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English cooking. Our experience with recipes that do contain information on quantities suggests
that this assertion is not true. For many years we made Hippocras, from the recipe in Le
Menagier de Paris, using about half the ratio of sugar and spices to wine specified in the
original, because otherwise it came out too sweet for our tastes. Eventually Jeremy de Merstone
(George J. Perkins) pointed out to us that, while the pound and ounce used in Paris in 1391 were
approximately the same as the modern pound and ounce, the quart was equal to almost two
modern U.S. quarts which implied that, by modifying the recipe to taste, we had produced
almost exactly the proportions of the original, correctly interpreted. The same conclusion that
medieval food, although hardly bland, was not extraordinarily spicy is suggested by our
experience with other recipes. One exception is a collection of dishes from 16th century India for
which we have ingredient lists with quantities but without instructions; many of them turn out
too salty for modern tastes. I am told that the same is true of modern Indian cooking in India.
Along with the idea that medieval food was overspiced one finds the claim that the reason it was
overspiced was to hide the taste of rotten meat, due to the lack of modern refrigeration. We have
found no evidence to support that claim and quite a lot to oppose it. Chiquart's description of
how to put on a large feast, for example, makes it clear that he expects to slaughter animals on
site. Other sources show medieval cooks as concerned with the risk of spoiled meat and taking
reasonable precautions to deal with it. Finally, there is the observation that hiding the taste of
spoiled meat does not prevent the effects; a cook who routinely poisoned his employer and his
guests would be unlikely to keep his position for long.
Two reference books that we have found helpful are the Larousse Gastronomique and the Oxford
English Dictionary. The former is a dictionary of cooking, available in both English and French
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editions. The latter, which is also useful for many other sorts of SCA research, is the standard
English scholar's dictionary; it contains a much more extensive range of obsolete words and
meanings than an ordinary dictionary. Also, Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks and Curye on
Inglysch contain glossaries.
An approach to developing recipes that we have found both productive and entertaining is to
hold cooking workshops. We select recipes that we would like to try or try again and invite
anyone interested to come help us cook them. The workshop starts in the afternoon. As each
person arrives, he chooses a recipe to do. We suggest that people who have not cooked from
period recipes before do new recipes so that they can actually have the experience of working
directly from an untouched original. Anyone who feels too inexperienced to do a recipe himself
helps someone else do one. The details of how the recipe is being prepared quantities,
temperatures, times and techniques are written down as the dish is prepared. The afternoon and
early evening are spent cooking, eating, and discussing how to modify the recipes next time.
Many of the recipes in this book were developed at such sessions. We have never yet had to send
out for pizza.
Tourney and War Food
Suppose you are going to a tournament and want to bring period food to eat and share during the
day. Suppose you are going to a camping event, such as the Pennsic war, and expect to be
encamped for something between a weekend and two weeks. What period foods are likely to
prove useful?
For both one day events and wars, we have accumulated a small collection of period foods and
drinks that can be made in advance and kept without refrigeration for an almost unlimited period
of time. They include Hulwa (p. 124), Hais (p. 101), Prince-Bisket (p. 101), Gingerbrede (p.
100), Excellent Cake (p. 102; this is actually slightly out of period), Khushkananaj (p. 104),
Sekanjabin (p. 132) and Syrup of Pomegranate (p. 133). The last two are drinks that are prepared
as syrups and diluted (with cold water for sekanjabin and hot water for granatus) just before
being served. The syrups are sufficiently concentrated so that, like honey or molasses, they keep
indefinitely.
For a one day event we will often also bring a cold meat or cheese pie; Spinach Tart (p. 97) is
one of our favorites. In addition, one can bring bread, cheese, sausage, nuts, dried fruit all things
which were eaten in period and can keep for a reasonable length of time.
A camping event, especially one more than two days long, raises a new set of challenges and
opportunities period cooking with period equipment. One of the associated problems is how to
keep perishable ingredients long enough so that you can bring them at the beginning of the event
and use them at the end. One could keep things in a cooler with lots of ice especially at Pennsic,
where ice is available to be bought. This is, however, a considerable nuisance and besides, it is
unlikely that either coolers or ice were available at a real medieval war.
Better solutions are to choose dishes that do not require perishable ingredients, or to find period
ways of preserving such ingredients. One of our future projects along these lines is to work out
some good recipes for salted or dried fish, which was an important food in the Middle Ages and
one that keeps indefinitely. Our most successful preserving technique so far is to pickle meat or
fowl, using Lord's Salt (p. 141). The pickled meat is strongly flavored with vinegar and spices,
so we pick a recipe to use it in that contains vinegar or verjuice in its list of ingredients. We wash
most of the pickling solution off the meat and make up the recipe omitting the sour ingredient
(and any spices that are already in the pickled meat). Two recipes that work well with pickled
chicken are Veal, Kid, or Hen in Bokenade (p. 76) and Coneyng, Hen, or Mallard (p. 78).
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There is an Indian bread (p. 10) and two Islamic pastries, Murakkaba (p. 105) and Musammana
(p. 107) which are made in a frying pan rather than an oven, and are therefore easy to make on
site. There are also recipes for fritters and funnel cakes (pp 116-120), many of which are suitable
for camping events.
There are many other possibilities for non-perishable period dishes. They include recipes using
dried beans (pp. 21-22, 51, 74) or lentils (pp. 52-53). They also include one very familiar
dish macaroni and cheese, known in the Middle Ages as Macrows (p. 138) or Losyns (p. 136).
If you have fresh meat available, there are many possible recipes; Meat Roasted Over Coals (p.
62) is good and very straightforward. If you roast a large amount of meat for one evening s
dinner, A Roast of Meat (p. 49) is a good way of using up leftover roast meat for the next meal.
Creative Medieval Cooking
It is sometimes claimed that the dishes served at an SCA feast are medieval even though they do
not come from any period cookbook. The idea is that the cook is producing original creations in
a medieval style. After all, there is no reason to assume that all, or even very many, medieval
cooks used cookbooks.
In principle, this is a legitimate argument if it is made by an experienced medieval cook. Since
we do not have the option of living in the Middle Ages, the only practical way to become an
experienced medieval cook is by cooking from medieval cookbooks. In my experience, however,
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