Junefaire Recipes

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What’s Cooking at Junefaire '03

This year at the Faire, we were pleased to present a demonstration of medieval cookery as part of the Arts and Sciences display. Duty cooks prepared a selection of dishes from medieval cookbooks. The recipes were taken from a variety of sources and chosen for suitability to cooking outside. Some are presented here.

From Ein Buch von gutter spise 1345-1354

Ein spise von birn (A food of pears)
Take roasted pears and tart apples and chop them small. And add thereto pepper and anise and raw eggs. Cut two thin slices from thin bread. Fill this in between not too full, of a finger's thickness. Make a thin leaf of eggs and turn that therein about and bake it with butter in a pan until it becomes red and give out.

Modern interpretation
2 large pears
2 apples
Quarter, peel and core fruit. Cook together till done, should be soft but not mushy. Pour off excess liquid and chop or grind together. Should have the consistency of chunky applesauce. Add:
½ teaspoon anise
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 beaten egg

Spread filling thickly on thinly sliced white bread (sourdough, French or Italian style not commercial sandwich bread) and cover with a second piece. The thicker you can spread the filling the better. Cover sandwich with an egg batter made of:
2 eggs beaten
1 tblsp flour
1 tbsp milk

Melt butter or grease in fry pan cook like French toast till bread is fairly dark. You can cover the pan with a lid to help cook the filling.
Note: the amount of egg batter in the redaction only makes enough for about half of the filling. Double it or add a little sugar to the rest of the filling and cook it down into a spread.

Ein gut gebackenz ( A good pastry)
Grate cheese. Mix it with eggs and boiled small pieces of fatty bacon thereto. Make a fine dough and fill therein with the cheese and the eggs. And make small cakes and bake them in butter or in fat, near to the time (they are to be served), and give them out warm.

4 strips of cooked bacon chopped small
approx. ½ - 1 cup grated gouda (should be twice as much cheese as bacon)
1 egg yolk
dough to wrap:
1 cup flour
I beaten egg
Salt
Water to make a dough
Mix salt and flour together, add beaten egg, mixture will be lumpy add enough water to make it into a smooth dough.

Mix cheese, bacon and egg yolk together. Roll out small pieces of dough and wrap around filling. Do not let the packets sit too long before cooking and do not let them touch. Melt a little grease or butter in a hot pan. (Could probably also deep fry them) put packets into pan and brown on one side turn and brown the other serve hot. Filling will be sizzley

Einen krapfen (A krapfen) a filling for pastry

How you want to make a fastday krapfen of nuts with whole kernels. And take as many apples thereunder and cut them diced, as the kernel is, and roast them well with a little honey and mix with spices and put it on the leaves, which you made to krapfen, and let it bake and do not oversalt.

3 cups chopped apples – important to chop them to the same size as the nuts
1 ½ cups chopped nuts
½ cup honey
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon mace

mix and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes Apple should be cooked but still retain shape – use as a filling, let cool before filling pastry.

From the Cookbook of Sabina Welserin 1553 German

To make a pastry dough for all shaped pies
Take flour, the best that you can get, about two handfuls, depending on how large or small you would have the pie. Put it on the table and with a knife stir in two eggs and a little salt. Put water in a small pan and a piece of fat the size of two good eggs, let it all dissolve together and boil. Afterwards pour it on the flour on the table and make a strong dough and work it well, however you feel is right. If it is summer, one must take meat broth instead of water and in the place of the fat the skimmings from the broth. When the dough is kneaded, then make of it a round ball and draw it out well on the sides with the fingers or with a rolling pin, so that in the middle a raised area remains, then let it chill in the cold. Afterwards shape the dough as I have pointed out to you. Also reserve dough for the cover and roll it out into a cover and take water and spread it over the top of the cover and the top of the formed pastry shell and join it together well with the fingers. Leave a small hole. And see that it is pressed together well, so that it does not come open. Blow in the small hole which you have left, then the cover will lift itself up. Then quickly press the hole closed. Afterwards put it in the oven. Sprinkle flour in the dish beforehand. Take care that the oven is properly heated, then it will be a pretty pastry. The dough for all shaped pastries is made in this manner.

2 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs beaten
melt ½ cup lard in ¼ water let cool
additional flour if needed and to roll

Mix flour and salt, add beaten eggs. When eggs are stirred in well, add fat and water, May need a little extra four if too sticky.

To make sour cherry pudding
Strain the cherries, as if you were cooking syrup, take a grated Semmel, fry it in fat, take the puree and pour it in, let it boil and sweeten it with sugar.

About 2 cups unsweetened cherry puree with juice. (A can of Oregon cherries pureed with juice comes to between 1 ¾ and 2 cups with is fine.)
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon bread crumbs
3 tablespoons sugar

sauté bread crumbs in melted butter till soft and starting to color, add cherry puree and cook over medium heat to thicken when close to the consistency you want add sugar and cook a few minute longer. Very nice served over a very non period dish of vanilla ice cream

Another tart
Take four glasses of milk, twelve eggs and seven ounces of sugar and one half ounce of ginger and some ground cinnamon. One must afterwards beat everything together, then put a little fat into a pan and put the batter into it and stir it around, until it begins to thicken. Then put the cover on the pot and hot coals over it. And there should be no more heat on top of it than under it, or else the batter will be bubbly. And when you see that it begins to set up, sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on top.

6 cups milk
12 eggs
15 tablespoons of sugar (Not quite 1 cup)
1 tablespoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup butter (This could be reduced to ¼ cup possible)
sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle on top

Beat eggs, add sugar and spices (be careful of ginger clumping) and beat well, add in milk. Melt butter in three and a half quart pan (min.). When it is quite bubbly pour in batter. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly to scrap bits of cooked custard off bottom of pot. When cooked bits seem to be about half of total volume, cover and slip into oven preheated to 350 degrees, bake till set (time will vary due to how much cooking occurred on top of stove, but at least 20 minutes in most cases) sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top to taste when it is set. This dish has a sort of pebbly texture, sort of a cross between fine scrambled eggs and smooth custard and there will be a good amount of clear liquid around the edges of the pot. More liquid will form as it cools. (This works very well in a dutch oven at camp)

124 meat casserole Cazuela de Carne From the Libre del Coch, 1520 Catalan cookbook in Spanish.

You must take meat and cut it into pieces the size of a walnut and gently fry it with the fat of good bacon; and cast in good broth and cook it in a casserole; and cast in all fine spices, and saffron and a little orange juice or verjuice and cook it well until the meat begins to fall apart and only a little broth remains…..

3-4 pounds beef chopped into chunks for stew,
bacon for fat
½ cup orange juice
2 cups broth – I can and some extra if needed
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp celery seed
½ tsp ground cloves
saffron

Brown the meat in the bacon fat (could substitute oil) Combine all ingredients in pot and cook covered, stirring occasionally. (You can also pop this in the oven for about an hour or use a crockpot)

From the Viander de Travailent. French 1375

Millet
Wash it in three changes of hot water and put it in simmering cow’s milk. Do not put the spoon in it until it has boiled, Then remove it from on top of the fire and add a bit of saffron. Boil it until it is done.

We did this for the first time on site. proportions seemed to be about 3 cups of milk to 1 cup of millet. Using modern millet we skipped the rinsing in water. Made a bright yellow dish that visitors often thought was polenta.