pot and boil till done.
Item, a salmi is made this way, but you add fried onions, and a few bread-crumbs to thicken. And then it is a broth.
Item, in the same way make a lardy gruel of veal, kid or deer.
HARE SOUP. Note that on a hare which is freshly taken and soon eaten the meat is more tender than a kept hare.
Item, a hare taken fifteen days previously is the best, as long as the sun has not touched it; that is to say, fifteen days in the depth of winter: in summer, six or eight days or more and without sun.
Item, know that if the hare is eaten when freshly taken, its meat is more tender, and there is no need to wash it, but roast it with its blood.
SOUP of HARE or CONEY is made thus: roast the hare on a spit or on the grill, then dismember it, and put to fry in fat or bacon: then have toasted bread-crumbs moistened with beef stock and wine, and strain, and put to boil together; then take ginger, a clove and grain; moisten with verjuice and let it be dark brown and not too thick. Note that the spices must be ground before the bread.
Coney is done the same way, except that the coney is parboiled, then put in cold water, and then larded, etc.
ROSE' of YOUNG RABBITS, LARKS, SMALL BIRDS or CHICKS. The young rabbits must be skinned, cut up, parboiled, put in cold water and larded: the chicks are scalded to remove the feathers, then put back in cold water, cut up, larded, and the larks or small birds are plucked only by parboiling in meat stock; then have bacon fat cut up in cubes, and put on the fire in a pan, and remove the solid bits and leave the melted grease: and fry your meat in it, or put your meat to boil on the coals and stir in a pot with fat. And while doing this, have almonds peeled, and put in beef stock and run through a sieve, then have ginger, clove, red cedar known as alexander, put in beef stock and strain, and put the cooked meat and everything else in a pot and boil together with plenty of sugar; then pour into bowls with browned spices on top.
Red cedar is a wood sold at the spicers, and is called cedar for making knife handles.
DEER VENISON. As this meat is tougher than fawn or goat, it must be parboiled and larded all along it: and in cooking, it must be put in plenty of wine, and when partly cooked, ground mace added; and it must be eaten with cameline. - Item, in pastry, let it be parboiled, larded along its length, and eaten cold with cameline.
And if you want to salt it in summer, you should put coarse salt to dissolve in water, then soak the venison in it, and after dry it in the sun.
And if you wish to make a piece of beef taste like venison of deer or bear, if you are in bear country, take numble or leg of beef, then parboil and lard it, spit and roast; and let it be eaten with (a sauce of) wild boar's tail. Let the beef be parboiled, then lard it along its length and cut into portions, and then put the hot boar's tail (sauce) in a dish over your beef which first is roasted or boiled in boiling water and taken out soon, for this is more tender than deer.
BEEF Like BEAR VENISON. A leg of beef. Do it in a black sauce of ginger, clove, long and grain pepper, etc. And put in each bowl, two pieces, and it will taste like bear.
WILD GOAT in an Unthickened Clear Broth: let it be flayed, then boiled in boiling water and removed quickly because it is more tender than deer, and larded, then put it to cook in non-greasy meat stock, its own or another: wine, coarsely ground spices, and arrange your meat therein. - Item, wild goat, is done in the same way.
Fresh WILD BOAR is cooked in water with wine and eaten with hot pepper, and is salted as above and eaten with mustard; this is in the depth of winter, but at the beginning of winter, it is eaten with spices and garnishes.
On Lady-day in March (the 25th), the appearance of antlers begins, and they say `mid-May, a half-head' (and also 'mid-June, half fat; On Magdalene day, true venison'), because the deer's antlers are half-grown; but the true course of antlers begins on Holy Cross in May [the 3rd, ancient opening day of deer-season], and from then the deer grows into venison until Magdalene-day, and can be hunted until Holy Cross in September; and then the season is over.
Item, when gutting it, you first remove the dainties, which are the c.....ns [letters missing (JH)], which include the flesh of the nape between neck and shoulders, vein from the heart, liver, etc. And these dainties are parboiled, then cooked, and eaten with hot sauce. [These so-called dainties were reserved to the lord, who often ate them immediately after the hunt.]
Item, in a deer there are shoulders, breasts, thighs, liver, numbles, loins, the tail, actually this is the disseminator, the two flanks, and that is all.
Item, the fresh pieces of meat, it seems that without parboiling they can be put in boiling water, and quickly removed and larded, and boiled and larded, then boiled in water, and this soup is called 'lardy soup with spices and garnishes'.
Item, the numbles are roasted with hot sauce.
Item, the loins, which are the part between the flank and the spine; and they are better in pastry than otherwise.
Item, also a fresh deer is eaten with a hot sauce, when it is put on to roast.
Item, you make a gift of the head and the feet to the lords, and do not eat them: they are only to know what sort and what age the deer was; but for eating, the lords are presented with the sexual organs, the breast and the two flanks.
Item, the tail is called the sexual organ: and if you wish to salt it, you must remove all the bones you can, because it contains a large part of the back.
Item, the breast is good salted; and salt venison the same as beef.
Item, all the innards, except the liver, are used as quarry for training the dogs, and are called the hallooing.
In September they begin to hunt the black beasts until Saint Martin's day in winter. - Item, all four limbs are called hams, as with a pig. Item, of a wild boar the head, the flanks, the backbone, the numbles, the four hams; that is all. Item, of the innards none are retained except the liver, which seems to be suitable for making a Subtle English Broth.
The 'bourbelier' is the numble. (Inasmuch as in this area, one says numbles on the one hand, and bourbelier on the other.)
Item, wild boar salted is eaten with frumenty. The head is cooked whole, in half water, half wine. Its jowls are good sliced on the grill.
WILD DOE in an Unthickened Clear Broth: let it be flayed, then boiled in boiling water and removed quickly, as it is more tender than the deer; and lard it; then put to cook in the non-greasy part of its own stock, or another, with wine, ground spices; and arrange your meat therein.
Hog Lights Soup. Grind up ginger, clove, grain, etc., then stir into vinegar and wine, then have bread toasted and moistened with vinegar, grind and sieve: and put all together; and have your lights cooked, chopped in pieces and fried in sweet oil. Then put some blood puddings in a caldron, or in a pot in a caldron, with your bread ground after your ground spices, and let boil; then throw into your pot the fried pieces and heat till boiling, and serve.
NEW BEANS. Boil till they split, then take plenty of parsley and a little sage and hyssop, and grind very fine; and after this grind up some bread, and a handful of these same beans which should be peeled and ground with the bread for thickening, then put through a sieve: then fry the rest of your beans in bacon fat, if this is a meat day, or in oil or butter, if this is a fish day; then put your beans in meat stock, if this is a meat day, or in the water from the beans, if this is a fish day.
CRETONNEE of New Peas or new beans. Cook them almost to a puree, then remove from the liquid, and take fresh cow's milk, and tell her who sells it to you that she will be in trouble if she has added water to it, for very often they extend their milk thus, and if it is not quite fresh or has water in it, it will turn, And first boil this milk before you put anything in it, for it still could turn: then first grind ginger to give appetite, and saffron to yellow: it is said that if you want to make a liaison with egg-yolks poured gently in from above, these yolks will yellow it enough and also make the liaison, but milk curdles quicker with egg-yolks than with a liaison of bread and with saffron to color it, And for this purpose, if you use bread, it should be white unleavened bread, and moisten it in a bowl with milk or meat stock, then grind and put through a sieve; and when your bread is sieved and your spices have not been sieved, put it all to boil with your peas; and when it is all cooked, then add your milk and saffron. You can make still another liaison, which is with the same peas or beans ground then strained; use whichever you please. As for liaison with egg-yolks, they must be beaten, strained through a sieve, and poured slowly from above into the milk,after it has boiled well and has been drawn to the back of the fire with the new peas or new beans and spices, The surest way is to take a little of the milk, and mix with the eggs in the bowl, and then a little more, and again, until the yolks are well mixed with a spoon and plenty of milk, then put into the pot which is away from the fire, and the soup will not curdle. And if the soup is thick, thin with a little meat stock. This done, you should have quartered chicks, veal, or small goose cooked then fried, and in each bowl put two or three morsels and the soup over them,
CRETONNEE on a fish day; fry tench, pike, sole or dab.
HOG OFFAL, actually using the entrails, which should be emptied in the river, then washed twice in warm water, and put them in a pan and rub thoroughly in salt and water, then wash again in warm water. Some wash them in salt and vinegar, and when they are thoroughly washed be it with vinegar or without vinegar, cut them up, and put on spits and roast on the grill and eat with grain verjuice. And if you want to make soup, you must put them to cook whole in a clay pot and set them to drain on a dish, then cut up in small pieces, and fry in bacon fat; then grind up first bread, then mace, galingale, saffron, ginger, clove, grain, cinnamon: moisten with stock and set to one side; then grind toasted breadcrumbs, and mix with offal and put through a sieve and put in meat stock or stock from the offal itself, or half of one and half of the other, and boil all together with red wine, verjuice and vinegar. In winter it must be brown and served as above, and in summer clearer and more yellow; and have grain verjuice cooked in water in a cloth, or gooseberries, and when you prepare your bowls, put six or eight morsels of the offal, then the soup over, and then six or eight grains of verjuice, or gooseberries on each bowl. And some make the soup with spices and milk as above and call it 'cretonnee'.
Note that the salt and vinegar remove the freshness. And what I call offal for eating in July, and for the kebabs which are made in December, includes all the parts such as liver, lung and other parts of the offal, and this is what the poor cook in washbasins along the roadsides[61].
CHICKEN COMINY. Put pieces in water and a little wine to cook then fry in fat, then take a little bread, moisten in your stock, and first take ginger and cumin, mixed with verjuice, grind and sift and put all together with meat or chicken stock, and then add color with saffron or eggs or egg-yolks strained and poured from above into the soup after it has been removed from the fire, Item, the best way is use milk as I said before, then grind your bread after your spices, but you must boil the milk first so that it does not curdle; and when the soup is done, the milk should be added to wine, though I see no reason for this, and fried, Some do not fry it, but it is said to be better fried.
(Bread is a liaison, and he says after that eggs are another liaison, and one or the other is enough, as he said in the section on 'cretonnee'.)
(Verjuice and wine. - If you want to make soup with milk, you do not need wine or verjuice.)[62]
Cominy for a Fish Day, Fry your fish, then skin almonds and grind, and mix liquid or fish stock and make almond milk, but cow's milk is more appetizing although they say it is not as healthy for sick people; and with the surplus do as above. Item, on a meat day, if you cannot find cow's milk, you can use almond milk, and do with the meat as above.
CAPON Game Soup. Cut it up in quarters, then cook it in water, then fry in bacon fat; and meanwhile grind ginger, cinnamon, clove and grain, and brown bread on the grill, grind after the spices, and moisten with verjuice, then pass the bread through the sieve and put it all to boil. And at the serving, put your meat in bowls and the soup all hot over it.
GAMEBIRD Hotpot is made thus and should not be clarified. You must cut them up in pieces; do thus with goose when it is tough and skinny, for roasting removes what grease there is. - Item, old ducks. Tough beef the same.
Cinnamon Soup[63]. Cut up your poultry or other meat, then cook in water and add wine, and fry: then take raw almonds with the skin on unpeeled, and a great quantity of cinnamon, and grind up well, and mix with your stock or with beef stock, and put to boil with your meat: then grind ginger, clove and grain, etc., and let it be thick and yellow-brown.
George Soup, Parsley-laced Soup. Take poultry cut into quarters, veal or whatever meat you wish cut into pieces, and put to boil with bacon: and to one side have a pot, with blood, finely minced onions which you should cook and fry in it. Have also bread browned on the grill, then moisten it with stock from your meat and wine, then grind ginger, cinnamon, long pepper, saffron, clove and grain and the livers, and grind them up so well that there is no need to sift them: and moisten with verjuice, wine and vinegar. And when the spices are removed from the mortar, grind your bread, and mix with what it was moistened with, and put it through the sieve, and add spices and leafy parsley if you wish, all boiled with the blood and the onions, and then fry your meat. And this soup should be brown as blood and thick like 'soringue'.
Note that always you must grind the spices first; and with soups, you do not sift the spices, and afterwards you grind and sieve the bread.
(I don't think wine and vinegar are necessary.)
Note that this is only called parsley-laced soup when parsley is used, for as one speaks of 'fringed with saffron', in the same way one speaks of 'laced with parsley'; and this is the manner in which cooks talk.
Russet Soup is made like George Soup above, except that you do not add any saffron, wine, or vinegar, and you should be more heavy-handed with the cinnamon, and the onions are sliced.
A Vinaigrette. Take short-ribs of pork, which have been well washed and scalded, then half roasted on the grill: then mince by pieces, then put them in a clay pot, with blood and sliced onions, and put the pot on the coals, and shake often. And when it is all well fried or cooked, add beef stock, and make it all boil, then grind toasted bread, ginger, grain, saffron, etc., and moisten with wine and vinegar, and set it all to boil, and it must be brown. (Brown. How will it be brown, if there is no toasted bread? - Item, I believe that it must be thickened, for I find it in the chapter on thickened soups; and for these two reasons, I believe that you must have toasted bread for thickening and to keep the color brown.)
White Soup. Take capons, hens or chicks killed beforehand at a convenient time, either whole or in halves or quarters, and pieces of veal, and cook with bacon in water and wine: and when they are cooked, take them out, and take almonds, peel and grind them and mix with water from your fowls, that is to say the dearest, without scrapings or any bits, and strain them through a sieve; then take white ginger prepared or peeled, with grain of Paradise, prepared as above, and strain through a very fine sieve, and mix with milk of almonds. And if it is not thick enough, strain fine flour or rice, which has been boiled, and add a taste of verjuice, and add a great amount of white sugar. And when it is ready, sprinkle over it a spice known as red coriander and some seeds of the pomegranate with sugared almonds and fried almonds, placed at the bottom of each bowl. More may be seen on this subject below, under fricassee.
Capon Fricassee for invalids. Cook it in enough water until it is well cooked, then grind a large quantity of almonds and capon liver, and let it be well ground and mixed with your stock, and passed through a sieve: then set it to boil well, until it is smooth and thick; then grind white prepared ginger and the other spices contained above in the recipe for white soup.
German Soup. Take coney flesh, fowls or veal, and cut in pieces: then half cook in water, then fry in bacon fat; then have finely minced onion in a pot, on the coals, and some fat in the pot, and shake the pot often: then grind ginger, cinnamon, grain of Paradise, nutmegs, livers roasted on a spit on the grill, and saffron mixed with verjuice, and this is the yellow coloring and the liaison. And first bread browned on the grill, ground and sieved; and at serving, put three or four pieces of your meat in the bowl and the soup over, and sugar on the soup.
(Note that he is at fault; for no cooks say that German Soup should be yellow, yet this fellow says it should. And anyway, if it should be yellow, should not the saffron be put through a sieve, but it is to be ground and mixed and put thus into the soup; when it is sieved, it is to give color: when it is sprinkled on, it is called fringing.)
Subtle Broth from England. Take cooked peeled sweet chestnuts, and as many or more hard-boiled egg yolks and pork liver: grind all together, mix with warm water, then put through a sieve; then grind ginger, cinnamon, clove, grain, long pepper, galingale and saffron to give it color and set to boil together.
Savoy Soup. Take capons or hens and boil with very lean bacon and the livers: and when it is half cooked, take it out, then add bread crumbs moistened with stock, then grind ginger, cinnamon, saffron, and take them out; then grind the livers and lots of parsley, then sieve, and then grind and sieve the bread, then boil it all together. (Note that the parsley makes the soup green and the saffron makes it yellow, so that it ends up a bad color. But it seems to me that the color would be better if the bread was toasted, as toasted bread and saffron together make green and parsley also makes green.)
Verjuice and Poultry Soup. (This is for summer.) Cook in quarters your poultry or veal or chicks, in stock or other liquid with bacon, wine and verjuice, until the taste of the verjuice passes: then fry your meat in good sweet fat, and have egg yolks and powdered herbs well beaten together and put through the sieve; then pour your eggs into the pot into your stock, pouring from above in a fine thread, and stir briskly with the spoon, and let the pot be at the back of the fire: then have defoliated parsley and grain verjuice, boiled in meat stock, in the spoon, and let the pot be at the back of the fire, or otherwise boiled in a small pot in clear water to remove the first greenness; then serve your meat, and pour the soup over it, and on top add your parsley and grain verjuice, boiled.
Bright-green Soup. Cook whatever meat you wish in water, or in a little wine, or in meat stock, wine and bacon to give flavor, then fry your meat, then grind ginger, saffron, parsley and a little sage, if you wish, and egg yolks poured in slowly with a slotted spoon, raw, for the liaison, or ground bread moistened with stock, and put all to boil together with verjuice; and some add cheese, and it is all right.
Grated Soup. Cook your meat, then fry it in fat, then grind grain, ginger, etc., and mix with verjuice: then have bread moistened with the meat stock, ground and passed through the sieve, and add spices, bread, and all into the cauldron and boil together; then have grain verjuice or gooseberries boiled in a slotted pan, or in another water in a cloth, strainer or otherwise, that is in order to remove the first sharpness, then serve your meat in bowls with the soup over it, and, on top, your grain verjuice.
GENISTA is so-called because it is yellow like genista flowers (yellow broom), and it is colored with egg yolks and saffron, and it is made in summer in place of broth and is cooked as will be told hereafter, except there are no onions.
Veal Broth[64]. Do not wash nor parboil, half cook it on the spit or on the grill, then cut it in pieces and fry in fat with a great quantity of onions cooked beforehand: then take lightly browned bread or untoasted bread crumbs, as otherwise it would be too brown for veal broth; (they say that this lightly browned bread is good for hare broth.) And let this bread be moistened with beef stock and a little wine or water left from cooking peas, and while it is moistening, grind ginger, cinnamon, clove, grain of Paradise, and saffron mainly for coloring it yellow, and mix with verjuice, wine and vinegar, then grind your bread and put through the sieve: and add your spices, and the sieved bread, to the cauldron, and put it all on to boil together; and it should be more yellow than brown, sharp with vinegar, and full of spices. - And note that it needs lots of saffron, and try not to add cloves or cinnamon, as they will redden it.
Hare Broth. First, cut the hare through the breast: and if it is freshly taken, that is no more than one or two days since, do not wash it, but put it on the grill, that is roast it over a good coal fire or on the spit; then have cooked onions and fat in a pot, and add your onions to the fat and your hare in pieces, and fry them over the fire, shaking the pot very frequently, or fry them on the griddle. Then heat and toast bread and moisten in stock with vinegar and wine: and have ginger, grain, clove, long pepper, nutmegs and cinnamon ground beforehand, and let them be ground and mixed with verjuice and vinegar or meat stock; gather them up, and set to one side. Then grind up your bread, mixed with stock, and sieve the bread and not the spices, and add stock, the onions and fat, spices and toasted bread, cook all together, and the hare also; and be sure the broth is brown, sharpened with vinegar, mixed with salt and spices.
Note. You can tell the age of a hare by the holes under its tail, for it has as many holes as years.
Coney Broth as above.
Meat Tiles. Take cooked freshwater crayfish (also means lobsters:trans.), and remove the meat from the tails: and the surplus, that is to say the shells and body, grind for a very long time; and after that, have unpeeled almonds, and let them be cleaned and washed in hot water like peas, and with their skins let them be ground up with what I have said, and with this grind bread crumbs browned on the grill. Now you must have, cooked in water, in wine and in salt, capons, chicks and hens cut raw into quarters, or veal cut into pieces, and with the liquid from this cooking you must moisten and mix that which you have ground up, then put through the sieve: then ginger, cinnamon, clove and long pepper moistened with verjuice without vinegar, then boil it all together. Now your meat must be cooked in pig fat in pieces or quarters, and arrange your meat in the bowls and put the broth over it, and on the broth, in each bowl, four or five lobster (or crayfish) tails and sugar sprinkled over them.
Broth with Meat Strips is made in haste at a supper where there are more people than expected. For ten bowls, take twenty strips of the cold meat from dinner and from the leg of beef; and let the strips be small like slices of bacon, and fry them in fat on the fire on the griddle. Item, have the yolks of six eggs and a little white wine, and beat them together until you are tired, then put with meat stock and old verjuice, not new, for it will turn: and boil it all without the meat; and then arrange in the bowls, and in each bowl two strips of meat. Some put the broth in the bowls, and on a dish, before four people, five meat slices and some broth with them; and this is for when there are more people and less meat.
Broth with Strips of Fish. Have some plaice prepared and washed, then dried, pressed between two towels and fried and put in a dish and two in another: which makes two dishes. Item, have two ounces of coriander, which has not been confined in a box, and of which one ounce costs one blanc, and let it be ground and moistened with wine and verjuice, then boiled and thrown on the two dishes.
Lombard Soup. When the meat is cooked, take it out and put the stock in another pot, but be careful to strain out any pot-scrapings or bits of bone; then have egg yolks beaten for a long time with verjuice and powdered spices, and pour into the pot from above while stirring, then make your soup.
Green Eel Stew. Steam and skin, or simply skin the eels and put them to cook in water with wine in very small pieces, then grind parsley and darkly toasted bread, and put through the sieve: and have ground beforehand prepared ginger and saffron, and put it all on to boil together, and when almost done add small squares of cheese.
Saracen Broth. Skin the eel and cut in little chunks, then sprinkle with ground salt and fry in oil; then grind ginger, cinnamon, clove, grain, galingale, long pepper and saffron to give color, and[65] verjuice, and boil all together with the eels which will make the liaison of themselves.
Green Broth of Eggs and Cheese. Take parsley and a little cheese and sage and a very small amount of saffron, moistened bread, and mix with water left from cooking peas, or stock, grind and strain: and have ground ginger mixed with wine, and put on to boil; then add cheese and eggs poached in water, and let it be a bright green. Item, some do not add bread, but instead of bread use bacon.
German Broth of Eggs Poached in Oil.[66] Then take almonds and peel them, grind and sieve: slice up onions, and let them be cooked in water, then fry in oil, and put all to boil; then grind ginger, cinnamon, clove and a little saffron mixed with verjuice, and finally add your spices to the soup, and boil till it bubbles, and let it be very thick and not too yellow.
White Broth can be made from loach, carp and perch, in the way told above for poultry.
Stewed Eels. Skin, then cut up your eels: then have sliced onions and defoliated parsley, and put all to fry in oil; then grind ginger, cinnamon, clove, grain and saffron, and mix with verjuice, and take out of the mortar. Then have bread darkly browned and mixed with water left from cooking peas, and put through the sieve, then add the pea water, and set all on to boil together, and flavor it with wine, verjuice and vinegar; and it should be clear.
Gravelly Soup of loach or other cold or hot fish, be it perch or other of that nature. Fry without flour in oil, then keep it in front of the fire: but before this, have darkly toasted bread ground and mixed with a little wine, stock or water left from cooking peas, and put through the sieve, and put in a pot; then grate ginger, cinnamon, clove, grain and saffron to give color, mixed with vinegar, and have onions, chopped and cooked, and fry them in oil, then put it all together in a pot to boil with water left from cooking peas or stock, except for the fried loach of which you put six or eight in each bowl or more, and the broth over it; and let it be not yellow but red.
Pike Hotpot (Chaudree). First, to prepare the pike, you must draw its guts out through its ear, and remove the bitter parts, and then put the guts back inside, and then roast it on the grill. If the pike is small, it may be roasted whole: and if it is larger, it can be sliced across in several places, and thus roasted. Then have a lot of saffron, long pepper, clove and grain, and let it all be ground up well and mixed with verjuice, wine, and a very small amount of vinegar, almost none, ground and removed from the mortar; then have toasted bread moistened with pea water or fish stock, or half wine half verjuice, and let it be ground, then put through the sieve, and all set on together to boil and place over the pike on dishes, and it should be yellow.
In the same way you can make Cold Fish Galantine, except that you do not add water left from cooking peas, because this does not keep long, but you do add fish grease.
Oyster Broth. Scald and wash your oysters very well, cook them just until they boil, and set them to drain, and fry them with cooked onion in oil; then take toasted bread or a very large quantity of bread crumbs, and put to soak in pea water or in the water the oysters were boiled in and sweet wine, and strain: then take cinnamon, clove, long pepper, grain and saffron to give color, grind and moisten with verjuice and vinegar and set aside; then grind your toasted bread or bread crumbs with the water left from cooking peas or oyster-water and also the oysters since they will not have been cooked enough.
Egg Broth. Poach eggs in oil, then have onions sliced and cooked, and fry them in the oil, then put on to boil in wine, verjuice and vinegar, and make it all boil together; then put in each bowl three or four eggs, and pour your broth over, and let it not be thick.
Sops in Mustard. Take some of the oil in which you poached your eggs, wine, water, and boil it all together in an iron skillet: then take crusts of bread and brown them on the grill, then cut into cubes, and put on to boil; then take them out, and put in a dish to drain: and in the bouillon put mustard, and make it boil. Then put your sops in bowls, and pour your liquid over them.
Thickened Cow' Milk. Let the milk be carefully chosen, as is told above in the chapter on thickened meat soups, and let it be boiled to a simmer, then remove from the fire: then pour slowly into it through a sieve a great quantity of egg yolks, and then grind a handful of ginger and saffron, and put them in, and keep it hot by the fire; then have eggs poached in water and put two or three poached eggs in each bowl, and the milk over them.
Espimbeche of Mullet. Shoulder[67], parboil and roast your mullet: then have verjuice and powdered spices, cinnamon and parsley: boil it all together, and pour it on the mullet.
Yellow Soup or Yellow Sauce on hot or cold fish. Fry in oil, with no flour, loach, skinned perch or other similar fish, then grind almonds, and mix most of them with wine and verjuice and sieve, and put on the fire: then grind ginger, clove, grain and saffron, and stir with your bouillon, and when the soup has boiled, add your spices; and when serving add sugar, and it should be thick.
MILLET. Wash it in three changes of water and then put in an iron skillet to dry over the fire, and shake it well, so that it does not burn; and then put it in simmering cow's milk, and do not let the spoon touch it until it has boiled well, and then take it off the fire, and beat it with the back of the spoon[68] until it is very thick.
The nature of milk is such that if the milk is drawn (from the cow) and put in a very clean and fair vessel of clay or wood or tin (pewter), and not in brass (bronze) nor copper, and kept in these vessels without moving or changing from one vessel to another, nor transported hither and yon, it will keep well for a day and a half or two days, and will not turn at all when boiled, provided one stirs it when it begins to move as it is boiled; and you should not add salt to it until you take it off the fire, or at least when you add sops to it, and you can add to it sops of leavened bread or otherwise, for it will not turn so long as the milk is treated as I have said. Item, and if the milk is not fresh or if you have doubts about it turning in the pan, add a little fine flour and stir it well, and then it will not turn. And should you wish to boil it [i.e. make stock or bouillon with it: (JH)], you should mix first your flour and your milk and some salt, then put it on to boil and stir well. And if you want to make soup with it, for each pint of milk add the yolks of half a quartern of eggs, the germs removed, well beaten together by themselves, and then beaten again with the milk; and pour it all slowly into the pan, and then stir the boiling milk very well: then make sops. And if you want to add ginger and saffron, let it be done.
Fresh beef tongue should be parboiled, skinned, larded and roasted, and eaten with a cameline sauce.
Item, you should know that the tongue of an old beef is better than that of a young one, so some say; others say the opposite.
In Gascony, when it begins to get cold, they buy the tongues, parboil and skin them, and then salt them one on top of another in a salting tub and leave then eight days, then hang them in the chimney all winter and in summer, as above, dry; and they will keep thus for ten years. And then they are cooked in water and wine if you wish, and eaten with mustard.
Again, the tongue of an old beef should be parboiled, skinned and cleaned: then spitted, stuck with cloves, roasted, and eaten with a cameline sauce.
Sirloin of Beef. Cut strips of meat from the leg of beef, and wrap inside marrow and beef fat: spit, roast and eat with salt.
Roast Mutton in a little salt or with verjuice and vinegar. The shoulder is first spitted and turned before the fire until the grease has melted away, then larded with parsley: and not too soon for two reasons, one being because it is easier for the larding, the other because if you lard it too soon, the parsley will burn before the shoulder is done.
Pork should be scalded, roast on the spit: and put sweet fat in the pan, and at the end of a stick have some feathers, and anoint the skin or rind of the pork so that it does not burn nor harden, or lard it. And in the same way do to a young pig, or lard it; and it is eaten with grain verjuice or old verjuice and scallions.
Stuffed Piglet. Have the piglet killed and its throat cut and let it be scalded in boiling water, then skinned: then take some lean pork, and remove the fat and innards of the piglet and put it on to cook in water, and take twenty eggs and cook them hard, and some sweet chestnuts cooked in water and peeled: then take the egg yolks, sweet chestnuts, fine old cheese, and the cooked meat of a leg of pork, and chop it up, then grind with saffron and a large amount of powdered ginger mixed in with the meat; and if your meat is too hard, mix in egg yolks. And do not split open your piglet's stomach but cut the smallest hole possible: then put it on the spit, and then push your stuffing inside, and sew it up with a large needle; and it should be eaten either with yellow pepper if it is winter, or with a cameline sauce if it is summer.
Note that I have often seen larded piglet, and it is very good. And thus they do it now and pigeons too.
CONEYS parboiled, larded, roast, with a cameline sauce.
ROAST VEAL. It should be browned on the fire on the spit and without washing, then larded, roasted and eaten with a cameline sauce. Some parboil it, lard then spit. This is the custom of doing it.
KIDS, LAMBS. Put in boiling water and take out quickly, and brown on the spit; then roast and eat with cameline sauce.
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).
To Counterfeit Bear Venison from a Piece of Beef. Take flank, and let it be chopped in large chunks as for loin stew, then parboil, lard and roast: and then boil a boar's tail[69], and let your meat boil a little, and throw sauce and all in a dish.
All fresh venison which is not basted is eaten with a cameline sauce.
Geese are roasted with white garlic in summer, or served with yellow pepper.
And note that in August and September, when the goslings are as big as their father and mother, you may know which are the young ones because when you press on the beak with your thumb it will break, and the other not.
Item, note that goslings placed in a coop are very small, they fatten until the ninth day, and after that they get thinner: but geese fatten always without losing their fat; and be it the one or the other, they must be kept dry and kept from getting their feet wet, nor given wet litter, but well dried, and keep them from bathing and from eating greenstuff, and let them not see clearly, and let there be a little cooked meal, and let them drink thin milk or the water in which the meal was cooked, and you must not give them any other drink, and let there be a little fine oats.
CAPONS, HENS, hung for two or three days, should be spitted, flamed, and roasted, put in verjuice with their grease; boiled, eaten Poitevin style or with yellow pepper.
CHICKS as large as pullets in July, should be killed two days before, and roasted, flamed, eaten with the must always made from wine, verjuice and plenty of sugar.
To age them, they must be bled, and straightaway put them in a pail of very cold water to die, and they will be that very morning as though killed two days ago.
SMALL BIRDS. Pluck dry and leave the feet, and spit through the body: and between each two put a piece of fat bacon tanned[70] like a leaf (or parchment page).
RIVER MALLARDS. In winter, when young etc.
Item, pluck river mallards dry, then put over the flame: take off the head and throw it away, and leave the feet; then put on the spit with a bread slice below to catch the grease, and put onions in it to fry in the grease. And when the bird is cooked, put bacon and parsley with the bread, and boil it all together and some croutons in it, and the bird in pieces; and it should be eaten with fine salt.
Item, it can be done otherwise. Put onions on the bread as is said, and when the bird is cooked, put on the bread a little verjuice and half wine half vinegar, and boil all together, and then add the croutons. And this last sauce is called Saupiquet.
PEACOCK, Pheasants, Swans, Heron, Bustards, Cranes, Grouse, Bittern, Cormorant, should be plucked dry or bled like the swan, and leave to those to whom they belong the heads and tails, and to others the heads and feet[71]: and do with the remainder as with the swan.
Item, with the pheasant from which you remove the tail, save back two or three feathers for when it is roasted, but serve (it with them).
WOOD PIGEONS are good in winter; and you can tell the old ones by the flight feathers on the wings being all of one color black, and the young ones which are those of a year old by the grey color at the ends of the flight feathers and the rest black like the others and they are good in pastry, in a cold cameline sauce, or all hot in the river bird sauce, or roasted for a long time like beef and eaten with salt, or a la dodine, in pieces, on a dish, like river birds.
Note that at Besiers they sell two sorts of wood pigeons, one sort being small, and they are not the best, for the large ones have a better flavor and eat acorns in the woods like pigs do; and they are eaten au boussac like a coney, and cut in fourths: and sometimes in a young wild duck sauce, and roast a la dodine; or if you want to keep them, let them be put in larded pastry. And they are in season from Saint Andrew's Day (November 30) until Lent, and they are only available every three years.
PLOVERS and WOODCOCKS, Pluck dry, singe and leave the feet on; roast and eat with salt.
And note that there are three sorts of birds, which other cooks roast without cutting open; these are larks, turtle-doves and plovers, because their guts are sweet and without dung, for larks eat only pebbles and sand: turtle-doves, juniper seeds and sweet-smelling herbs: and plovers the wind.
Partridges mate towards the middle of February, and then take flight two by two: and at Easter they must be cooked in water, with beef flesh, at a full boil; then draw and roast them.
Item, partridge must be plucked dry, and cut off the claws and head, put in boiling water, then stick with venison if you have any, or bacon, and eat with fine salt, or in cold water and rose water and a little wine, or in three parts rose water, orange juice and wine, the fourth part.
SWAN. Pluck like a chicken or goose, scald, or boil; spit, skewer in four places, and roast with all its feet and beak, and leave the head unplucked; and eat with yellow pepper.
Item, if you wish, it may be gilded.
Item, when you kill it, you should split its head down to the shoulders.
Item, sometimes they are skinned and reclothed.
RECLOTHED SWAN in its skin with all the feathers. Take it and split it between the shoulders, and cut it along the stomach: then take off the skin from the neck cut at the shoulders, holding the body by the feet; then put it on the spit, and skewer it and gild it. And when it is cooked, it must be reclothed in its skin, and let the neck be nice and straight or flat; and let it be eaten with yellow pepper[72].
Chicks may be placed in pastry, back down and breast up, and broad slices of bacon on the breast; and then cover.
Item, in the Lombardy fashion, when the chicks are plucked and prepared, have beaten eggs, both yolks and whites, with verjuice and powdered spices, and moisten your chicks in it: then put in pastry with slices of bacon as above.
MUSHROOMS of one night are the best, and are small and red inside, closed above: and they should be peeled, then wash in hot water and parboil; if you wish to put them in pastry, add oil, cheese and powdered spices.
Item, put them between two dishes over the coals, and add a little salt, cheese and powdered spices. You can find them at the end of May and in June.
ESCAROLE (U.K. endive; U.S. chicory (JH))[74]. Wash them in two or three changes of hot water, then flour them and fry in oil. Item, after this, some put them in pastry with lots of onions and chunks of herring or eel and powdered spices.
Note. Pies should be roomy and the meat should have plenty of room inside.
Fresh VENISON PASTY. You must parboil the venison, and skim it, then lard it and make pastry: this is the way to make pasties of all fresh venison; and it should be cut in big, long pieces like rolling-pins, and this is called 'pasty of larded boiled meat.'
BEEF PASTIES. Have good young beef and remove all the fat, and the less good parts are cut in pieces to be used for stock, and then it is carried to the pastry-cook to be chopped up: and the grease with beef marrow.
The meat of a leg of beef is sliced up and put in pastry; and when the pastry is cooked, it is appropriate to throw a wild duck sauce into it.
MUTTON PASTIES. Chopped very small with scallions.
VEAL PASTIES. Take the round part of the thigh, and put with it almost as much beef fat; and with this you make six good pasties in platters[75].
To cook fish you should first put on some water to simmer with salt, and then put the heads in to boil a little, and then the tails, and boil together, and then the remainder.
All freshly dead fish is firm under the thumb and hard, with red ears, and if it is long dead, it is dry.
PERCH should be cooked in water, and eaten with green sauce.
BARBEL is roasted with verjuice, the small ones in winter in soup or fried with yellow pepper; item, in winter, in sharp or yellow pepper, for they are the same.
PERCH should be cooked in water without being scaled, and then skinned: vinegar, and parsley may be added; fried it is put in sauce.
TENCH is scalded, and the mud removed as with an eel, then it may be cooked in water: eaten with green sauce. Fried, in stew; inverted, roast and sprinkle with powdered cinnamon, then plunge it in vinegar and oil while it is cooking, and eat with cameline sauce. And note that in inverting it, it is appropriate to cut it open along its back, head and all, then turn it inside out, and put a lath between the two gills, then sew it up with thread and roast.
BREAM is cooked in water, eaten with green sauce: and roasted with verjuice.
LOACH must be cooked in simmering water with a little wine, and put the head in first and then the tail, and boil until the water seethes: then add the remainder. Loach is eaten with green sauce when it is cooked in water. Sometimes you make soup with it, and sometimes it is fried; when fried it is eaten with yellow pepper.
Of one loach you can eat half cooked in water, and the other half may be salted for one day or two days, up to eight days, but in this case it must be soaked to get the salt out, then it can be parboiled and then drained, then fried and eaten with yellow pepper. As for fresh loach left over from dinner, at supper you may have it minced.
PIKE is good au chaudumee.
Pike soft roe is more valuable than the hard roe, except for making rissoles, for you grind up the hard roe to make rissoles.
Salted SHAD is cooked in water and eaten with mustard, or in wine and eaten with scallions. Fresh it is in season in March. It is appropriate to hold it by the ears, scald, cook in water, and eat with cameline; and if it is to go in a pie, you should first scald it, then put in the pie with very clear cameline sauce in the pie when it is almost cooked, and make this sauce boil. Item, shad is prepared as above, without scalding, then roast in the oven with parsley and half verjuice, half wine and vinegar; and it is in season from February to June.
CARP. Some prefer the ones with soft roe to the ones with hard, and some otherwise. And note that sterile ones are worth more than either of the others.
Item, in preparing it, take out the bitter parts which are at the base of the throat, and this done, you can cook the head whole, and it will cook cleanly: and if those parts are not removed, the head will stay all bloody and bitter. And as far as this is concerned, if the bitter parts are not removed whole and without breaking, you must wash the place and rub it with salt, and if the parts are removed whole, you do not need to wash the head nor anything else, but it is appropriate to boil the head first, and quite soon after the tail, and then the remainder, and all on a small fire. Cooked carp is eaten with green sauce, and if any is left over, put it in a galantine.
CARP with STUFFING. First, put some minced onions on to boil in a pot with water, and when the onions are well cooked, throw in the head and quite soon after the tail, and quite soon after the chunks (of fish), and cover tightly so that no steam escapes. And when it is cooked, have ready a mixture of ginger, cinnamon, and saffron, moistened with wine and a little verjuice, that is to say one third, and put it all to boil together, well covered; and then serve in bowls.
Note that the Germans say that the French put themselves in great danger from eating under-cooked carp. And we have seen that if French and Germans have a French cook who cooks carp for them, the Germans take their share and cook it again until it is more done, and the French do not.
TROUT. The season begins in May. (Item, their season is from March until September). Trout with two little black veins on the palate are crimson.
Trout are cooked in water with a lot of red wine, and should be eaten with a cameline sauce and should be cooked in chunks about two fingers thick. On meat days, in pie, they should be covered with broad strips of bacon.
EELS. Fresh eels are skinned and cut in chunks, cooked in water with lots of parsley, then grated cheese added: then remove the chunks, and make sops, and in each bowl put four chunks; or cook onions, then let them be cooked in this water, and a little spices and saffron and onions in a pot, and make soup.
Large eels are cooked in water with parsley and eaten with white garlic; in pastry with cheese and finely powdered spices. Inverted, in hot sauce like lampreys.
If you wish to keep an eel, make it die in salt, and leave it there for three full days: then let it be scalded, remove the mud, cut into chunks, cook in water with scallions, and almost at the end add wine. And if you wish it to be salted just from morning until evening, prepare it and cut it up, and put the chunks in coarse salt; and if you wish to advance it further, grind up black salt and rub each chunk with it, and then bury in salt between two bowls.
Inverted EEL. Take a large eel and skin it, then split it along its back the length of the backbone on both sides, in such a manner that you remove the backbone in one piece, head and tail all together, then wash and turn it to the reverse, that is flesh side out, and join it up loin to loin: and put it on to cook with red wine, then take it out and cut the thread with a knife or scissors, and set it to cool on a tile; then have ginger, cinnamon, clove, powdered cinnamon, grain, nutmegs, and grind and set aside: then have browned bread and grind very well, and do not strain it, but mix with the wine the eel was cooked in, and boil all in a pan on the fire, and add verjuice, wine and vinegar, and throw over the eel.
POMPANO have shining fine skin and are not muddy as are eels. One may scald and roast them without removing mud, that is to say the fresh ones, and the salted ones which have been dried are roasted and eaten with verjuice[76].
LOACH is cooked in water with parsley and good cheese, and eaten with mustard. Fried, in stew, and with green garlic. Cooked in water, it is eaten with mustard: and fried, you flour what you are going to fry.
GAIMEL is cooked in water, eaten with mustard: or if you like, with green garlic.
Little LAMPREYS are roasted well and eaten with the hot sauce described below for lampreys; and if they are cooked in water, they are eaten with mustard: and if they are cooked in pastry, throw the hot sauce over the pies, and set to boil.
LAMPREYS. It is understood that some bleed the lamprey before they skin it, and some skin it before they bleed or scald it. To bleed it, first wash your hands thoroughly, then split the jaw through the chin, that is at the juncture with the lower lip, and stick your finger inside and pull out the tongue, and let the lamprey bleed into a dish, and stick a little skewer in the mouth to make it bleed better. And if your fingers or your hands are blood-stained, wash them, and the wound also, with vinegar, and let it flow into the dish, and keep this blood, for it is to make the sauce.
As for skinning it, have hot water, on the fire, simmering, and skin it like an eel: with a blunt knife peel it and scrape the mouth on the inside, and throw away the scrapings, then spit it and roast it well. And to make the thick sauce, take ginger, cinnamon, long pepper, grain and a nutmeg, and grind and set aside: then have bread toasted black, and grind it and mix with vinegar and strain it through the sieve; then put the blood on to boil, along with your spices and your bread, all together, just till it boils, and if the vinegar is too strong, add wine or verjuice; and then it is thick sauce: and it is black, thick to a point but not too much, and the vinegar a little dominant, and salted a little; then turn it all hot on to the lamprey, and let it steep.
Item, you can make another sauce which is briefer. Take the blood and the vinegar and some salt, and when the lamprey is well roasted, boil this sauce just until it boils and throw it over your lamprey, and leave it to steep between two dishes.
Item, BOILED LAMPREY. Bleed it as above, and keep the blood: then put it to cook in vinegar and wine and a little water, and when it is well cooked, take it off the fire and put it to cool on a towel; then take toasted bread and mix with your bouillon and put through a strainer, and then put it to boil along with the blood, and stir it well so that it does not burn: and when it is boiled, pour into a mortar or a clean basin, and keep on stirring until it has cooled; then grind ginger, cinnamon, powdered cinnamon, clove, grain of Paradise, nutmegs and long pepper, and mix with your bouillon, and put in a dish as told above and it should be black.
Note that no seafish is good when it is caught in rainy or damp weather.
BRETTE[77] is prepared like a mullet, cooked like a ray, and so skinned: eat with camelin water. And the brette is quite like the dogfish, but brette is smaller and sweeter and better, and some say it is the female of the dogfish: and it is brown on the back, and the dogfish is russet.
DOGFISH like the brette. And note that the liver of either is good to put in a pie, along with finely powdered spices; and some add cheese, and it is good.
MULLET is called "migon" in Languedoc, and it is scaled like a carp, then split the length of the belly, cooked in water, with parsley on it, then cooled in its water; and then eaten with green sauce, and better with orange sauce. Item, it is good in pie.
COD (morue) is not spoken of in Tournay unless it is salt, for the fresh is called "cabillau", and it is eaten and cooked in the same manner as is told below for cod.
Item, when this cod is caught at the edge of the sea[78] and you want it to keep for ten or twelve years, you gut it, and take off its head, and dry it in the air and sun, and not with fire or smoke; and when this is done, it is called stockfish[79]. And when it has been so kept and you want to eat it, you should beat it with a wooden mallet for a good hour, and then put it to soak in warm water for a good twelve hours or more, then cook and skim it well like beef; then eat with mustard or drenched in butter. And if anything is left in the evening, make it into tiny pieces like lint, fry and put powdered spices on it.
Also with fresh cod, if any part is left for the evening or the next day, chop it small and fry it in a little butter, and then take it out of the skillet, and then pour off all the butter so none remains, and fry it again dry, and drip over it beaten eggs: then put it on platters or dishes and sprinkle finely powdered spices over it. And if there are no eggs, it is just as good without.
FRESH COD is prepared and cooked like gurnet with white wine in the cooking, and eaten with yellow sauce; and the salted cod is eaten with butter or mustard. The salted, lightly soaked, tastes too salty, and too long soaked it is not good; and because of this, if you buy it, you must try it in your teeth and eat a small piece.
FRESH MACKEREL comes into season in June, although you will find it from March onward. Gut it through its vent, then dry it with a clean rag, and without washing it at all put it on to roast, then eat it with cameline sauce or with a little salt; if it is salted mackerel, eat with wine and shallots. And you can put it in it, with powdered spices on it.
TUNNY is a fish found in the sea or salt-pools in parts of Languedoc, and has no bones except the spine, and has a hard skin, and should be cooked in water and eaten with yellow pepper.
SPINY LOBSTERS are large crayfish, and are good cooked in water, and you have to stop up with tow (or oakum) the tail through which you emptied it and also the jaw and the feet which are broken, and all other places through which any liquid might issue from its body, and then cook in water or in the oven, and eat with vinegar. All the same, if you want to roast it in the oven, you do not have to stop it up, but it is enough for you to cook it upside-down.
CONGER. Scale and skin like an eel, then put in the skillet and salt it like the red mullet, and cook it a long time like beef; and when it is almost done put it on to boil with parsley then let it [cool and: ed.] recook in its water, then serve and eat with green sauce. Some people put it to cook on the grill.
TUMBE[80], RED MULLET, GURNET, RED GURNET, are gutted through the belly and washed very well, then put in the skillet with salt on them, and then cold water; (and thus it is for saltwater fish, whereas for freshwater fish the water must be boiling), then cook over a low fire, and take off the fire; let it cook again in its water and eat with cameline sauce. Always, red gurnet, in summer, split along the back through the shoulders, are roasted on the grill and dowsed with butter and eaten with verjuice. Note that tumbe is the largest, and is taken in English waters. Gurnet is the next largest, and both species are a tan colour. The red mullet is the smallest and the reddest, and the red gurnet is the thinnest of all and is tan, splotched, and of various colours; and all are the same kind and same flavour.
Item, red mullet are good cooked with verjuice, powdered spices and saffron.
FRESH SALMON should be smoked, and leave the backbone in for roasting; then cut it into slices boiled in water, with wine and salt during cooking; eat with yellow pepper or with cameline sauce and in pastry, whatever you like, sprinkled with spices; and if the salmon is salted, let it be eaten with wine and sliced scallions.
HADDOCK is prepared like red mullet, and it is a good idea to let it cool a little in its cooking water, and eat a la jance[81].
SEA-PIKE[82] should be gutted through the vent, cooked in water, eaten with cameline sauce: or cut in chunks, and on the chunks put finely powdered spices and olive oil.
SEA-PIG, PORPOISE (and another name also meaning porpoise) are all the same, and the whole fish must be split up the belly like a pig; and with the liver and pluck make broth and soup as with a pig. Item, you cut it up and split it like a pig, along the back, and sometimes roast it on the spit in its skin, and then eat with a hot sauce such as sauce brule in winter.
Also it is cooked in water and wine added, then powdered spices and saffron, and put in a dish in its cooking liquid like venison; then grind ginger, cinnamon, grains, long pepper and saffron, and soak in your bouillon, and take one part out of the mortar; item, grind (toasted?) bread, soak in the liquid from your fish and strain through a sieve, and put it all together to boil, and it will be clear; then serve like venison. Or grind up black pepper, and let your fish, without washing, be cooked in half water half wine, and put on a dish: and throw on your sauce such as sauce galantine, and serve. And when you want to eat it, take a little of the cooled sauce, and add either (charcoal?)-water, or its own liquid, or vinegar and so on, and put on the fire to warm.
STOCKFISH must be cut into square pieces like a chequerboard, then soak for only one night, then take it out of the water, and put it to dry on a cloth; then put your oil on to boil, then fry your pieces of fish in a little oil, and eat with mustard or garlic sauce. Stockfish is made, apparently, from cod.
STURGEON. Scald, remove the mud, cut off the head and cut it in two. And first cut it longways along the belly as you would a pig, then let it be emptied, chunked, and put on to cook in wine and water and let the wine evaporate; and as the wine boils away, keep adding more wine. And you will know when it is cooked, when the skin can be lifted slightly; and to eat it hot, add the cooking liquid and spices as you would for venison: and if you wish keep it till it is cold, and eat with parsley and vinegar.
VEAL DISGUISED AS STURGEON FOR SIX PLATTERS. The evening before, or early in the morning, take six calves' heads without skinning, and scald them in hot water like a pig, and cook them in wine, and add a half-litre of vinegar and some salt, and let it boil until the meat comes off the bone; then let the heads cool and remove the bones. Then take a piece of good coarse cloth, and put it all in it, that is to say, one on top of the other in the smallest space you can, then sew with good strong thread, like a square pillow, then put put it between two strong planks and press very hard, and leave overnight in the cellar; then slice it up with the skin on the outside like venison, and add parsley and venison, and only put two slices on each dish. Item, if you cannot find enough heads, it can be done with a (skinned?) calf.
GRASPOIS[83] This is salted whale[84], and should be sliced raw and cooked in water like bacon; and serve with peas.
SALT WHITING is good when its fins are whole and its belly white and whole; and it is good cooked in butter, verjuice and mustard; and fresh whiting, fried, a la jance.
THE STINGFISH has three places it is dangerous to touch, that is the places on the back near the head, the ears[85]; and touch it with nothing except the knife, and throw everything out of it, and pull the innards out through the vent, and then cut it crossways in several places, roast it, and eat with verjuice and butter, or verjuice with powdered spices. Otherwise, cook it a little in water, then fry in butter, then boil in verjuice with the rest of the butter, and throw (spices) on it.
RAY is gutted through the numble, and keep the liver, and cut the ray in pieces, then put it on to cook like plaice, then skin and eat with cameline garlic.
Ray is good in September, and better in October, because then it eats fresh herring. That which has only one tail is called "notree", and those which have several, are not[86]. And there is still another fish similar to the ray called "tire", but it has no stickers on its back, and is larger and more speckled with black.
GALANTINE FOR RAY in summer. Grind almonds and soak in boiled water, and strain through a sieve; then grind ginger and garlic, and soak in this almond milk and pass through a sieve, and boil it all together and put it on the pieces of ray.
Ray which has been cooked once, if it is fried in oil without flour and eaten hot with cameline sauce, is good and better than in a cold galantine.
Ray must be washed in several waters, then cook in a little bouillon and quartered, then skin and let cool: but some parboil it in water without salt, then take it out, skin it and wash thoroughly, and put it on a good fire[87]; then put in a pan, on the fire, water and ground salt, then cook the ray over a low fire. And if desired, fry a part of that which was parboiled, and this ray will keep well for eight days.
PLAICE AND "CARRELET" are almost the same kind of fish. The larger is called plaice, and the small "carrelet", and it is speckled with red on its back; and they are good at March flood-tide, and better in the April flood-tide. Gut towards the back under the vent: wash well, and put in the pan with salt, and cook in water like a red mullet; and eat with wine and salt.
Item, "carrelet" are good fried in flour and eaten with green sauce.
DAB are speckled with yellow or russet on the back, becoming paler at the vent; they should be fried in flour and eaten with green sauce, or half fried and eaten in stew or broth.
"POLE"[88] AND SOLE are the same thing; and the "pole" are speckled on the back. They should be scalded and gutted like plaice, washed and put in the pan, with salt on them and water, then put on to cook, and when nearly done add parsley; then cook again in the same liquid, then eat with green sauce or with butter with some of the hot cooking liquid, or in a sauce of old verjuice, mustard and butter heated together.
Item, some roast them on the grill with damp felt between two; and these must not be scalded and are eaten with sorrel verjuice.
Item, you must also scald those you are going to fry, and they must be floured, then fried, and eaten with green sauce, and put in broth or gravy.
TURBOT is called "Ront"[89] at Besiers. It should be scalded, prepared as above and eaten with green sauce, or put in a (galingale?) sauce; and it is better cooled for two days.
BRILL is scalded, prepared as above, cooked and eaten, for it is of the same species and flavour, except only that the brill is smaller, and the turbot larger and better.
BREAM, "BAITTE"[90] is scalded, cooked in water, eaten a la cameline or put in pastry with powdered spices.
TENCH is cooked in water or baked, and eaten with verjuice.
DORY is prepared lengthwise, cooked in water, or baked, and eaten with verjuice.
"ALE" is baked en filopant[91], eaten with mustard; or skinned, then cooked in water just a little, then floured, fried in oil, and eaten a la jance or with scallions.
FLOUNDER. There is no need to take any notice of these, they are only in season when the "carrelet" are underfoot. This fish is not spotted with red on the back as is the "carrelet", and the back is quite dark.
SCALLOPS. Note that scallops which are heaped up and hold together in a pile without scattering or leaving, and are red and of lively colour, are fresh: and those which do not hold together and are separate and of dull or dead colour, are from an old catch. Pick them out, then wash thoroughly in two or three good hot waters, and then do it again in cold water, then dry on a towel briefly at the fire, and fry in oil with cooked onions, and then sprinkle with spices and eat with almost clear leaves, wheat sprouts or sorrel sprouts or leaves of (all-heal?, sainfoin?) or (wild chicory?, barberry?).
MUSSELS are cooked quickly on a high fire, in very little water and wine without salt, and eaten with vinegar. Item, when they are cooked in old verjuice and parsley, then fresh butter added, it makes a good soup.
Mussels are best at the beginning of the new season in March. Cayeux[92] mussels are red, round crosswise and longish, and the Normandy mussel is black.
FRESHWATER CRAYFISH. Cook them in water and wine, more wine than water, and skim, then add a little salt (I have heard that some say not, because the salt causes darkening).
LOBSTER should be cooked in the oven, and some call them crayfish, and all the holes in the oven should be stopped, and they should be eaten with vinegar and scallions.
CUTTLEFISH "CONREE"[93] should be skinned, then divided into pieces, then put it in a pan on the fire and some salt with it, and stir often, until it is well dried: then place it in a cloth, and wring it well and dry it with the cloth; then flour it with flour, and fry in plenty of oil with or without onions, then sprinkle spices on it, and eat with leaves of sprouted wheat.
Item, some, after it is skinned and cut in pieces, take it and stir it for a long time in the pan to remove its dampness and liquor which they must often pour off and strain. And when no more comes off, they dry it as above, and then fry it for a long time in lots of oil until it is wrinkled and crisp like pork cracklings, and then it is put in a dish, and powdered spices sprinkled on it, and so eaten. And in the pan with the hot oil on the fire, the oil has taken on the flavour of the cuttlefish, which makes it worthless, and you have to throw in cold wine which makes the taste come out with the steam; and thus the oil remains good for soups, and better than other oil which has not been used in cooking.
Item, for anyone who has no other meat except cuttlefish, and it is fried with onions as above, then put in two dishes with a good sauce of boiled garlic thrown on it, this would be a quite passable dish.[94]
Fresh cuttlefish should be washed thoroughly, then put in a pan in the oven with water, verjuice, oil and new scallions, and cooked; but first you must take out the bones and the bitter part.
An herbal dish or two of eggs. Take just two leaves of "coq"[95], and of rue less than half that or none at all, for remember that it is strong and bitter: of celery, tansy, mint and sage, no more than four leaves of each or less: of sweet marjoram a little more, more fennel, and yet more parsley; but of the leaves of white beet and beet, violet leaves, spinach, lettuce, and mother-of-sage, in equal amounts so that altogether you have two good handfuls: clean and wash in cold water, then rinse and remove all the water, and grind up two pieces of ginger; then put your herbs through the mortar two or three times, along with the said ginger, and grind up together. And then take sixteen well-beaten eggs, both yolks and whites, and grind and stir in the mortar along with what is already there, then divide in two, and make two thick omelettes which will be fried in the following manner: first you will heat your frying-pan thoroughly with oil, butter, or some such grease as you like, and when it is nice and hot all over, especially towards the handle, mix and pour your eggs into the pan and turn often with a flipper, then throw on some good grated cheese; and remember that it is done this way because if you grind the cheese with the herbs and eggs, when you put it in the pan to cook, the cheese on the underside would stick to the pan; and similarly with a cheese omelette if you mix the cheese with the eggs. So for this reason put the eggs in the pan first, and put the cheese on top, and then bring the edge of the eggs over to cover: otherwise it will stick to the pan. And when your herbs are fried in the pan, you can give your herbal dish a square or round shape and eat it not too hot and not too cold.
LOST EGGS. Break the shell and throw yolks and whites on the coals or on very hot embers, and then clean them and eat.
HELMET EGGS. Break open the end of the shell and empty out the white, leaving the yolk inside, set this shell on a tile[96], the hole upwards.
OMELETTE FRIED WITH SUGAR. Take out all the whites and beat the yolks, then put some sugar in a frying-pan and let it melt, and then fry your yolks in it, then put on a plate, with sugar on them.
LOST EGGS. Take four egg-yolks and beat them, and rock and powdered sugar, and let it all be beaten together very well, then poured through a strainer, then fried on the iron skillet and after that cut in lozenges; then let these lozenges be put on a dish with another omelette of poached eggs and finely powdered spices sprinkled on top.
TO MAKE A FINE OMELETTE WITH EGGS. Take seven eggs and remove the whites from two and put those in a bowl, and break all the others and beat with the two extra yolks, and fry; and it will be yellow.
Or, take six or twelve eggs and remove the whites and beat the yolks, and fry in oil, and let it be well spread out over the skillet, and cut in lozenges, and each lozenge should be turned over with the flipper, then put on the plate half an omelette fried in the ordinary way and four lozenges of these yolks, and some of the sugar sort fried in the ordinary way.
HERB DISH IN PASTRY COOKED IN THE SKILLET. Beat, grind and mix together your eggs and herbs and a piece of ginger as said before, then have some pastry kneaded as though for the bottom of a pie, and heat your skillet with oil or other grease: then put your kneaded pastry in the bottom of the skillet, then put in your pie filling along with a sufficient amount of grated cheese. And since the underside, that is the pastry which forms the bottom of the tart, will be cooked before the top side is barely heated, you should have another skillet the bottom of which has been heated, wiped and cleaned, and let this skillet be filled with hot coals, and put it inside the first skillet, on and touching the filling, so that it may be heated and cooked till dry till both filling and pastry are done.
TANSY EGGS. Grind a little ginger and some tansy, and moisten with vinegar, strain and put in a dish of whole, peeled hard-cooked eggs.
A Note on the Nature of Eggs. Put them on to cook in boiling water and the yolk will not be hard, so long as you have not first put them in cold water: but if you put them in cold water and then incontinently into boiling water, they will surely harden. Item, if you put them in boiling water and leave them on the fire, they will always get hard. Item, hard or soft, if as soon as they are cooked, you put them in cold water, they will be easier to peel.
FRUMENTY. First, you must hull your wheat the same as you would for hulled barley, and remember that for ten bowls you need a pound of hulled wheat, which you can sometimes find at the spice-shop already hulled for one blanc per pound. Clean it and cook it in water in the evening, and leave it overnight covered by the fire in lukewarm water, then take it out and wash it. Then boil milk in a skillet and do not stir it, for it would turn: and without waiting, put it all at once into a clean pot; and when it is cold, take the cream off the top so that this cream does not cause the frumenty to turn, and then boil the milk again with a little wheat, but very little wheat; then take egg yolks and pour them in, that for each sixth of milk a hundred eggs, then take the boiling milk, and beat the eggs with the milk, then move the pot back and throw in the eggs, and move it back (away); and if you see that it is trying to turn, put the pot in a full pail of water. On fish days, use milk: on meat days, use meat juices; and you can add saffron if the eggs aren't yellow enough; item, half a piece of ginger.
FALSE GRAIN DISH. Cook in water and wine livers and giblets of poultry, or meat from veal, or from a leg of pork or mutton, then chop it very finely and fry in lard: then grind up ginger, cinnamon, clove, grains, wine, verjuice, beef bouillon or juices of whatever meat you are using, and lots of egg-yolks, and pour it over your meat, and put it on to boil well. Some add saffron, as it should be yellowish in colour, and others add burnt bread, ground and sieved, for it should be thickened and also eggs and bread, and it should be tart from the verjuice. And in serving, over each bowl, sprinkle powdered cinnamon.
Mortereul is made like the False Grain dish, except that the meat is ground in the mortar with cinnamon spice: and there is no bread, but powdered cinnamon is sprinkled on top.
TAILLIS to be served in Lent. Take fine grapes, boiled milk of almonds, scalded, cakes and crusts of bread and apples cut in small cubes, and boil your milk, and saffron to give it colour, and sugar, and then mix it all together until it is stiff enough to be cut. It is served in Lent instead of rice.
STUFFED CHICKS. A chick should be suffocated while it is still alive, and it is suffocated at the neck; then bind its neck and let it die: then scald, pluck, gut, put it back together and stuff.
Item, or else, when it is all ready to put on the spit, at the hole where it was gutted, you can separate with your finger the skin from the flesh, then stuff it using the end of your finger, then sew it back up with a whip-stitch, at the hole, sewing the skin with the flesh, and put it on the spit.
And note that the stuffing is made of parsley and a little sage with hard-cooked eggs and butter, all chopped up together, and powdered spices too. For each chick you need three eggs, whites and all.
TO FATTEN CHICKS, put them in a blind (? obscure word: ed.) place, wash out their trough or drinking-bowl nine or ten times a day, and each time give them fresh food, and new fresh water; for food, beaten oats known as groats, soaked a little in milk or milk-curds; and keep their feet dry for nine days.
TO FATTEN A GOOSE IN THREE DAYS, feed it on warm bread crumbs soaked in buttermilk.
TO MAKE YOUNG PARTRIDGES OUT OF CHICKS, you need to have small pullets, and kill them a day or two beforehand, then prepare them, and chop off the legs and necks, take out the innards and throw them away, break the stomach, and work the thighs to make the flesh on them shorter, then garnish and roast, and eat with salt like partridge.
POULTRY STUFFED ANOTHER WAY[97]. Take your hens and cut out their crops, then scald and pluck, and be careful in plucking them that the skin is not torn; then do them again in water, then take a thin sharp blade and slip it between the flesh and the skin, and blow in it: then split them between the shoulders and do not make too large a hole, and pull out the innards, and leave the skin on the thighs, wings, neck up over the whole head and the feet. And to make the stuffing, take mutton, veal and pork and chicken meat; chop it all together coarsely, then grind in a mortar, and whole eggs with it and good fine cheese and good powdered spices and just a little saffron, and salt to taste. Then fill your chickens and sew up the hole, and from the remainder of your stuffing make balls the size of woad-balls[98], and put on to boil in beef bouillon or in good boiling water, with lots of saffron, and do not let it boil too strongly or they will fall to pieces; then put them on a good slender spit. And to make them golden, take lots of egg-yolks and beat them well with a little ground saffron, and gild them; and if you want them to be green, grind up green herbs and then lots of well-beaten egg-yolks passed through the sieve into the greens, and with it coat your poultry when it is cooked as well as your meatballs. And set up your spit or pot where your gilding is, and throw your gilding all along their length, and put back on the fire two or three times, until your gilding takes; and be careful that your gilding does not get too much heat or it will burn.
RICE for a meat day. Pick it over and wash in two or three changes of hot water, and put to dry on the fire, then add boiling cow's milk, and grind up saffron to colour it yellow: soak with your milk, then add in grease from beef stock.[99]
RICE, Another Way. Pick it over and wash in two or three changes of hot water until the water is clear, then do as above until half cooked, then puree it and put on trenchers in dishes to drain and dry in front of the fire: then cook it thick with the fatty liquid from beef and with saffron, if this is a meat day: and if it is a fish day, do not add meat juice, but in its place add almonds well-ground and not sieved; then sweeten and do not use saffron.
TO MAKE A SAGE-BASED SAUCE, take your poultry and quarter it, and put it on to cook in water with salt, then let it cool: then grind up ginger, cinnamon sticks, grains, cloves, and grind well without sieving; then grind up bread moistened with the chicken liquid, plenty of parsley, some sage and a little saffron among the greens to make it greener, and sieve it, (and some sieve with this hard-cooked egg yolks) and soak in good vinegar: and when it is soaked, add it to your poultry, and at the same time put on this poultry hard-cooked eggs cut in quarters and throw your sauce over all.
ANOTHER WAY, take the chicken and pluck it, then put it on to boil with salt until it is cooked, then take it out, quarter it and let it cool: Then put on to cook in water some hard-boiled eggs, and add bread soaked in wine and verjuice or vinegar, as much of one as of the other; then take parsley and sage, then grind up ginger, grains, and sieve it, and sieve the egg-yolks, and put quartered hard-boiled eggs on the chicken, and then add your sauce over it.
SAUCE FOR PIGLET is made the same way as the sage-based sauce but without eggs nor sage nor bread. It is made with the snout, ears, tail, short hocks, and the four trotters well-cooked and well-plucked, then put in a sauce of ground parsley, vinegar and spices.
PARTI-COLOURED SOUP OR FALSE GRAIN. Take a mutton thigh or the livers and gizzards of chickens, and set them to cook thoroughly in water and wine, and cut them into squares: then grind up ginger, cinnamon, clove and a little saffron and grains of Paradise, and soak in wine and verjuice, meat bouillon, (the same the meat has cooked in), and then take it out of the mortar; then have toasted bread soaked in wine and verjuice, ground very fine, and after this put it through the sieve, and put it all on to boil together, then take the meat and fry it in fat and throw it in, and take sieved egg-yolks, and throw them in to thicken it. And then arrange in bowls, and throw on powdered cinnamon and sugar: that is, throw it on half the contents of the bowl and not on the other; and call it Parti-coloured Soup.[100]
FLANS IN LENT. Kill and skin eels: then cook them in water so hot that you can remove the flesh without the rest, and leave on both the head and the tail, and only take the flesh; and grind up saffron in the mortar, then grind over it the eel's flesh, soak in white wine, and with this make your flans; and sprinkle sugar over it.
Item, flans have the taste of cheese when you make them with the soft roes of loach, or carp, ground almonds or starch, and saffron soaked in wine and lots of sugar on top.
Item, can be made with the flesh of tench, loach, carp, with starch, saffron, soaked in white wine and sugar on top.
JACOBIN TART. Take eels and skin them and cut into short lengths no thicker than half a finger, and take ginger, crumbled cheese, and carry this to the oven and make a tart of it, and sprinkle it with cheese at the bottom, and then put eel on top of that, and then a layer of cheese, and then a layer of crayfish tails, and so on, as long as each one lasts, one layer after another. And put some salt in the milk, and do not cover it; and stick the crayfish feet in the tart, and make a pretty cover separately, to be put on when it is cooked.
ANOTHER TART. Note that with pig stuffing you can make a covered tart, and let the stuffing be well made.
TO MAKE A TART, take four handfuls of beet-leaves, two handfuls of parsley, one handful of chervil, a bit of turnip-top and two handfuls of spinach, and clean them and wash them in cold water, then chop very small: then grate two kinds of cheese, that is one mild and one medium, and then put eggs with it, yolk and white, and grate them in with the cheese; then put the herbs in the mortar and grind them up together, and also add to that some powdered spices. Or in place of this have first ground up in the mortar two pieces of ginger, and over this grate your cheeses, eggs and herbs, and then throw in some grated old pressed cheese or some other such on to the herbs, and carry to the oven, and then make it into a tart and eat it hot.
TO MAKE FOUR DISHES OF MEAT JELLY, take a pig and four calf's feet and have two chicks plucked and two skinny young rabbits, and remove the grease, and they are to be split in two down the middle, except the pig which is to be cut in pieces: and then put in a pan three quarts of white wine or claret, a pint of vinegar, a half-pint of verjuice, make it boil and froth strongly: then add, in a small closed cloth bag, a quarter of an ounce of saffron to give an amber colour, and put meat on to boil and all together with a little salt; then take ten or twelve pieces of white ginger or five or six pieces of galingale, half an ounce of grains of Paradise, three or four pieces of mace leaf, two blancs worth of juniper: cubeb, nard, three blancs worth: bay leaves, six nutmegs; then crush them in a mortar and put in a bag and put in to boil with the meat until it is cooked, then take it out and set it to dry on a white cloth, then take for the best plate the feet, the snout and the ears: and the rest to the others. Then take a good net on two supports, and pour your whole potful through it, except for the spices which you take out, and strain it for soup, and do not stir it until it gets clearer. But if it does not strain well, heat it here and there to keep it hot so it will strain better, and strain it two or three times until it becomes clear, or through a cloth folded three times. Then take your dishes and arrange your meat in them, and have some cooked crayfish, of which you are to put on your meat the thighs and tails; your jelly is to be reheated, and pour enough of it on to the meat to cover, for there need be only a little meat, then put in the cellar overnight to cool, and in the morning stick in it cloves and bay leaves and cinnamon sticks, and sprinkle with red anise. Note that to make it in two hours, you must have quince seed (or flesh: trans.), philicon (possibly an astringent plant of the fern family) and cherry-tree gum, and crush all this together and put in a bag to boil with the meat.
Item, on fish days, you make the jelly as above, with loach, tench, bream, eels, crayfish and perch. And when the fish is cooked, put it to drain and dry on a fair white cloth, and skin and clean it well, and throw the skins in the broth.
Item, TO MAKE BLUE JELLY, take the aforesaid bouillon, either meat or fish, and put in a clean pan and set it to boil again on the fire, and take from a spice-box two ounces of turnsole[101] and put it on to boil with it until it has a good colour, then take it out: and then take a pint of loach and cook it separately, and distribute the loach in your dishes, and strain the bouillon on as above, and let it cool. Item, this makes it blue. And if you wish to make a coat of arms on the jelly, take gold or silver, whichever pleases you better, and with the white of an egg use a feather to trace it, and put gold on with tweezers.
Further, FOR TWENTY DISHES OF JELLY you need ten skinny young rabbits, ten skinny chicks, a chopine of loach[102] which might cost three sous: a hundred crayfish which must not be from Marne, six sous: a skinny pig, three sous, eight deniers; (and even though it is skinny, you still need to remove the fat from between the skin and the flesh, and make little square pieces,) three shoulders of veal, four sous: eight quarts of wine to cook the veal all in wine, two quarts of vinegar: half an ell of linen cloth, two sous. Item, you must cook the veal all in wine and vinegar, and skin it and add salt, then take it out, and cook the rabbits and chickens, and skim it, and put the saffron and half the bay-leaves in a cloth or bag to cook with it: also put in spices milled small or ground in a stone mortar; and when all is cooked, strain it through the sieve and cloth, and repeat until it is clear; then cook the loach separately, and the crayfish separately, and take the crayfish tails, and make up your dishes with half a rabbit, half a chicken, six loach and four crayfish tails; and put them in the cellar, and set your dishes down very straight, and throw your jelly on top and fill them well. And the next day, put on each plate white violet, grenadine and red sugared almonds and four bay-leaves.
SUMMER CHITTERLING SAUSAGES. Take the pluck of a lamb or kid and remove the membrane, and the remainder cook in water with a little salt: and when it is cooked, chop it very fine or grind it, then have six egg-yolks and powdered spices, a tablespoon of silver, and beat it all together in a bowl; then add and mix in your pluck with your egg-yolks and spices, then spread it all on the caul or membrane, and roll up in the manner of sausages, then bind slackly with thread longways, and then close-set crossways; and then roast on the grill, then remove the thread and serve. Or thus: make balls of it, that is of the membrane itself, and fry these balls in sweet pork fat.
BALLS. Take raw lean meat from a mutton thigh, and the same from a lean pork thigh. It should be all chopped very finely together, then grind in the mortar ginger, grains, clove, and sprinkle it into your chopped meat, and then moisten with egg-white with no yolk; then use your hands to shape the raw meat and spices into balls, then when the shapes are well made, put them on to cook in water with salt, then take them out, and have some hazelwood skewers and spit them and set them to roast; and when they turn brown, have some parsley ground and sieved and flour mixed together, neither too clear nor too thick, and take your balls from the fire and put a dish under them, and turning the spit on the dish, anoint your balls well, then return to the fire as often as necessary until the balls are done.
FROGS. To take them, have a line and a hook and bait of meat or red cloth, and having taken the frogs, cut them across the body near the thighs and empty out what is near the back end, and take the two thighs of these same frogs, cut off the feet, and skin the thighs raw, then have cold water and wash them; and if the thighs stay overnight in cold water, they will be better and more tender. And after thus rinsing them, they should be washed in warm water, then take and dry in a cloth; the thighs, thus washed and dried, should be rolled in flour, that is floured, and then fried in oil, fat or other liquid, and put in a bowl and powdered spices on them.
SNAILS KNOWN AS ESCARGOTS, should be taken in the morning. Take young, small snails, with dark shells, among the vines and shrubs, then wash them in plenty of water until there is no more scum (or froth: trans.): then wash them once in salt and vinegar and put them on to cook, in water. Then you should drag the snails out of their shells with the end of a pin or needle, and then you should remove their tails, which are black, because that is their excrement; then wash, and cook and boil in water, and then take them out and put them on a dish or in a bowl, to be eaten with bread. And also some say that they are better fried in oil and onion or other liquid after they have been cooked as above, and are eaten with powdered spices, and are for rich people.[103]
NORTHERN PIES are made of cod liver and sometimes with chopped fish added. And first you should parboil it a little, then chop it up, and put in small patties at three deniers apiece and powdered spices on top. And when the pie-maker takes them uncooked to the oven, they are fried whole in oil and this is for fish days; and on meat days, they arc made of beef marrow, which has been put in a slotted spoon, and the slotted spoon with the marrow in it put in the bouillon of the meat pot, and left there as long as you would leave a plucked chicken in hot water to scald it; and then put it in cold water, then cut the marrow into small round balls or little bullets, then take to the pie-maker who puts them four and four or three in each pasty and powdered spices on top. And without cooking in the oven they are cooked in oil. And if you wish you can make marrow doughnuts, but they have to be prepared in the manner above, then take flour and egg-yolks and make a paste, take each piece of marrow and fry in oil. You can make doughnuts out of the remainder.
LARDY MILK. Take milk of cows or ewes and put to boil in the fire, and throw in bits of bacon and some saffron: and have eggs, that is both white and yolk, well-beaten and throw in all at once, without stirring, and make it all boil together, and then take it off the fire and leave it to turn; or without eggs, use verjuice to turn it. And when it is cool, tie it up stoutly in a piece of cloth or net and give it whatever shape you wish, flat or long, and weighted with a large rock let it cool on a side-board all night, and the next day release it and fry it alone without added grease, or with grease if you wish; and it is placed on plates or in bowls like slices of bacon and stuck with cloves and pignon nuts. And if you want to make it green, use turnsole.
RISSOLES ON A FISH DAY. Cook chestnuts on a low fire and peel them, and have hard-cooked eggs and peeled cheese and chop it all up small; then pour on egg yolks, and mix in powdered herbs and a very little free-running salt, and make your rissoles, then fry in lots of oil and add sugar.[104]
And note, in Lent, instead of eggs and cheese, put in cooked whiting and sciaena, chopped very small, or the flesh of pike or eels, and chopped figs and dates.
Item, on ordinary days, they can be made of figs, grapes, chopped apples and shelled nuts to mimic pignon nuts, and powdered spices: and the dough should be very well saffroned, then fry them in oil. If you need a liaison, starch binds and so does rice. Item, the flesh of sea lobster is good instead of meat.
RISSOLES ON A MEAT DAY are seasonable from St. Remy's Day (October 1). Take a pork thigh, and remove all the fat so that none is left, then put the lean meat in a pot with plenty of salt: and when it is almost cooked, take it out and have hard-cooked eggs, and chop the whites and yolks, and elsewhere chop up your meat very small, then mix eggs and meat together, and sprinkle powdered spices on it, then put in pastry and fry in its own grease. And note that this is a proper stuffing for pig; and any time the cooks shop at the butcher's for pig-stuffing : but always, when stuffing pigs, it is good to add old good cheese.
Item, at the courts of lords like Monseigneur de Berry, when they kill a beef, they make rissoles with the marrow.
CREPES. Take flour and mix with eggs both yolks and whites, but throw out the germ, and moisten with water, and add salt and wine, and beat together for a long time: then put some oil on the fire in a small iron skillet, or half oil and half fresh butter, and make it sizzle; and then have a bowl pierced with a hole about the size of your little finger, and then put some of the batter in the bowl beginning in the middle, and let it run out all around the pan; then put on a plate, and sprinkle powdered sugar on it. And let the iron or brass skillet hold three chopines, and the sides be half a finger tall, and let it be as broad at the bottom as at the top, neither more nor less; and for a reason.
CREPES IN TOURNAY STYLE. First, you must have the use of a brass skillet holding a quart, of which the top is no wider than the bottom, even by a very little, and the edges should be three or four fingers tall and half a finger thick. Item, you need to have salted butter, melted, skimmed and cleaned, and then turned into another skillet, and leave all the salt and fresh oil as clean in one as in the other. Then take eggs and fry them, and take the whites out of half of them, and the remains of these are beaten with all the whites and yolks, then take a third or a fourth of warm white wine, and mix it all together: then take the best wheat flour you can get, and then beat together enough at a time, for one or two people, and your batter should be neither clear nor thick, but such that it will flow gently through a hole as big as your little finger; then put your butter and your oil on the fire together, as much of one as of the other, until it boils, then take your batter and fill a bowl or a large pierced wooden spoon, and pour it into your grease, first into the middle of the skillet, then circling until your skillet is full; and keep beating your batter without stopping, to make more crepes. And this crepe which is in the pan should be lifted with a fork or a skewer, and turned over to cook, then take it out, put it on a plate, and start another; and keep stirring and beating the batter without stopping.
PIPEFARCES. Take egg yolks and flour and salt, and a little wine, and beat together strongly, and cheese chopped in thin slices, and then roll the slices of cheese in the batter, and then fry in an iron skillet with oil in it. This can also be made using beef marrow.
AN HERBY MEAT DISH FOR FOUR PEOPLE. If you have killed a goat, you can make a dish of the first stomach (and the other stomachs?), etc., in yellow sauce with bacon and liver, lungs, pluck and other tripes. Cook them very well in water, then chop with two knives as for puree, and chop them up very small, or grind them in the mortar with sage or mint, etc., as above.
Note that with goat the bowels are not left with the pluck as they are with pig; the reason is that pig intestines are broad and can be washed, and turned inside out in the river, and those of the goat, cannot; but everything else is left in as with pig, including the head, the gullet and the neck, the liver, the lights or lungs, for it is all one, the small spleen and the heart, and all together it is called the pluck: and the same with pigs.
Item, when we speak of skewered pieces of pork eaten in July, which are dipped in salt and vinegar, these are the intestines which are broad, chopped in pieces four fingers in length, and eaten with new verjuice.
CHERVIS[105]. The earliest appearing from the ground and freshly pulled, harvested in January, February, etc., are the best; and the freshest are known by the fact that they break off, and the old ones when pulled from the ground bend. You must clean them and remove the bad parts as with turnips, then you must wash them thoroughly in warm water, then parboil a little, then put them to dry on a towel, then flour them, then fry, then arrange nicely on little plates, and put sugar on them.
Item, if you wish to make pies with them, you must prepare them as above up to the frying, and then put them in pastry, breaking the longest in two pieces, and instead of the sugar mentioned above, you should put in figs chopped small and grapes.
DEEP-FRIED EGGS AND LOACH. You must put the eggs in water with salt, and cook well ... let cool, then cut in pieces and wrap in pastry and eggs, and cook in oil.
MUSTARD. If you wish to provide for keeping mustard a long time do it at wine-harvest in sweet must. And some say that the must should be boiled. Item, if you want to make mustard hastily in a village, grind some mustard-seed in a mortar and soak in vinegar, and strain; and if you want to make it ready the sooner, put it in a pot in front of the fire. Item, and if you wish to make it properly and at leisure, put the mustard-seed to soak overnight in good vinegar, then have it ground fine in a mill, and then little by little moisten it with vinegar: and if you have some spices left over from making jelly, broth, hypocras or sauces, they may be ground up with it, and then leave it until it is ready.
SORREL VERJUICE. Grind the sorrel very fine without the twigs, and soak in old, white verjuice, and do not strain the sorrel, but let it be finely ground; or thus: grind parsley and sorrel or wheat-leaves. Item vine buds, that is those that are young and tender, without any sticks.
CAMELINE. 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.
Note that there are three differences between meche Ginger and Colurnbian (or columbine: trans.) ginger. For meche ginger has a darker skin, and it is easier to cut and whiter inside than the other; item, better and always more expensive.
Galingale which is most reddish-violet when cut is the best.
The heaviest nutmegs are the best and the firmest to cutting. And also the heavy galingale which is firm in cutting, for if it is spoiled it is rotten and lightweight like dead wood; this is not good, but that which is heavy and firm under the knife like walnut-wood, that is good.
GARLIC CAMELINE SAUCE For Ray. Grind ginger, garlic and crusts of white bread soaked in vinegar, or toasted bread, and soak in vinegar; and if you add liver it will be better.
WHITE OR GREEN GARLIC SAUCE 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.
SAUCE WITH MUST For Fresh Herring. Grind the garlic without peeling, and only grind it a little and soak in must, and arrange with the peelings.
GREEN SAUCE WITH SPICES. Grind ginger very fine, clove, grain, and take out of the mortar: then grind parsley or allheal, sorrel, marjoram, or one or two of the four, and white breadcrumbs soaked in verjuice, and strain and grind again very fine, then strain again and put it all together and flavour with vinegar.
Note that it is good jellied, but leave out the breadcrumbs.
Note that for all the spices, some put in only rosemary leaves.
A STREAKY SAUCE TO KEEP FISH. Take parsley, sage, allheal, vinegar, and strain; but beforehand grind "coq"[106], hyssop, sorrel, all, rnarjoram, ginger, cinnamon stick, long pepper, clove, grain, and take it all out of the mortar, and put it on your fish when all is done; and it will be streaky. And some put in allheal with the whole root.
Note that jellied sauce is so-called because it is prepared like pig's trotters.
For freshwater fish you make a broth thus, except that you do not put any herbs in, and in place of herbs, you put in saffron and nutmegs and verjuice, and it should be a fine yellow and boiled, and put it all hot on the cold fish.
On the spit, cut crosswise and roast on the grill.
The sauce for a roast capon is to dismember it, and put on the joints salt and verjuice, and a third of white or red wine; and push strongly like for a chicken[107].
Item, in summer, the sauce for a roast chicken is half vinegar, half rose-water, and chilled, etc. Item, orange-juice is good.
Note, that in July the old verjuice is too weak and the new verjuice is too green: and for this reason, at grape-harvest, verjuice which is mixed half old and half new is best. Item, in stew, you weaken it with puree, but in January, February, etc., the new is the best.
CAMELINE TOURNAIS STYLE, look in the preceding chapter.
YELLOW OR BITTER PEPPER. Take ginger, saffron, then take toasted bread soaked in liquid from the meat (and even better is a little cabbage-water), then boil, and when boiling add the vinegar.
BLACK PEPPER. Take a clove and a little pepper, ginger, and grind very fine: then grind toasted bread soaked in a little liquid from the meat or in a little cabbage-water which is better, then boil in an iron pan, and when boiling add vinegar; then put in a pot on the fire to keep hot. Item, some add cinnamon to it.
GALANTINE FOR CARP. Grind saffron, ginger, clove, grain, long pepper and nutmegs, and soak in the greasy liquid in which the carp will cook, and add to it verjuice, wine and vinegar; and thicken it with a little toasted bread ground up well, and without sieving, (it is said that sieved bread makes a nicer sauce ) and boil it all and throw on the cooked fish, then put in dishes. And it is good reheated on a dish on the grill, better than all cold. Note that it is good and nice without saffron; and note that it is enough that each plate have two chunks of carp and four fried gudgeon.
SAUCE FOR RABBIT OR FOR RIVER-BIRD OR FOR WOOD-DOVE. Fry onions in good oil, or mince them and put to cook in the dripping-pan with beef drippings, and do not add verjuice nor vinegar until boiling: and then add half verjuice half wine and a little vinegar, and pass the spices. Then take half wine half verjuice and a little vinegar, and put all in the dripping pan under the rabbit, dove or river-bird; and when they are cooked, boil the sauce, and have some bits of toasted bread and put in with the bird.
CALIMAFREY OR LAZY SAUCE. Take mustard and powdered ginger and a little vinegar, and the grease and liquid from carp, and boil together: and if you want to make this sauce for a capon, instead of using the grease and liquid from the carp, add verjuice, vinegar and the capon grease.
COW'S MILK JANCE. Grind ginger, egg yolks without specks (embryos), and pass them raw through the sieve with cow's milk: or if you fear it might turn, cook the egg yolks, then grind and pass through the sieve; soak in cow's milk, and let it boil well.
GARLIC JANCE. Grind ginger, garlic, almonds, and soak in good verjuice and then boil; and some add a third of wine to it.
JANCE is made in this manner: take almonds, put in hot water, peel, grind, and also two pieces of ginger; or put in powdered spices, a little garlic, and untoasted white bread, slightly more of that than the almonds, soaked in white verjuice and a quarter of white wine: strain, then make it boil very well, and serve in bowls. And one should serve it more than other sauces.
A SAUCE FROM POITOU. Grind ginger, clove, grain and some livers, then take out of the mortar: then grind toasted bread, wine and verjuice and water, one third of each, and put on to boil, with fat from the roast added, then pour over your roast or put in bowls.
A MUST SAUCE (for Starlings? don't think so: JH). Take new black grapes, and squish them in the mortar, and boil up a bouillon, then strain through a sieve: and then throw on powdered spices, a little ginger and more cinnamon, or cinnamon alone for it is better, and stir a little with a silver spoon, and throw in crusts or toasted bread or eggs or chestnuts to thicken it: some red sugar, and serve.
(Item, on this head, you should know that alkanet[108] is a spice which gives a red colour and is also like galingale; and it may be soaked in wine and meat juices, then ground.)
Item, and if you want to make this Must Sauce after Saint John's Day and before you can find any grapes, you can make it of cherries, wild cherries, heart-cherries, mulberry wine, with powdered cinnamon, without ginger, even a little, boil as above, then put sugar on it.
Item, and after grapes can no longer be found, as in November, make the Must Sauce with hedge-sloes, take out the seeds, then grind or crush in the mortar, boil with the skins on, then pass through a sieve, add powdered spices, and the rest as above.
SHORT SAUCE FOR CAPON. Have good clean water, and put in the dripping-pan under the capon while it is roasting, and keep sprinkling the capon, then grind up a clove of garlic and soak in this water and boil, then serve. Like Jance it is good, and there is none better.
SAUCE TO BOIL IN PIES OF YOUNG WILD DUCK, DUCKLING, YOUNG RABBIT OR WILD RABBIT. Take lots of good cinnamon, ginger, clove, grains, half a nutmeg and mace, galingale, and grind very well, and soak in half verjuice and half vinegar, and the sauce should be clear. And when the pie is just about done, throw this sauce inside it and return to the oven to boil once.
(Note that the young wild duck are those which cannot yet fly until they have felt the August rain.)
And note that in winter you put more ginger in so it will be stronger in spice, for in winter all sauces should be stronger than in summer.
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.
SAUCE RAPEE. Scald three or four bunches of verjuice[109], then crush part of them and remove the residue of this verjuice: and then grind ginger and mix with this verjuice and put in a bowl; then grind the verjuice skins previously crushed, and moisten with white verjuice and strain; and put it all in the bowl and stir it all together, then sieve and sprinkle grain on top. Note, in July, when the verjuice is growing, this can be used with ham or pig's feet.
SAUCE FOR A CAPON OR HEN. Put a very small amount of white breadcrumbs to soak in verjuice and saffron, then grind it: then put it in the dripping-pan, with four parts of verjuice and the fifth part of grease from the capon or hen and no more, for that would be too much, and put it to boil in the dripping-pan, and serve in bowls.
SAUCE FOR EGGS POACHED IN OIL. Have onions cooked and parboiled as long as cabbages, then fry them: after emptying the pan where you have fried your eggs so that nothing is left in it, put in it water and the onions and a quarter of vinegar, that is to say the vinegar should make it all up to one quart(er), and boil, and throw it on your eggs.
SWEET TISANE. Take water and boil it, then add for each sixth of a gallon of water one good bowl of barley, and it does not (or it does matter? - Trans.) if it still has its hulls, and get two parisis' worth of licorice, item, or figs, and boil it all until the barley bubbles; then let it be strained in two or three cloths, and put in each goblet a large amount of rock-sugar. This barley is good to feed to poultry to fatten them.
Note that good licorice is the youngest, and when cut is a lively greenish colour, and if it is old it is more insipid and dead, and dry.
BOUILLON. To make four sixths of bouillon, you need half a brown loaf of bread costing one denier[110], yeast bread, raised three days: item, bran, a good quarter of a bushel[111], and put five sixths of water in a pan, and when it boils, put the bran in the water and boil until it all reduces by a fifth or more; then take it off the fire and let it cool until it is just warm, then strain through a sieve or cloth, then soak the leavened bread in water and put it in a cask, and leave it for two or three days to work; put in the cellar and leave to clarify, and then drink.
Item, if you want to make it better, you should add a pint of honey, well boiled and well skimmed.
BOUCHET. To make six sixths of bouchet, take six pints of fine sweet honey, and put it in a cauldron on the fire and boil it, and stir continually until it starts to grow, and you see that it is producing bubbles like small globules which burst, and as they burst emit a little smoke which is sort of dark: and then stir, and then add seven sixths of water and boil until it reduces to six sixths again, and keep stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it is just warm; and then strain it through a cloth bag, and then put it in a cask and add one chopine (half-litre) of beer-yeast, for it is this which makes it the most piquant, (and if you use bread yeast, however much you like the taste, the colour will be insipid), and cover it well and warmly to work. And if you want to make it very good, add an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grains of Paradise and cloves in equal amounts, except for the cloves of which there should be less, and put them in a cloth bag and throw in. And after two or three days, if the bouchet smells spicy enough and is strong enough, take out the spice-bag and squeeze it and put it in the next barrel you make. And thus you will be able to use these same spices three or four times.
Item. ANOTHER BOUCHET KEPT FOUR YEARS, and perhaps you could make a whole batch more or less at one time if you wished. Combine three parts water and one part honey, boil and skim until it reduces to a tenth, and then throw in a vessel: then refill your pot and do the same again, until you have enough; then let it cool and complete your batch: your bouchet will emit something like must which works. If you can, keep it continually full so that it can emit, and after six weeks or a month you must draw off the bouchet as far as the lees and put it in a copper tub or other container, then stave in the vessel where it stands, remove the lees, scald, wash, replace the staves, and fill it with what you have left, and keep; and do not warm it up if it broached. And then have four and a half ounces of finely powdered cinnamon and an ounce and a half of cloves and one of grains beaten and placed in a cloth bag and hung by a cord from the stopper.
Note that the scum which is removed, for each pot of it take twelve pots of water, and boil together, and this will make a nice bouchet for the servants. Item, any skimming from honey can be used in the same proportions.
CAPON WATER. Put your capon or hen in a good clean pot which is newly tinned and well covered, so that nothing can escape, and put your pot in a pan full of water and boil until the capon or hen in the pot is cooked; then take out the capon or hen, and give the liquid left in the pot by the fowl to a sick person to drink.
HAZELNUT BEVERAGE. Parboil and peel, then put in cold water, then grind and mix with boiled water and strain: grind and strain twice, then put in the cellar to cool; and it is better than a tisane.
ALMOND BEVERAGE. As above.
FLEMISH SOUP. Put a pot of water on to boil, then for each bowl four egg-yolks beaten with white wine[112], and drip it into your water and stir well, and add salt to taste; and when it has boiled well, pull it to the back of the fire.
Note. If you are making only one bowl for a sick person, use five yolks.
BARLEY GRUEL. Soak the barley in a basin for about half an hour, then mash it and put it in a copper mortar and crush it with a wooden pestle, then set it to dry: and when it is dry store it. And when you want to make broth, put it to cook in a little pot with water, and when it bursts, mash it and put it on to boil with almond-milk; and some strain it. Item, add lots of sugar.
ALMOND MILK. Parboil and peel your almonds, then put in cold water, then grind and soak in water in which onions have been cooked and strain through a sieve: then fry the onions, and add a little salt, and boil on the fire, then add the sops. And if you make almond milk for sick people, do not add onions, and in place of the onion water to soak the almonds as spoken of above, add and soak them in clean warm water and boil it, and do not add salt, but lots of sugar. And if you want to make it as a drink, strain through a sieve or through two pieces of cloth, and lots of sugar to drink it.
STRAINED PULLET. Cook the pullet until it falls apart, and grind it with all its bones in a mortar, then put back in its own cooking-liquid, strain, and add sugar. Note that the bones must first be boiled: then take them out of the mortar, strain, and wash the mortar; then grind the flesh and add lots of sugar.
STRAINED PERCH, OR TENCH, OR SOLE, OR CRAYFISH. Cook it in water and keep the liquid, then grind almonds and perch together, and put in the liquid, and strain and boil it all; then serve your perch and put lots of sugar on it. And it should be clear, and lots of sugar.
The best strained meats you can have on meat days are made from the necks of pullets and chicks. And you must grind up the necks, along with the heads and bones, then grind again, and put in the cooking-liquid from beef cheek or leg, and strain.
Note that after the great heat of June, spice soups come into season, and after Saint Remy's Day [October 1], broths of veal, hare, oysters, etc.
GRUEL[113] should be cooked until it bursts, then puree and cook with almond milk as said earlier in the recipe for barley gruel, and lots of sugar.
RICE. Clean it and wash it, etc.
THIS IS THE WAY TO MAKE COMPOTE. Note that you must start by St. John's Day which is the twenty-fourth day of June.
First, take five hundred new walnuts, and be sure that neither the shell nor the kernel are yet formed and that the shell is also neither too hard nor too tender, and peel them all round, and then pierce them through or in a cross. And then put them to soak in water from the Seine or a spring, and change it every day: and they must soak ten to twelve days and they will become black and when you chew one you will not be able to taste any bitterness; and then put them on to boil in sweet water and let them boil just for the length of time it takes to say a Miserere, and until you see that there are none which are too hard or too soft. Then empty the water, and put them to drain on a screen, and then boil a sixth of honey or as much as they need to be all covered, and the honey should be strained and skimmed: and when it is cooled down to just warm, add your walnuts and leave them two or three days, and then put them to drain, and take as much of your honey as they can soak in, and put the honey on the fire and make it come to a good boil and skim it, and take it off the fire: and put in each hole in your walnuts a clove in one side and a little snip of ginger in the other, and then put them in the honey when it is lukewarm. And stir it two or three times a day, and at the end of three days take them out: and gather up the honey, and if there is not enough, add to it and boil and skim and boil, then put your walnuts in it; and thus each week for a month. And then leave them in an earthenware pot or a cask, and stir once a week.
Take, around All Saints Day (November 1), large turnips, and peel them and chop them in quarters, and then put on to cook in water: and when they are partially cooked, take them out and put them in cold water to make them tender, and then let them drain; and take honey and do the same as with the walnuts, and be careful not to over-cook your turnips.
Item, on All Saints, take carrots as many as you wish, and when they are well cleaned and chopped in pieces, cook them like the turnips. (Carrots are red roots which are sold at the Halles in baskets, and each basket costs one blanc.)
Item, take choke-pears and cut them in four quarters, and cook them like the turnips, and do not peel them; and do with them neither more nor less than with the turnips.
Item, when gourds are in season, take those which are neither too hard nor too tender, and peel them and remove the seeds and cut into quarters, and do the same to them as to the turnips.
Item, when peaches are in season, take the hardest and peel them and cut them up.
Item, around St. Andrew's Day, take roots of parsley and fennel, and scrape them, and chop them into small pieces, and split the fennel and remove the hard part, and do not do this to the parsley, and prepare them exactly the same way as told above, neither more nor less.
And when your preserves are ready, you can use them in the following recipe.
First, for five hundred walnuts, take a pound of mustard-seed and half a pound of anise, a quatrain and a half of fennel, a quatrain and a half of coriander, a quatrain and a half of caraway seed, which is a seed eaten in dragees, and grind all these things to powder: and then put all these things through the mustard mill and soak them thick in very good vinegar, and put in an earthenware pot. And then take half a pound of horse-radish, which is a root sold by herbalists, and scrape it thoroughly and chop it as small as you can and grind it in a mustard-mill, and moisten with vinegar. Item, take half a fourth of clove stem, half a fourth of meche ginger, half a fourth of nutmegs, half a fourth of grains of paradise, and grind them all to powder. Item, take half an ounce of saffron from Orte [a place-name] dried and beaten in an ounce of red cedar, a root bought at a herbalist's and called "cedar for making knife-handles". And then take twelve pounds of good honey which is hard and white and melt it on the fire, and when it is well-cooked and skimmed, let it sit, then strain it, and cook it again: and if it still produces scum, you will have to strain it again, if it is not convenient to let it cool; then moisten your mustard with good red wine and half as much vinegar and put in the honey. Soak your powdered spices in wine and vinegar and put in the honey, and boil your cedar pieces a little in hot wine, and then add the saffron with the other things, and another handful of coarse salt. Item, and after these things, take two pounds of grapes known as Digne grapes, which are small and have no seeds or pips inside, and which are fresh, and pound them thoroughly in a mortar and moisten in good vinegar, then strain through a strainer, and put with the other things. Item, if you add four or five pints of must or cooked wine, the sauce will be better.
TO MAKE QUINCE MARMALADE, take quinces and peel them, then cut in quarters and take out the eye[114] and the seeds, then cook them in good red wine and then strain through a strainer: then take honey and boil it for a long time and skim it, then put your quinces in it and stir thoroughly, and keep boiling until the honey is reduced by half; then throw in powdered hippocras, and stir till cold, then divide into portions and keep it.
FINE POWDER of spices. Take (probably: Ed.) an ounce and a drachma of white ginger, (probably: Ed.) a quarter-ounce of hand-picked cinnamon, half a quarter-ounce each of grains and cloves, and (probably: Ed.) a quarter-ounce of rock sugar, and grind to powder.
WALNUT PRESERVE. Take, before St. John's Day, fresh walnuts and peel them and pierce them, and put to soak in cold water for nine days, and each day renew the water: then let them dry, and fill the holes with cloves and ginger, and boil in honey, and thus keep them preserved.
TO MAKE WATER TO WASH THE HANDS AT TABLE. Boil sage, then strain the water, and let cool until it is luke-warm. Or instead you can use camomile or marjoram, or rosemary : and cook with the peel of an orange. And also laurel leaves [bay leaves] are good for this.
HIPPOCRAS. To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter-ounce of very fine cinnamon, hand-picked by tasting it, an ounce of very fine meche ginger and an ounce of grains of paradise, a sixth of an ounce of nutmeg and galingale together, and pound it all together. And when you want to make hippocras, take a good half-ounce or more of this powder and two quarter-ounces of sugar, and mix them together, and a quart of wine as measured in Paris.
And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together make "duke's powder".
To make a quart or a quarter-ounce of hippocras by the measure used in Besiers, Carcassonne, or Montpelier, take five drams of fine select clean cinnamon, select peeled white ginger, three drams: of clove, grains, mace, galingale, nutmeg, nard, altogether one and a fourth drams: more of the first, and of the others less and less of each as you go down the list. Grind to powder, and with this put a pound and half a quarter-ounce, by the heavier measure[115], of ground rock sugar, and mix with the aforesaid spices; and have wine and the sugar melted on a dish on the fire, and add the powder, and mix: then put in the straining-bag, and strain until it comes out a clear red.
Note that the cinnamon and the sugar should dominate.
SAGE. To make a pot of sage, take two pounds of sage and remove the stems, then put the leaves in the pot. Item, have half an ounce of cloves in a cloth bag hung in the pot with a cord; item, you can put half an ounce of laurel [bay leaves] in it: item, half a quarter-ounce of meche ginger, half a quarter-ounce of long pepper and half a quarter-ounce of laurel. And if you want to prepare sage at the table in winter, have sage-water in a ewer, and pour it on white wine in a goblet.
TO MAKE WHITE WINE RED AT THE TABLE, take in summer the red flowers which grow in the wheat, called rose-mallow and other names, and let them dry until they crumble into powder, and secretly drop them in the glass with the wine, and it will turn red.
IF YOU WANT TO HAVE VERJUICE[116] AT CHRISTMAS ON THE TRELLIS, when you see the raceme just beginning to grow, and before it flowers, trim it at the tail, and the third time leave it to grow until Christmas.
Master Jehan de Hautecourt says that you can trim the vine-stock below the raceme, and the other shoot beneath will send out a new raceme.
IF YOU WANT TO HAVE RED CHOKE-PEARS IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER, put some hay on to cook, and cover the pot so that no steam escapes. Note that you need to put on the pears rape-seed boiled in new wine and then dried, or sugared almonds.
TO MAKE SALT WHITE, take a pint of coarse salt and three pints of water, and put on the fire until it is all dissolved together, then strain through a cloth or a strainer, then put back on the fire and bring to a good boil and skim: and let it boil until it is all dry, and the little bubbles of water become quite dry; then take the salt from the pan and spread on a cloth in the sun to dry.
TO WRITE ON PAPER A LETTER NO-ONE CAN SEE UNTIL THE PAPER IS HEATED, take sal ammoniac and moisten and dissolve it in water: then write with this and let it dry. And it will last about eight days.
TO MAKE LIME[117], you must peel holly while it is in sap, (and this is usually from May to August,) and then boil the bark in water until the outer bark separates: then peel it, and when the outer bark is peeled away, wrap the remainder in leaves of dwarf-elder, seun[118], or other broad leaves, and put in a cool place such as a cellar, or in the ground or in a cold manure-heap, until it is rotted, And then pound it like a puree of cabbages and make into round cakes like woad[119], and then go wash the cakes one after the other and cut up like wax; and they should not be washed too much in the first water nor should the water be too hard[120]. And after they have all been cut and hardened in good flowing water, put in a pot and keep well covered.
And if you want to make lime for water, you should heat a little oil, and soak your lime in it: and then lime your line.
Item, another lime can be made from wheat.
TO KEEP ROSES RED, take a dozen buds, and gather them into a bundle, and then wrap them in linen and tie the string tightly as you would a parcel, and make as many bundles of roses as you like; and then put them in a jug of Beauvais ware and be sure it is not made of clay from anywhere else, and fill it with verjuice: and as the verjuice disappears, add to it, but let the verjuice be very well made. And when you want them to open out fully, take them out and put them in warm water, and let them soak a little.
Item, to keep roses another way, take as many buds as you want, and put them in a bottle made of Beauvais clay, as many as you can get into it. Then take the finest sand you can get, and put in the bottle as much as you can, and then stopper it tightly so that nothing can get in or out, and put the bottle in a flowing stream: and your roses will keep the whole year.
TO MAKE ROSE WATER WITHOUT A LEAD ALEMBIC, take a barber's basin, and fold a kerchief longwise across the opening like a drum, and then put your roses on the kerchief, and over the roses set the bottom of another basin containing hot ashes and live coals.
TO MAKE ROSE WATER WITHOUT ALEMBIC OR FIRE, take two glass bowls, and do as said earlier, and in place of ashes and coals, put it all out in the sun: and the heat of the sun will make the rosewater form.
Roses from Provence are the best to put in clothing, but they should be dried, and in mid-August sift them over a screen so that the worms fall through the screen, and then spread them in your clothes.
TO MAKE DAMASK ROSEWATER, add mashed roses to the rose petals. Or thus: pour the first distillation of rosewater into the second and the third and the fourth; and thus, having gone through four times, it will be red.
TO MAKE RED ROSEWATER. Take a glass flask and half fill it with good rosewater then fill it up with red roses, that is petals of young roses from which the white bit at the end has been cut away, and leave nine days in the sun and at night too, and then strain it.
TO MAKE BIRDS IN A CAGE LAY, HATCH AND FEED. Note that in the Hesdin cage, which is the greatest in this realm, nor in the King's cage at Saint-Paul, nor in the cage of Messire Hugues Aubriot, no eggs are laid to be hatched and later little birds fed, and in the Chariot cage they do lay eggs, brood them and hatch. In the first case[121], the fault is that the young birds are fed on hempseed, which is hot and dry, and nothing to drink. And in the second case (where the birds do lay, etc., as in the Chariot mews), they give them chickweed or sow-thistle, field thistles soaked in water and often renewed and always fresh, refreshened three times a day, and in lead vessels which are clean, and along with the chickweed and sow-thistle all green, the thistles that have been standing in water a good while beforehand, hempseed which has been shelled, sorted and the spines removed, milled and soaked in water. Item, you should put in the cage carded wool and feathers so they can make their nests. And thus have I seen turtle-doves, linnets, goldfinches flourishing in cages, laying and feeding. Item, and you should also give them caterpillars, little worms, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies, all fresh in grass and dampened and wet. Item, worms, caterpillars and the like are soft to the young bird's beak which is tender.
(And with such things do peacocks feed their young, for we have all seen a hen hatch the eggs of a peahen along with its own, and brood the eggs for the same length of time, but the baby peacocks do not live long because their beaks are too tender, and the hen does not get them soft things as their nature needs, and the chicks live well on grain or soft paste, which is not proper nourishment for peacocks. Again you have seen those who throw to a hen the very best well-sieved wheat in the world, yet she scratches for worms or bugs.)
Item, at the end of April you should go to the woods to find three-forked branches, and fix them against the wall and cover with other greenery, and there they can make their nests.
TO CURE THE TOOTHACHE. Take a clay pot with a lid or a pot without a lid which you can cover with a plate, and fill with water and put it on to boil: then you must strip, lie down, and let your head be well covered, then have the covered pot, firmly closed except for a small hole in the middle, or it can be covered by a dish pierced in the centre. And with your mouth agape hold your teeth over the hole so that you can inhale the steam coming through the hole, and have sage or other herbs in the pot, and keep it well covered.
TO MAKE SAND TO PUT IN CLOCKS[122]. Take the lime dust which falls when they saw those great blocks of black marble, then boil it very well in wine like a piece of meat and skim it, and then put it to dry in the sun, then put it on to boil, skim, and then dry nine times: and thus it will be good.
POISONS TO KILL DEER OR BOAR. Take the root of the electuary herb which has blue flowers, and grind in a mortar and put in a bag or cloth and press out the juice: and put this juice in a bowl in the sun, and during the night keep it covered securely so that neither water nor other liquid can get in it, and keep putting it out in the heat of the sun until it gets glutinous and holds together like gummed wax, and put it in a tightly closed box. And when you want to shoot your bow, put some between the iron barbs and tubular casing of the arrow so that when the beast is struck, it will strike and contact the flesh, for if you do it otherwisely, that is to say if you anoint the metal differently, when it enters the beast's hide, the ointment will stay in the skin, and the blow will fail.
MEDICINE TO CURE THE BITE OF A DOG OR OTHER ENRAGED BEAST. Take a crust of bread and write the following: Bestera bestie nay brigonay dictera sagragan es domina fiat fiat fiat.[123]
TO MAKE A BOAR INTO A GOOD PIG. Take a boar of two years old or thereabouts, and in May or June castrate him, and in boar-hunting season[124] hunt it down, singe it and butcher it like a boar. Or else thus: take some tame pig which may be scalded, and cook it in half water half wine, and serve in a dish of this stew, turnips and chestnuts and the meat. Thus thirdly...[125]
Note that a candle put in bran lasts very well. Note that if you want to make a candle, you must first dry the wick thoroughly at the fire.
TO TAKE THE WATER OUT OF WINE. Put water and wine in a cup, and have some cotton thread and plunge one end in to the bottom of the cup, and let the other end hang over the edge below and outside of the cup, and you will see the water dripping from this end like dew. And when the water has all dripped out, you will see the red wine dripping out. (And it seems that similarly a tail of wine can be made) .
TO MAKE COOKED WINE, take from the barrel or tun the first pressing, whether white or red, as much as you want, and put it in an earthenware vessel, and put it on to boil gently, just simmering, on a fire of very dry wood and clear flame, without the slightest bit of smoke, and skim with a pierced wooden spoon, not a metal one. And it should boil so that, if the grapes are green that year, the wine reduces to a third and if the grapes are ripe, to a fourth.[126] And then let it cool in a barrel or other clean wooden vessel, and when it is cooled, put it in a puncheon; and the third or fourth year it will be better than the first year. And keep it in a medium place, neither hot nor cold, and keep some of this boiled wine in a small vessel, to refill the container from time to time, for you know that wine always likes to be kept full.
TO SERVE TRIPE IN YELLOW SAUCE. You may have it raw, or cooked. If raw, put them on to cook in a pot with water and without salt, and elsewhere cook a piece of beef leg or thigh without salt. And when the two pots are boiling, add the liquid from the beef to the tripe pot and cook the tripe longer than the beef; and when the tripe is almost cooked, add some bacon, and let it boil and cook together: and at the point where the tripe is ready to be taken out of the pot, add saffron, and when the saffron has made it yellow enough, remove the tripe, and add salt to the water if you wish. If you buy it cooked, parboil in the stock without salt; and then proceed as above.
If you wish to cook tripe, etc.
Hedgehog should have its throat cut, be singed and gutted, then trussed like a pullet, then pressed in a towel until very dry; and then roast it and eat with cameline sauce, or in pastry with wild duck sauce. Note that if the hedgehog refuses to unroll, put it in hot water, and then it will straighten itself.
Squirrels are singed, gutted, trussed like rabbits, roasted or put in pastry: eat with cameline sauce or in pastry with wild duck sauce.
Turtledoves are good roasted and in pastry, and are in season in September, from August on. Always when roasted they smell marvelous; and if you have plenty of them and wish to feed and keep them, you should clip or pluck their tails, otherwise they will fly and maim themselves and thus die.
Waffles[127] are made in four ways. In the first, beat eggs in a bowl, then salt and wine, and add flour, and moisten the one with the other, and then put in two irons little by little, each time using as much batter as a slice of cheese is wide, and clap between two irons, and cook one side and then the other; and if the iron does not easily release the batter, anoint with a little cloth soaked in oil or fat. - The second way is like the first, but add cheese, that is, spread the batter as though making a tart or pie, then put slices of cheese in the middle, and cover the edges (with batter: JH); thus the cheese stays within the batter and thus you put it between two irons. - The third method, is for dropped waffles, called dropped only because the batter is thinner like clear soup, made as above; and throw in with it fine cheese grated; and mix it all together. - The fourth method is with flour mixed with water, salt and wine, without eggs or cheese.
Item, waffles can be used when one speaks of the "large sticks" which are made of flour mixed with eggs and powdered ginger beaten together, and made as big as and shaped like sausages; cook between two irons.
To remove salt from all soups without adding or taking away. Take a nice white cloth and put it on your pot, and change it frequently; and the pot should be away from the fire.[128]
To remove burn from a soup, take a fresh pot and put your soup in it, then take a little leaven and tie it in a white cloth, and throw it in your pot, and do not let it stay long.
To make a liquid for marking cloth. Take dirty grease, such as the black muck which is found at each end of the axle-tree of a carriage, and add, and mix in oil and vinegar and boil it all together, and then heat up your marking tool and dip it in, and set it on your linen.
If you want to make good tinder to light a fire with (flint and) steel, take walnut bark (or possibly flowers?) past its prime, and put in a pot of very strong lye, either whole or in pieces the size of two fingers, whichever you wish, and boil continually for at least two days and a night. And if you have no lye, take good ashes and mix with the water and make it like "charree" (the thick mixture of ashes and water left at the bottom of the washtub after you pour off the lye), then put your bark on to boil in it for the time mentioned above and add liquid as needed while it boils. If you boil it in lye, add lye; if you boil it in charree, add water; and all the time it is boiling, if you can provide clean animal urine to add to it, so much the better. And when it is boiled enough, press it, and then wash in good clean water to soak it, then dry in the sun or in the hearth, away from the fire, so it does not burn, for it should dry gradually and gently; and when it is dry, if someone will help you , beat it with a mallet or a stick, until it gets spongy. And when someone wants to light a fire, let him take a piece about the size of a pea and put it on his flintstone, and he will soon have a fire; he only needs a sulphured spill, and he can light the candle. And you must keep it very clean and dry.
Coots should be very well roasted, and are better cooked in broth than roasted, for roasted they are too dry, and must be basted with their own grease, and the fire should be in front. - Item, it is very good fresh with cabbage. - Item, put water and onions in a little pot and the coot, then let it boil like a piece of beef, then grind up some small spices, and mix them with two parts verjuice to one part vinegar, and you will have a nice stew. -Item, coot salted for two days are good in stew.
Note that rump of venison includes the skin and tail; and when fresh it is cooked in water and wine, with spices and saffron and broth in summer: and in winter with pepper; and the same with fresh boar.
To Make Three Pints of Ink, take two ounces each of galls and gum Arabic, and three ounces of vitriol; and break the galls and soak them for three days, then boil in three quarts of rainwater or stagnant pond water (i.e. not running water: Trans.). And when they have boiled long enough and the water has boiled down to about half, that is, so that there is only about three pints, then take it off the fire, and add the vitriol and the gum, and stir until cold, then put in a cold, damp place. And note that after three weeks, it will go bad.
To Make Candied Orange Peel, divide the peel of one orange into five quarters and scrape with a knife to remove the white part inside, then put them to soak in good sweet water for nine days, and change the water every day; then cook them in good water just till boiling, and when this happens, spread them on a cloth and let them get thoroughly dry, then put them in a pot with enough honey to cover them, and boil on a low fire and skim, and when you believe the honey is cooked, (to test if it is cooked, have some water in a bowl, and let drip into this one drop of the honey, and if it spreads, it is not cooked; and if the drop of honey holds together in the water without spreading out, it is cooked;) and then you must remove your orange peel, and make one layer with it, and sprinkle with ginger powder, then another layer, and sprinkle etc., and so on; and leave it a month or more, then eat.
To Make Sausages. When you have killed your pig, take some chops, first from the part they call the filet, and then take some chops from the other side and some of the best fat, as much of the one as of the other, enough to make as many sausages as you need; and have it finely chopped and ground by a pastry-cook. Then grind fennel and a little fine salt, and then take your ground fennel, and mix thoroughly with a quart[129] of powdered spices; then mix your meat, your spices and your fennel thoroughly together, and then fill the guts, that is to say, the small gut. (And know that the guts of an old porker are better for this purpose than those of a young pig, because they are larger.) And after this, smoke them for four days or more, and when you want to eat them, put them in hot water and bring just to boiling, and then put on the grill.
To Take The Salt Out Of Butter, put it in a bowl on the fire to melt, and the salt will sink to the bottom of the bowl, and the salt thus obtained is good for stew, and the rest of the butter is sweet. Another way, put your salt butter in sweet fresh water, and beat it and knead it, and the salt will stay in the water.
(Item, note that flies do not bother a horse rubbed with butter or old salty grease.)
Burbot (a sort of scaly eel: Trans.) is the same shape as leach but somewhat larger: and cook it in water, then skin it like a perch, then boil cameline or galantine and throw on it; or bake and put in pastry with powdered spices.
Pears, at the beginning of the season, that is in October and November, provided they are of the new crop, are hard and tough, and then you must cook them in water: and when they are choke-pears, in order to make them have a good colour, put some hay in the pot they are cooked in, and after that bake them; but later, when they are withered and mouldy from the damp weather, you should not cook them in water at all, but simply on the grill; that is in February and March.
Magpies, Crows, Jackdaws. These are killed with crossbow-bolts with broad unsharpened points, and with light crossbows you can take crows which are perched on branches, but for those in the nest you need to draw large bolts to knock down nest and all. They should be singed, then parboiled with bacon, then cut in pieces, and fry with eggs like mincemeat.
Sheep's Head should be very well cooked, then remove the bones, and chop the remainder very fine, and throw powdered herbs on it.
If you need to make provision for vinegar, empty the barrel of your old vinegar, then wash it thoroughly with very good vinegar and not with water either hot or cold: then, put the washings in a wooden or clay vessel, not copper or iron, and here let these slops rest and settle: then pour off the clear vinegar, and put it back in the barrel, and fill with more good vinegar, and put it in the sun and the heat, and at night and in damp weather cover it up: and when the sun comes out again, uncover it again.
Rique-Manger. Take two apples as big as two eggs or a little more and peel them, and take out the seeds, then chop in small pieces, then parboil in an iron skillet, then pour off the water, and let the rique-manger dry: then add butter for frying, and while frying and stirring, drip in two eggs; and when it is all cooked, throw on powdered spices, and saffron, and eat with bread during September.
Baked Hare. I have seen a hare baked while wrapped in that part of a pig's innards known as the caul and costing three blancs, and this way the hare needs no other grease. Item, I have seen it larded.
The Meat of a Leg of Beef, etc.
Pig Hash needs no work except to wash it, stick it on a spit and wrap it in its cloth and cook for a long time.
Coloured or Gilded Stuffed Hens. They are first skinned, and all the meat inside removed, then filled with other meat, then coloured or gilded as above: but this requires too much work, and it is not a job for a cook in a bourgeois household, nor even in a knight's; so I'll leave the subject.
Item, Shoulder of Mutton, these are nothing but trouble and work.
Item, hedgehogs are made with mutton balls, and this is very expensive and a lot of work with poor returns and little profit, so no more of this.
Take new almonds, and with a knife carefully remove the outer skin, then poke a hole in the middle of each almond. When this is done, put the almonds in sweet water and leave them for five or six days, but change the water every day. Then, after five or six days take the almonds out of the water and place (on a cloth?), and leave them there for a whole day to drain and dry. Then have enough excellent honey for these almonds; make it boil and cook it well and sufficiently, and skim it. And when it is cooked and cooled, put a clove in the hole of each almond, place the almonds in a good clay pot, add (item, it may be done with preserved nuts, but they must stay in water nine days and the water must be changed every day;) enough of the cooked honey to cover the almonds completely and they can be eaten after two months.[130]
Cow's Udders. Cooked with meat and eaten like meat. - Item, salted with mustard sauce. - Item, sometimes cut in strips and roasted on the grill, cooked fresh.
Starlings. They are plucked dry[131], gutted, then cut off the heads and feet, then sew up, put in pastry with two strips of bacon on them: or cut the parts in pieces like a chick, and treat like mincemeat, that is to say that you cut the thigh into three parts, and leave the bones in each piece: the wings also, and the rest the same, and then fry in the skillet with eggs like mincemeat (hamburger: Trans.) It seems to be a good idea to half cook them before frying.
Roast Skylarks. Pluck them dry, then cut off the heads, and do not gut them. They are sewn back up, and the legs are not cut off, and they are spitted crossways between two slices of bacon. Item, in pastry, you do cut off the heads and legs, and gut them, and put in the hole fine cheese, and eat them with salt.
Hare is parboiled, then larded, put in pastry, with powdered spices, and eaten with cameline sauce; and it is a summer meat.
Rabbit in summer.
Pork in Pastry. Put in pastry with grape verjuice over.
Geese, Hens, Capons are cut in pieces, and put in pastry, except the very fat capons are not cut up; and from one goose you can make three pies.
River Birds. In pastry, and with cameline sauce or better put in the pastry when it is cooked; the head, legs and feet are left out.
Pigeons in pastry, heads and feet cut off, and two slices of bacon on top: or roast, and lard them.
To Clean Barley or Wheat To Make Frumenty. You need very hot water, and put the wheat or barley in this hot water, and wash and rub very thoroughly for a long time: then pour off all the water, and let the wheat or barley dry and then pound it with a wooden pestle, then winnow it in a wash-basin.
Drinks made from filberts. Scald and peel them and place in cold water, then let them be well ground and soaked in boiled water, then run through a sieve.
Sardines, gutted, cooked in water, and eaten with mustard sauce.
New Herring begins in April and lasts until Saint Remy's Day when the fresh herrings begin; and it is cooked in water, and then you make good hearty soups to be eaten with old verjuice, but first, and as soon as it is cooked and removed from the pan, you should put it in good fresh water, and wash it and remove the scales, head and tail.
[1]Left blank in manuscript. (JP)
[2]Vin de Grenache. See Legrand d'Aussy, vol. III, p. 48. (JP)
[3]Pinparneaux translates most closely to pimpernel, but recipes further on in this manuscript obviously call for a fish, and this is as close as I can come. (JH)
[4]These numbers must refer to pages of a manuscript or to chapter numbers, not to anything in the three manuscripts I have before my eyes. (JP)
[5]I do not know this sauce or method of preparation. (JH)
[6]Actually a very thin wafer made of flour, water, white wine and sugar, and cooked between two irons. (JP)
[8]This dish is not found in le Menagier nor in le Grand Cuisine nor in Taillevent. It seems to me to come from menu VI where it can be made with lampreys. (JP)
[9]I'm sure this does not mean a man with a cross-bow, but the true meaning evades me. (JH) Herb dish or herbelade, as in the Arbolettys in Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books. (DDF)
[10]Manuscript B adds, after a blank space, ".de pore ut pa (ut proximal)." (JP)
[11]I do not know the meaning of this abbreviation, but further on we find "soup of shad the colour of peach flowers..." which must be the same dish here.
[12]This, I think, is not the usual English name for "gonelle", but, anyway, it is an edible fish from the English Channel (JH).
[13]cut bread? (JH). But according to Terrance Scully, this is a kind of cheese and egg pie (EGC).
[14]I do not think that the author is speaking here of the pheasant solemnly presented (like peacock) to the company for the making of feudal vows, for if he was he would not have put it in the plural. It seems to me that he indicates by these words just that the pheasant was a select game-bird, reserved for the lords - and which could not be touched by the servants nor by those who dined later? Nevertheless it is unnecessary to think that the pheasant was rarer then than now. In the "Modus" is a chapter which tells how to take this bird, and in a large number of homages rendered by the Angevin lords of the 14th and 15th centuries, there figure hunting-preserves for partridge as well as for pheasant. See the note on Jean de Craon, lord of La Suze, in my edition of the "Tresor de Venerie" ("Hunting Treasury"). (JP)
[15]Claret here means a sort of hippocras made with honey instead of sugar, and with white wine instead of red. (JP)
[16]Although this menu ends with an etc,, it seems impossible to believe that it could actually indicate a meal of twenty-four removes, and I believe that platter or dish is meant. (JP)
[17]a thick sauce (JH); literally, "in mud"(EGC).
[18]This may refer to the cypress-root herb, the turbot, the pastry, or be understood to indicate chopped vegetables. (JH)
[19]Closest I can come to this word is "larrons"=thieves! (JH).
[20]Vanilla? Must be a borrowed word or an inventive spelling, it doesn't even look like medieval French (JH). Couldn't be; vanilla is from the New World and this is pre-Columbus (EGC).
[21]The word normally means a bowl, but it is evident here and in certain other passages of this work that there is a certain understood relationship between the number of bowls and the number of guests. We know that they ate from trenchers or flat pieces of bread, but though this custom makes sense when it is a matter of solid foods, it could not apply to sauces and soups which obviously had to be taken with spoons from hollow containers. Here is a meal with eight bowls, served to sixteen guests. . . So we can suppose that they served one bowl between two guests - in the Orient they still place in the middle of the table one large dish normally containing pilau, etc., from which each person helps himself with his fingers; while in between each two table-companions there is a small bowl of liquid foods from which they both eat with spoons - so that two people would thus eat together of the liquid foods, and so it would follow that a meal of a certain number of bowls would have double that number of guests. We would be even more likely to think of one bowl serving at least two people since the usage of personal bowls was still new and uncommon during the minority of Louis XIV. This is shown in "Les Delices de la Campagne" ("Country Delights"), a work by Nicolas de Bonnefons, valet of the King's chamber, the first edition of which is, I believe, 1653, and in which we read. "The plates of table-companions will be hollow also so that each may have his own soup and can serve himself as much as he wishes to eat of it, without taking spoonful by spoonful from the common dish, because of the disgust caused by those who carry their spoon from mouth to bowl without wiping it off between spoonsful." From the instructions given by that author on the use of hollow plates, it would seem to me that this was still a new fashion. This being so it is scarcely possible to suppose that in the fourteenth century they would serve a hollow plate, a bowl, to each guest for himself alone. Nevertheless, we shalt see further on place two strips of meat in each bowl, but when there are more guests and less meat, to serve the broth alone in the bowls, and in a dish five strips for four people. It would definitely seem from this passage that two strips in each bowl would be a more generous serving than five between four, and thus consequently one bowl with two meat-strips would be for one person normally . . It is impossible for me to reconcile these two passages of the Menagier, and I leave them to the enlightened examination of my readers. (JP)
[22]Covered dishes, served solely to and for him, were the custom for the king, the dukes, etc. (JP)
[23]The quart contained two pints and the pint two half-pints; there were therefore sixteen guests. (JP)
[24]This word, "faudis", unknown to the nineteenth century French editor, is close to a Provencal word which could well have existed in the fourteenth century in this form. The meaning is the modern French "fade" or tasteless, which could well have indicated then a lack of strong taste (JH).
[25] The priest of Lagny had fishing-rights in the Marne. (JP)
[27]The author of "Tresor de sante" ("Treasury of health") advises only to use it in the depth of winter. (JP)
[28]The price for a "setier" (approx. 8 pints or 1 gallon) of grain, at the time the author was writing, varied between 13 and 20 sous. Taking 16 s. as an average price, and applying to this price the laws governing prices of bread made by Charles V in 1372, we find that a denier-worth of bread of the best quality weighed six ounces after cooking. This amount of bread and provisions appears quite considerable for a dinner of twenty bowls (forty people), and a supper of ten (twenty people?), but we may suppose that it served also a large number of servants, companions, etc. (JP)
[29]This was coarse bread, probably toasted. (JP)
[30] . . . I do not know if this refers to the servants or perhaps to people of a less elevated position who dined after the first guests. (JP)
[31]I cannot find this word anywhere else; it seems to designate a kind of wafer(JP). I assume a flat wafer (JH).
[32]Money struck in Paris (JH).
[33]The author put no price for pomegranates or oranges, doubtless because the price varied. Legrand~d'Aussy . cites an account of the dauphin Humbert, from 1333, where it speaks of oranges, and passes from there to the reign of Louis XLV. We see from this passage in the Menagier that oranges were frequently served at Paris tables in the 14th century (JP).
[34]Further on in the chapter on "Side-dishes, Frumenty", the author says this cost one blanc the pound at the grocers, I believe I have good reasons to set the value of the blanc at five deniers and in fact one pound of blanched wheat, at the price of 5d., makes one gallon of it cost 100 sous, a rather higher price than the average 16s. per gallon of ordinary wheat in the 14th century . The price of 8 deniers given here would put the gallon at 160 sous. Anyway this difference can be explained by the quality of the blanched wheat, of which one would naturally take the best for a wedding feast, and by variations in the price of wheat. (JP)
[35]The author, in the chapter "Sauces which are not boiled", tells us that mesche ginger had a browner bark, was easier to cut, whiter, better and costlier than the columbine; and indeed we see here that it cost 20s. the pound and the columbine 11, but I have been able to find nothing on the differences of origin or species which doubtless caused the two gingers to have different names. (JP)
[36]Root of "galanga", a plant from the East Indies. The author, in the chapter on "Sauces which are not boiled", says that the best is the hardest, heaviest, and of which the violet colour is brightest. These words prove that he is speaking of the small galingale from the Indies, which is indeed reddish, rather than the large galingale which grows in China and which is whitish or ashy grey. (JP)
[37]The flower of the nutmeg . . . All these spices figure in the enactments of February, 1349 (1350) and May 3, 1351, relating to laws under which commodities entered Paris. We can see there that pepper, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, rice, anise, saffron and cloves came into Paris in bales, and that cubeb (also sometimes used in the kitchen), mace, grains of Paradise, long pepper, nutmeg, spikenard, galingale, pumpkins(?), dates, pine-nuts, etc., arrived without doubt in small quantities, since they were taxed by the pound. (JP)
[38]This means that the grocer took back the ends at a rate of 2s. 6d. the pound. So one would lose only 6 deniers the pound in this way. (JP)
[39]Counting only what wax was used, the rest being returned to the grocer. (JP)
[40]I do not know how the author came up with this amount, since there were twenty bowls at the dinner, ten at the supper, and included six more at the servants' dinner. (JP)
[41]It seems from this passage that the guests could have had liquid leftovers to leave in front of them. This scarcely agrees with the idea of one bowl between two people, and necessarily renewed with each dish. Could personal metal plates already have been in use? (JP)
[42]Vases placed on the table or on a sideboard, in which were placed a portion of the dishes which one had before one to be given later to the poor. This is the same charitable and Christian idea which caused the first part of the King's cake to be given to the poor; this was called God's portion. The alms pots were of large dimensions, for we see one made of silver weighing 12 marks 2 ounces half priced for 40 gold francs, in the accounts of the execution of Queen Jeanne d'Evreux in 1372, and one also of silver weighing 11 marks and priced at 60 Paris pounds in the inventory of Richard Picque, Archbishop of Rheims, who died in 1389. We see also in this same document a great alms bowl, and finally, a sideboard for the alms basket. (Such an alms container would have been less charitable, but it is quite likely that this story was entirely the invention of Jean sans Peur or of Jean Petit.) (JP)
[43]This is the house of the Bishop of Beauvais, whether the one who owned the whole of Rue de la Verrerie (Glassworks Road) personally, the celebrated Miles de Dormans, Bishop of Beauvais, who died in 1387, or the house of the bishops of Beauvais on Rue des Billettes, which belonged to their see, and which Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, sold for 30,000 pounds in 1572. Sauval did not know where this house was. - We read in the narrative of the embassy of Jerome Lippomano in France, in 1577, that the concierges of Paris houses rented them out by the day or by the month during the owners' absence; this was already the custom in the 14th century, for it is said further on that Jean Duchesne paid the 4 francs mentioned here to the concierge of Beauvais House, who also rented him tables, trestles, etc. The headdresses were hats or crowns made of flowers. (JP)
[44]A rather curious passage in the history of table-service. There was, besides the sideboard in the dining-room for the cups, wine, etc., a sideboard in the kitchen for preparing the dishes, and from which they were carried to the table. (JP)
[45]A meal or feast given the day after the wedding or some days later, sometimes given by the parents of the newly-weds. (JP)
[46]We know that at one time the nuptial bed used to be blessed; one can even see, in a miniature in the "Chivalrous Count of Artois", reproduced in the curious edition by M. Barrois of this pretty novel, p. 27, a priest blessing the bed in which the Count of Artois and his new bride are already ensconced. (JP)
[47]This is not explained (JH).
[48]We shall see further on this Hautecourt called Master Jehan de Hautecourt . . . There is plenty of reason to believe that he was in a position high enough to have as expensive a wedding as the one whose menu we have here. (JP) [Here follows a long and interesting history of a law-suit Jehan was involved in (JH)].
[49]It seems these words indicate a fruit or almond, but I have been unable to discover which. (JP) Or perhaps a candy or another sort of wafer (EGC).
[50]It is quite likely that one stayed in mourning all one's life. Queens mourned their whole lives for the king they had survived, wearing white, So they were called to distinguish them from the new queen, "reines blanches" (white queens): as a result many houses were called "de la reine Blanche" (of the White Queen). (JP)
[51]Minstrels were also dancers and tightrope-walkers, and sometimes tellers of stories both farcical and merry. (JP)
[52]In the 4th article, above, but it is only an incomplete list of names. (JP)
[53]From this comes the proverb: as bad as yellow bacon (JP).
[54]There seem to be several words missing here, perhaps: with water and... This recipe is repeated further on in the chapter on Stews with Spices. (JP)
[55] In the "Delights of the Countryside" there are some details on the different parts of beef, but the author was writing for people who knew the names he used, and did not define them clearly, so one can only make educated guesses at his meanings.
The manner in which beef is divided is completely changed nowadays, and it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to give exact names and definitions for the parts named here by the author of "Le Menagier". Nevertheless here are the very feeble results of information carefully gathered on this subject.
"Planchet" (flank) is today the name of the membrane holding in the intestines and the lower abdomen. The Trevoux Dictionary defines it as a part which is cut from the lower end of the beef, towards the thighs, and which is part of the sirloin.
The "surlonge" (sirloin) necessarily different from the part which today bears that name... must be at the extremity of the-body, that is to say a part of the rump.
The "longe" (loin), worth twice the sirloin, today includes the sirloin and the fillet. The English have kept the word to designate only the Loin.
Dom Carpentier thinks that the "nomble" (numble) designates the loin and the backbone. But this passage in "Le Menagier" distinguishes the numble from the loin; one can only suppose that at some time the part of beef known nowadays as the fillet was given to the flayer as being of little worth... According to Phebus, the numbles are flesh and fat with the kidneys, which lie within, in the area of the loin near the two thighs. This definition, along with the expressions of the author of "Le Menagier", accord with the part now known as "onglet"... a piece of meat twelve to fifteen inches long, forming the extremity of the "hampe" or membrane which separates the liver and the spleen from the pancreas and the intestines. It touches the fat which envelopes the kidney, and the "hampe" which is the nerve continuation of the "onglet", goes on to attach itself, not to the neck, but to the chest. (JP)
[56]At the great butchery at Porte-Paris. (JP)
[57]Evidently the liquid from the peas is very thin and clear, a kind of vegetable bouillon. (JP)
[58]We know that the year began then at Easter. The years 1392, 1393, 1394, in which the Menagier was composed, all began in April. (JP)
[59]The verse translation sufficiently explains the beginning of this culinary aphorism, Lazarus seems to refer to the coating; Martinus signifies hard, obstinate (firm) by allusion to Martin Grosia, professor of law at Boulogne in the 12th century, whose toughness and obstinacy were proverbial according to Cardinal Baronius... It seems that "respondens pontifici" may be translated as weighty, perhaps an allusion to pontifical gravity. (JP)
[60]This family includes pumpkins, vegetable marrows and squashes (JH). Almost all of the ones we are familiar with are from the New World and therefore did not exist in Europe at this time, the exception being Lagenaria sicereia, the white-flowered gourd or bottle gourd. (EGC)
[61]We see in Lamarre, vol. II, article on "The Tripers", that all the tripes from the slaughterhouses were sold in gross lots through tripers (belonging only to six families), prepared by them during the night, and sold in the early morning to poor women who peddled them in the streets from bowls of yellow copper. (JP)
[62]Here and in several places below, le Menagier is evidently commenting on recipes he has copied from another source. (EGC)
[63]Here and for the next several recipes, the word "bruet" is translated "soup"; I have never been sure whether a bruet is a soup or more like meat with sauce. (EGC)
[64]What is here and for the hare and coney recipes translated "broth" is "cive'" in the original. There are contemporary English recipes for "cyveye" in various spellings; generally meat or fish in a bread-thickened sauce with onions. (EGC)
[65]Perhaps there is missing here "and mix with wine and". (JP)
[66]There is without a doubt missing here "poach eggs in oil". (JP)
[67]Neither I nor the 19th century editor are sure of the significance of this verb. (JH)
[68]The Taillevent ms., (in the Bibliotheque Royale), which gives this recipe, adds here these words which seem to have been omitted from the Menagier mss: "Then put back on the fire and add a little saffron and set it to boil until". (JP)
[69]He seems to mean here an actual boar's tail, giving the dish a very pronounced flavor, and not the sauce of the same name. (JP)
[70]Thinned, reduced, like leather hardens and condenses when tanned? (JP)
[71]As birds were often taken by falconry, they appeared on the table minus the portions which were the right of the hunting-bird. The head of the partridge and duck, the thigh of the crane, etc., belonged to the hunting-bird, What was at first the result of the habits of falconers became later an absolute rule of culinary etiquette...I do not remember ever having seen the tails of birds taken in the hunt being at some time the subject of a falconry right. However the lords could reserve the tail of the heron or other birds, but perhaps also they would leave the tail on the bird when the feathers were brilliant and would produce the best effect at table. (JP)
[72]The "Grand Cuisinie" gives a much more detailed recipe for a swan thus clad. I decided to reproduce it here. (JP)
"Take a swan and prepare it and put it on to roast until it is all cooked, then make a paste of eggs, as clear as paper, and pour it on the said swan while turning the spit so that the paste cooks on it, and be careful that no wings or thighs be broken, and put the swan's neck as though it were swimming in water, and to keep it in this position, you must put a skewer in its head which will rest between the two wings, passing all other, until it holds the neck firm, and another skewer below the wings, and another between the thighs, and another close to the feet and at each foot three to spread the foot: and when it is well cooked and well gilded with the paste, take out the skewers, except that in the neck, then make a terrace of whole-wheat pastry, which should be thick and strong, and which is one fist thick, made with nice fluting all around, and let it be two feet long, and a foot and a half broad, or a little more, then cook it without boiling, and have it painted green like a grassy meadow, and gild your swan with a skin of silver, except for about two fingers width around the neck, which is not gilded, and the beak and the feet, then have a flying cloak, which should be of crimson sendal on the inside, and emblazon the top of said cloak with whatever arms you wish, and around the swan have banners, the sticks two and a half feet long with banners of sendal, emblazon with whatever arms you wish, and put all in a dish the size and shape of the terrace, and present it to whomever you wish.
[73]Note that the same word in French means pastry, pasty and pie (JH).
[74]The 19th century editor says that he knows not this word, and that perhaps it is a type of mushroom. Because of a strange transatlantic transference of terms, U.K. chicory is U.S. endive, and U.S. chicory is U.K. endive. In modern French, the word is "carole" or less frequently, "escarole" (JH).
[75] Gaces de la Bugne, chaplain in chief to the kings Jean, Charles V and Charles VI, and who died in 1383 or 1384, gives in his "Book of Inferences" (written 1359-1377) a recipe for pie in enough detail to warrant including it here. (The original is written in verse: (JH)).
You might say that great profit can come from such an inference. For one can make such a pie than which no-one has ever tasted better; and I do not want to be silent about this that I may teach it to the young. Place for me three large prepared partridges in the middle of the pastry, but be sure not to fail to bring me six large quails, for what purpose you will learn: and then bring me a dozen larks, which you will place for me around the quails. And then take some of these things and some of these little birds: according to what you have, you will roll out the pastry. Now you must provide a little bacon, with no rancidness, which you will dice up: sprinkle the pastry with it. If you want it to look well a cluster of verjuice is added, and sprinkle it with a very little salt, so that it will be more savory. If you want to make your pastry tasty have eggs put in the pastry: the crust, somewhat heartily, make of the best wheaten flour, and if you would be wise, add no spices nor cheese: put in a good hot oven, which has burned down to clean embers; and when it is done to a turn isn't it good to eat, cooked so. (JP)
[76]It seems to me from this passage that this fish, mistakenly called a sea fish in the Dictionary of Trévoux, is a species of eel. It is often named with the eel in the examples cited by Du Cange on the word Piprinella. This fish is also cited in a warrant of January 31, 1365-6, in the matter of the death of a collecter of the taxes imposed for the fortification of Mantes, who was said to have been killed by the inhabitants of Tourny, near Vernon, and who seemed to have died simply of indigestion brought on by "pimpreneaux". (In quo quidem prandio, pimprenellos male decoctos comederant; et illuc per longum tempus steterant, ac vinum de tanto ac tall ad tantum at tale, et postmodum de poto ad potum, more Normannorum, biberant, etc.) (JP)
[78] Or: taken to the market from the sea (JH).
[80]Rouen name of gurnet? (JP)
[81]There is a recipe for the sauce jance in Du Fait de Cuisine (1420), consisting of almonds, bread, wine, garlic, vinegar and spices; there are also recipes later in this book (EGC).
[82]This fish is a sort of marine eel, caught off the Normandy coasts (JP).
[84]Many Mediaeval authors speak of "craspois" or "graspois", but to my knowledge the author of "Le Menagier" is the only one to tell us what it is. A lawsuit which lasted several years in the Paris parliament and which had to do with the seven stalls owned by the king in the Paris markets, of which stalls five were for salt fish and two for "craspois", tells us that the "craspois" was only found in Paris in Lent: it was "Lenten bacon", the fish for the poor; during Lent four thousand people lived on "craspois", dried fish and herring. These fish were sold by around a thousand poor merchants, who alone were prohibited from the main market where the big stalls were ("Civil Pleadings", 7, 12, 14 and 19 March 1380-1, 1st March 1383-4; "Judgements", XXXlI, p. 93). Belon does not name the "craspois", however he confirms the Menagier explanation. "This fish", he says speaking of the whale, "is covered with a thick black skin beneath which is about a foot thickness of fat bacon, which is what they sell in Lent." Legrand d'Amy who told with detail about salt whale as being the meagre [i.e. fast-day--EGC] food of the poor, after Charles Etienne (II, 83), did not know that "craspois" was the name of this food. Apart from this, the author of "The Treasury of Health" said that salt whale, even though cooked for twenty-four hours, was still very tough and indigestible. (JP)
[85]Either this fish has three ears or the author leaves us to find the third dangerous place ourselves! (JH)
[86] "Notree" seems to have indicated a particular species of ray... I have never seen any species of ray with more than one tail. (JP)
[87]or iron, or even butter, i.e. put good butter on it.(JH)
[88]Belon says that the only way to distinguish between these two fish is to lay them on a plate and look at them from above: in this position the mouth of the "pole" will be at the left and that of the sole at the right. (JP)
[89] "Ront" comes from "rhomba", the Latin name for turbot, in Italian "rombo". (JP)
[90]I have seen nothing about this fish in Belon, who speaks of "sea-bream". (JP)
[91]Could this be cut in strips, or in pieces? See vol. I, p. 172. I do not know what sort of fish the "ale" is, unless it might be the anchovy, "halecula" in Latin. (JP)
[92]This is obviously Cayeux, on the Picardy coast, two leagues from Saint-Valery. Legrand d'Aussy (vol. II, p. 82) says that there is fish of this name different from the shellfish, but he does not give his reason for this opinion, and I see no such fish mentioned anywhere. One must note moreover that mussels appear here after scallops, another shellfish. (JP)
[93]See Du Cauge on the word "Conredium". Prepared, this dish must be the dry "confite avec la saulce aigre (marinee)", of which Belon says (p. 340) that it was thus prepared in his time to make it easier to eat and to digest. Note that the author here distinguishes between fresh cuttlefish and cuttlefish "conree".(JP)
[94]It is obvious that the author does not think much of this fish. At the time of Belon, as in the 14th century (see p. 200, no. 2), it was hardly ever eaten except by the poor. Bruyere-Champier prefers the salt cuttlefish over the fresh, saying that it is a consolation for Lent: jejunia verna egregie solantur. (JP)
[95]Literally this means
cock, rooster; I do not know what herb is intended. (EGC)[A
correspondent tells me that this is costmary, known in
French as methe-coq. DDF]
[97]This recipe is in Taillevent, printed and manuscript, but with several differences of which one is that Taillevent forbids putting the birds back together, contrary to what is said here. (JP)
[98]It is said in the "Maison Rustique" (Country House), 1570 edition, page 105, that when one has expressed the liquid from the woad, one shapes the remains in small pastilles which are dried in the sun, and these pastilles are thrown in the tubs where wool is being dyed. (JP)
[99] Same recipe as Taillevent's. (Ms. Bibl. Royale.) (JP)
[100]Because it is thus divided by a vertical line in two portions of different colours, like a divided shield in heraldry. Quartered stew ... has to be done in a similar manner, except that it was quartered (divided in four portions by two crossing lines), instead of being halved... (JP)
[101]Literally "sunflower", turnsole is mentioned as a blue food coloring in various medieval cookbooks. I do not know exactly what plant is meant. (EGC)
[103]At the end of the "Calendrier des Bergers" (Shepherds' Calendar) (Paris, 1493, in-fo., f. N vj), there is a strange piece on the snail, where it is thus addressed: "Uncle Lombard will not eat you, In such a sauce as we shall fix, We shall put you in a big dish, With black pepper and onions." (JP)
[104]A 15th-century English recipe for dried-fruit rissoles gives more detail on making them: "then take fine paste of flour and water, sugar, saffron and salt, and make fair cakes thereof; then roll thine stuff in thine hand and couch it in the cakes and cut it, and fold them in ryshews, and fry them up in oil; and serve forth hot." (EGC)
[105]I said on page 185 that this word (escheroys) could mean a type of mushroom; but I believe it is rather the root of the chervis mentioned and described under the name eschervis in the "Tresor de Sante", p. 132 (JP). Chervis is a root grown in earlier times as a food, of the umbelliferous family. It probably has an English name, but I'm no botanist (JH).
[106]This is mentioned above in the herbal dish of eggs; I don't know what it is. (EGC)
[107]We have already seen how one pushes on the thighs of the chicken to make the meat shorter. (JP)
[108]Alkanet is mentioned in contemporary cookbooks as a red or pink food coloring. (EGC)
[109]I think this has to mean the unripe grapes out of which verjuice was made. The white verjuice farther down, however, probably really does mean verjuice. (EGC)
[110]This loaf would have weighed about eighteen ounces. (JP)
[111]A bushel=13 litres or about a peck, today. (JH)
[112]Taillevent and others mix the wine two to one with water. (JP)
[113]Specifically, oatmeal. (EGC)
[114]Doubtless the knot which is at the end of the fruit, opposite the stalk. (JP)
[115]The pound in use in the Midi only had thirteen ounces; the author at the beginning of this paragraph having adopted the Beziers measure, says that here he means the pound in use in Paris. (JP)
[116]We have seen throughout Le Menagier how important verjuice was to our ancestors. Nevertheless I read with astonishment the following words from a pleading of April 9, 1385-6, given by Jean II de Neelle, lord of Auffemont and Mello, who was pleading against the monks of Saint-Comeille de Campiegne to keep the right to transport, by water and without tolls, from Mello to Auffemont, the wine necessary to make it: "At Auffemont we do not grow eight tails of wine a year and that is only enough for verjuice for the Auffemont house." Did the lawyer mean that at the Auffemont house they used six or seven tails of verjuice a year (a tail = 391 litres)? What a numerous household Jean de Neelle had, a very great lord in truth; it would be difficult to believe such a consumption of verjuice. (JP)
Verjuice is sometimes made from unripe grapes removed to thin the bunches, the rest being allowed to grow to maturity. What is quoted above could mean that the vines sufficient to produce that amount of wine also produce enough unripe grapes to make enough verjuice for the one house. (EGC)
[117]Note that this is a recipe for bird-lime, for trapping bird; it is poisonous. (EGC)
[120]as well-water, for instance. (JP)
[121]Where the birds do not lay, as in the King's and Aubriot's mews. (JP)
[122]He is speaking here of sand clocks, doubtless the only sort these people could obtain. Nevertheless, clockwork clocks were known before the time Le Menagier was written. (JP)
[123]There is a Christian cross drawn at the beginning, between each word, and at the end. I have not gone to the trouble of translating this magical spell. "Fiat" means "let it be so". (JH)
[124]Which follows deer-season and runs from mid-September to spring. (JP)
[125]Probably a third recipe along these lines. (JP)
[126]This should perhaps be "by a third" and "by a fourth", since it would seem better to reduce more the wine made from the less ripe grapes. (JP)
[128]This recipe and the one following are found in the Taillevent ms. with few differences. (JP)
[129]Or maybe a fourth part: that is, a fourth as much of the spices as of the fennel. (EGC)
[130]This recipe is in Latin, for some odd reason. (JH)
[131]i.e. without dunking in hot water. (JP)
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