Disgustingly healthy! Apple sauce is a medieval relic. It was a popular dish, considering the many recipes for apple sauce that can be found in medieval cookbooks all over Europe. Some of those recipes are rather unusual, like the following recipe for apple sauce with … fish liver! The recipe’s title is ‘appelmoes in de vastene’ (apple…
saffron
Medieval Easter Eggs
Straight to the recipe Playing with colours During Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday before Easter, eggs were banned from the table. But as the days started to grow longer again after the winter solstice, hens began laying their eggs again! So you can bet that on Easter Sunday, when…
Medieval pea soup
Very simple The recipe is taken from ms KANTL Gent 15, second part. Edition: W.L. Braekman, Een nieuw zuidnederlands kookboek uit de vijftiende eeuw. Scripta 17, Brussel, 1986, recipe nr 92 (edition p.53). About this manuscript. The erweijten (peas) in this recipe can mean either green peas or marrow fat (or field) peas. The liquid in which peas were…
Rice Pudding for Lent
Straight to the recipe This fourteenth-century recipe is especially for Lent, the period between carnival and Easter. Meat and dairy products were banned from the table (see the recipe for Fake Fish), and inventive cooks would create delicate dishes within these limitations, even though meals during Lent should be sober occasions. This sweet almond-rice pudding with raisins…
Scappi’s Macaroni
Straight to the recipe A lot of work, but also a lot of fun The previous historical recipe on Coquinaria consisted of three parts: two recipes for macaroni from World War One, and a page on the production of industrial pressed macaroni. There is also a page with part two of the history of making macaroni and other…
Deep-fried braids(Dafâir)
Straight to the recipe An Arab recipe from the thirteenth century Arab pastry is delicious. Sweet and rich, but really delicious. This was already so in medieval times on, when sweet pastry was served after a meal. You can imagine that after a copious meal with a plethora of mouth-watering dishes the pastry had to be very…
Clareit
Straight to the recipe Spiced wine for warm summer evenings and cold winter nights Mulled wine is most often red wine with spices, served warm at Christmas. In the Netherlands we drink Bisschopswijn (‘bishop’s wine’), also a warm, spiced red wine, on Saint Nicholas Eve (5 December), and in Spain you can drink Sangria, cold red wine with…
Medieval applesauce from England
Greasy! Elsewhere on Coquinaria I have published a recipe for Apple Sauce for Lent. On this page is an English recipe with different versions for meat days and fish days, called apple moys. The Dutch name for apple sauce is appelmoes, so to me (being Dutch) that sounds very familiar. This apple sauce is special…
Mock eggs for Lent
Just for fun Straight to the recipe This an extra recipe with the Medieval coloured easter Eggs. During Lent, between carnival and Easter, no eggs were eaten. But sometimes eggs did appear on the table, as a joke. These were mock eggs, made with pike roe (also eggs, but from fish, so these were permitted) or…
Purée from broad beans
Straight to the recipe This recipe for broad beans is taken from the sixteenth-century cookbook Opera by Italian Bartolomeo Scappi (see bibliography). more on Scappi and his book: Tortelli in brodo and Broccoli in de Opera). In the Libro Terzo (Book III, with recipes for Lent and fish days) of this cookbook is the following recipe for minestre (a first course, thick soup or pottage)…
Aubergines in aubergine sauce
This recipe for aubergines (eggplants) with aubergine sauce was chosen because of the possible connection with an Arab recipe with aubergines. It is from an Italian cookbook from the end of the fifteenth century that has been published by Terence Scully as The Neapolitan recipe collection. ‘Cuoco Napoletano’ (see bibliography). The Southern part of Italy has been…
Fake Fish
Straight to the recipe Medieval apple pie for Lent Lent – The fishy season In the Middle Ages the catholic church prescribed what was on the daily menu. Each week counted at least one day, and more often three or even four days (depending on where and when in medieval Europe) during which no meat…