{"id":8973,"date":"2008-01-25T18:11:03","date_gmt":"2008-01-25T17:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coquinaria.nl\/?p=8973"},"modified":"2020-10-13T10:40:42","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T08:40:42","slug":"jacobin-sops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coquinaria.nl\/en\/jacobin-sops\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacobin Sops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Straight to the recipe<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"SilverTake 200 capons …<\/h2>\n

This is a recipe from the delightful cookbook\u00a0Du fait de cuysine<\/em>\u00a0by Ma\u00eetre Chiquart. He was a cook in the service of Amadeus VIII (1383-1451, also known as the last\u00a0Antipope Felix V<\/a>\u00a0from 1439 to 1449), count and first duke of Savoy. Amadeus was a regular guest at the courts of Burgundy and Berry (the Duc de Berry of the famous\u00a0book of prayers<\/a>\u00a0was his great-uncle), and was well aware of the elevated status of his family and court. He commisioned a history of the duchy of Savoy, and ordered several of the craftsmen and scientists at his court to write books on their subject. Interesting little fact for Harry Potter fans: a study about the philosopher’s stone was one of the works that were written as a result.<\/p>\n

Du fait de cuysine<\/em>\u00a0by Ma\u00eetre Chiquart<\/h3>\n

Maitre Chiquart (that is how he called himself, and how he is named in the ducal administration) dictated his book in 1420 to\u00a0 “Jehan de Dudens, clerc, bourgeois de Anessier le bourg (Annecy)”. That it is in essence a spoken text is obvious. An modern editor would have revised the text drastically. But the charm of the book is that you get a clear impression of how a kitchen in a great court functioned. This is clearly a cookbook written by a cook. The Canadian historian Terence Scully published an edition of the original text in 1985, and an English translation in 1986 (see bibliography).<\/p>\n

Du fait de cuysine<\/em>\u00a0is unique in its composition. instead of a division in kinds of dishes or ingredients, the recipes are ordered according to the festive meals that were served on October 26 and 27 ((which year is not certain, Scully suggests 1403) during a visit of\u00a0Philip the Bold<\/a>. The menus of these meals are recorded on the last pages of the manuscript. No meat was served, just fish. As it appears, October 26 and 27 were a Friday and Saturday in 1403, both fishdays according to the rules of the Church. But Chiquart has given an equivalent meat recipe for every fish recipe.<\/p>\n

This is not a cookbook for beginners or amateurs, Chiquart describes some very intricate recipes, like guilded, fire spitting boar’s heads with heraldic decorations, or an outrageous castle that has to be carried in by four men, decorated with little figures of meat paste and a\u00a0fontaine d’Amours<\/em>\u00a0that spouts rose water and spiced wine. On top of the four towers are spectacular entremets, and the birds that occupy the court are all roasted.<\/p>\n

Chiquart’s shopping list<\/h3>\n

For a festive banquet for several hundred guests you’ll need to do some planning ahead. Chiquart provides a shopping list: one hundred fat cows, hundred and thirty fat sheep, hundred twenty pigs, one hundred piglets a day, two hundred kid and lambs, one hundred calves, two thouseand chickens and six thousand eggs. Not to mention about six hundred pounds ginger, cinnamon, grains of paradise and pepper, twenty four pounds of saffron, and six pounds each of nutmeg, cloves, mace and galangal.<\/p>\n

Not a\u00a0soup<\/em>, but a\u00a0sop<\/em><\/h3>\n

The recipe is for\u00a0soupe Jacobine<\/em>. This\u00a0soupe<\/em>\u00a0is not a\u00a0soup<\/em>\u00a0in the modern sense, but a\u00a0sop<\/em>\u00a0(food soaked in a liquid before being eaten). According to the menu at the end of the cookbook this was served during the main meal of the second day, the\u00a0dynee<\/em>\u00a0that was served at noon. The sop must be served in\u00a0gold, silver and pewter dishes<\/em>. What metal you got depended on your status. Moreover, the lower you were on the social ladder, the smaller the portion you got. The dishes did not get smaller, but you had to share a dish with more people. On the picture above you can see a\u00a0French<\/span>\u00a0tableware shop from the\u00a0fifteenth century<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Dutch Jacobin Sop<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0soupe jacobine<\/em>\u00a0has a Middle Dutch variation. In ms UB Gent 476 (around 1500,\u00a0edition Jansen-Sieben en Van Winter, see bibliography<\/a>) there is a recipe for\u00a0soppijn Jacopijn<\/em>, a slice of bread on which cheese and chickenmeat are heaped. But the recipes are not exactly the same. Chiquart uses broth with bone marrow and herbs, the Dutch version beef broth and sugar, and the cheeses are regional cheeses. I have prepared the Dutch version several times, and it is very good. Because of the sugar it tastes even more ‘medieval’ than the almost hundred year older recipe of Chiquart.
\nA very special version of\u00a0Jacobin Sop\u00a0<\/em>from the seventeenth century, meant for Good Friday, can be found\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Who were the Jacobins?<\/h3>\n

\"The<\/a>More\u00a0medieval<\/span>\u00a0Jacobin recipes have survived. In the\u00a0M\u00e9nagier de Paris <\/em>(see this recipe<\/a>)\u00a0there is a recipe for a delicious eel pie called\u00a0Tarte Jacobine<\/em>, and there is also a Middle Dutch version of\u00a0Tarte Jacobine<\/em>\u00a0in the\u00a0Nieuwen Coc-boeck<\/em>\u00a0of Carolus Battus (1593).<\/p>\n

Who or what were these\u00a0Jacobins<\/em>? They were monks from the\u00a0Dominican order<\/a>, their oldest cloister in Paris was dedicated to the apostle Jacob. The street where the Dominican cloister was situated, was named after the cloister\u00a0Rue Saint-Jacques<\/em>. During the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century there was a group of\u00a0radical revolutionaries<\/a>\u00a0than named themselves after the street where they convened, but these Jacobins have nothing to do with our soupe Jacobine. On the picture a rendition of the ‘termination’ of the revolutionary Jacobins in 1794 with the cloister as backdrop. Anyway, I would love to take a peek at a fourteenth century cookbook of that cloister, because both recipes are very tasty!<\/p>\n

The original recipe<\/h2>\n

The cookbook of Maistre Chiquart is called\u00a0Du fait de Cuysine\u00a0<\/em>(About cooking). It survives in just one manuscript, S103, that is kept in the Kantonal-Bibliothek in Sion (in the Swiss province Wallis). Terence Scully, who has also delivered excellent editions and translations of the\u00a0Viandier<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0three books by La Varenne<\/a>, has published the\u00a0Oldfrench text\u00a0in 1986, and seperately an\u00a0English translation. Both are hard to find, but there is also a\u00a0translation on the internet\u00a0by Elizabeth Cook, so you can at least get an impression. Manuscript S103 is the actual manuscript written in the hand of Jehan de Dudens, in 1420. For the English translation I have used Scully’s version (edition\u00a0pp.44\/45). In 2010 Scully published a new edition of Du fait the cuysine<\/em>, combining the Old-French original and the English translation. See the bibliography<\/a> for the editions.<\/p>\n

Et pour servir de la soupe jacobine fault que hai\u00e9s voz beaulx chappons et, selon la quantit\u00e9 de la feste, cent ou .iic<\/sup>. chappons de haulte gresse, et d’aultre poulaille a grant foyson pour servir en deffault desdistz chappons ; et si soient roustitz bien et appoint. Et quant sera au despiecer les beuffs d’aute gresse si prenne on les os miolle et les lav\u00e9s bien et adroit, puis les mect\u00e9s boullir en chaudieres belles et nectes, et de beau mouston parmi ; et puis appr\u00e9s faictes que vous ay\u00e9s ung quintal de tresbon fromaige de Crampone et de Brye et du plus fin que faire se pourra et trouver, et lesditz fruictz faci\u00e9s parer et nectoyer bien et appoint, et puis le tayll\u00e9s bien minument. Et ledit queux qui est ordonn\u00e9 pour faire ladicte soupe jacopine si prenne deux ou .iiic<\/sup>. pains de bouche et ce pain taille par belles lesches et les roustissez tresbien nectement sans bruller, et qu’il soit rousselet, et puis le mect\u00e9s en belles cornues belles et nectes – et que vous ai\u00e9s .ii. belles postz blanches et nectes pour tailler vostre dit pain rousti pour les souppes jacobines ; et puis que vous ay\u00e9s vostre platz d’or et d’argent et d’estaing a la suite, et par voz platz allo\u00e9s vostre pain bien et doulcement et le fromaige par dessus. Et prenn\u00e9s voz chappons et les mect\u00e9s par membres, c’est assavoir lev\u00e9s les ailles et les cuisses et lev\u00e9s la crouppe ; et puis prenn\u00e9s le blanc dudit chappon et le taill\u00e9s bien menuz, et ce blanc de chappon sem\u00e9s par dessus vostre souppe jacobine ; et\u00a0puis appr\u00e9s prenn\u00e9s les membres desditz chappons, c’est assavoir les aylles, cuisses et crouppe, et mect\u00e9s par dessus vostre souppe jacopine en ordonnance. Et vous prenn\u00e9s garde de vostre boullon des miolles de beufz et moustons qui sont bons et doulx, et coull\u00e9s ce boullon en une olle grande, belle et necte ; et que vous hay\u00e9s une bonne -bonnete- buguete d’erbes de salvy, percy, margellayne et ysope, et qu\u00e9lles soient bien nectoy\u00e9s et lavees, et mect\u00e9s dedans vostre boullon. Et faictes que vers le dreceur, ou vous ser\u00e9s pour servir des dictes souppes jacopines, vous hay\u00e9s bon feu de charbon et dessoubz vostres oulles en quoy est vostre boullon affin qu’il boulle toujours ; et dudit boullon cuis\u00e9s voz dictes souppes jacopines.<\/em><\/div>
To serve Jacobin Sops you need your good capons, and, depending on the size of the feast, that will be one or two hundred fat capons, and a large number of other poultry to serve if those capons run out; and they should be properly roasted. When fat oxen are being cut up, their marrow bones should be taken and carefully washed, and then set to boil in good clean cauldrons with good mutton among them. After that, arrange to get a quintal [120 lbs] of very good Crampone cheese and Brie cheese, the finest that can be made and found, and have this cheese properly pared and cleaned, then cut it up very small. The cook who is ordered to make these Jacobin Sops should take two or three hundred loaves of table bread and cut this bread into good slices and toast them very neatly without burning them, so that they are brownish, and then put them into good clean two-handled pots; and you should have two immaculately clean work-tables to slice that toasted bread for the Jacobin Sops. Then you should set out your gold, silver and pewter dishes in a row, and place your bread delicately on them with the cheese on top. Take your capons and dismember them, that is, remove the wings and the legs, and remove the rump; then take the white meat of each capon and cut it up very small and scatter this white meat from the capons on your Jacobin Sops. After that take the members of the capons, that is, the wings, legs and rump, and place them in orderly fashion on top of your Jacobin Sop. Check on your broth of beef and mutton marrow, that they are good and soft, and filter this broth into a large good clean kettle; get a good\u00a0bonnette – bouquet garni<\/em>\u00a0of sage, parsley, marjoram and hyssop which should be thoroughly cleaned and washed, and put this into your broth. Over by the dressing table where you will be serving up the Jacobin Sops, arrange to have a good coal fire under the kettles containing your broth so that it will keep on boiling, and cover your Jacobin Sops with this broth.<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

<\/a>Modern adaptation of the recipe<\/h2>\n

I’ve reduced the amounts to a meal for four persons. My estimate is that the amounts in the original recipe were for four to eight hundred people, if one reckons a half to a quarter capon each. In the fifteenth century the Jacobin Sop was served in dishes for multiple eaters. The guest of honor and the host probably had a dish for themselves, from which they would present morsels as a token of favour. The larger the distance between the eater and the places of honour, the more persons he had to share his dish with. For the modern adaptation I use individual soup plates. We are all guests of honour! Although … the plates I used were simple earthenware dishes …
\nFilling\u00a0first course<\/span>\u00a0or\u00a0main course<\/span>\u00a0for 4 persons<\/span>;\u00a0preparation in advance<\/em>\u00a0a little over an hour<\/span>;\u00a0preparation<\/em>\u00a015 minutes<\/span>.<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"Jacobin1 fat\u00a0chicken<\/span>, home-roasted (the ready roast chicken won’t be spiced the medieval way!)
\n2\u00a0marrow bones<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of beef and 2 of sheep or lamb, or 4\u00a0 marrow bones of beef
\n200 gr (\u00bd pound)\u00a0salers<\/a>\u00a0or cantal, or\u00a0gruy\u00e8re<\/span> if you can’t find the other two
\n200 gr (\u00bd pound)\u00a0brie<\/span><\/a>, not too ripe
\ncoarse\u00a0white bread<\/span>, uncut, two days old
\nsprigs of sage<\/span>,\u00a0parsley<\/span>,\u00a0marjoram<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0hyssop<\/span><\/a>
\n8 deciliter (3 cups\/1\u00bd pints)\u00a0medieval\u00a0beef stock<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(or modern stock, preferably\u00a0home made<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Preparation in advance<\/h3>\n

Cover the marrow bones with cold water, bring to the boil. Take the marrow bones out of the water, rinse them well and put them in a pan with the beef stock. Let simmer for an hour. Strain the stock while still hot (marrowfat coagulates at a high temperature). Push the remaing marrow fat out of the bones, let it cool slightly and slice it. You can also make the stock after deboning the chicken, because then the carcass can be used too.
\nRemove legs and wings of the chicken, and take off the white meat. Mince the breast meat.
\nBefore I forget: the chicken was filled with an onion spiked with cloves, and coated with a mixture of melted butter, pepper, ground cloves and cinnamon before roasting.
\nGrate the salers, cantal or gruy\u00e8re, remove the crust of the brie and cut into small cubes.<\/p>\n

Preparation<\/h3>\n

Bring the stock to the boil with the herbs.
\nCut the bread into thick slices (2 centimter, 1 inch) and toast them in an oven until brown but not burnt. Place each slice in a deep soup plate and sprinkle the cheeses over them. Then cover with the minced chicken meat that you have reheated in a little hot broth. Place a leg or wing on each plate.
\nPour the boiling hot broth over the covered bread and serve at once. If you are not averse to it, garnish the sop with some slices of marrow.<\/p>\n

To serve<\/h3>\n

One can also, like Chiquart, pour the stock over the sop at the table, but take care that the stock is as hot as possible.<\/p>\n

Ingredients<\/h2>\n

All descriptions of ingredients<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Used<\/p>\n

<\/a>Bone marrow<\/h4>\n

‘The soft, nutritious substance found in the internal cavities of animal bones, especially the shin bones of oxen and calves’ (The Oxford Companion to Food<\/em>). It used to be a delicacy, but now it is looked upon with suspicion (BSE, cholesterol). This distrus and repulsion is not justified. Bone marrow contains iron, phosphorus, vitamin A, and contains 75% monounsaturated fat which is believed (though not yet proven beyond a doubt) to reduce the risk of heart disease and even some cancers. Since the shin bone is not connected to the brain or spine, there is no risk of BSE.
\nModern use of bone marrow is limited to soup bones and ossobucco.<\/p>\n

Before using bone marrow, you have to prepare it. The bones have to soak for at least twelve hours in salted water which has to be refreshed several times. You’ll see the water turn pink from the blood that is extracted from the bone marrow by the salted water. After soaking rinse the bones and dep them dry.<\/p>\n

Bone marrow can be prepared in to fashions: you can boil them or roast them. If you boil them, fifteen minutes is enough. Roasting takes about as much (or little) time, in a preheated oven of 225-240 \u00b0C\/435-465 \u00b0F. Just place the bones upright in a greased baking tray. When the bones are done, they are served on a plate with a special marrow spoon. The marrow is scooped out of the bones, spread on freshly toasted bread and sprinkled with salt.
\nThe marrow spoon dates from around 1700, when serving roasted marrow bones was quite popular. The spoon can be used at both sides, for narrow and wider marrow bones.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Brie<\/h4>\n

Soft cheese with a crusty white mould, originally made of raw cow milk. It is made in the region East of Paris. Most Brie you can buy today is made from pasteurized milk, to the detriment ot the taste of the cheese, but it eliminates\u00a0listeria bacteria<\/a>. That is important for pregnant women, because it can cause miscarriage or a very sick baby. However, if you or your guests aren’t expecting, look for unpasteurized Brie. By the way, in unpasteurized Gouda cheese there’s no danger of listeria because of the different production process.<\/p>\n

Brie has a long history. It was already produced during the reign of Charlemagne who enjoyed the cheese in 774. In the fifteenth century the cheese inspired Charles, Duke of Orleans (1394-1465) to write a little poem to accompany 240 whole Bries that were send to as many ladies at the court:\u00a0Mon doux coeur, je vous envoie \/ Soigneusement choisi par moi \/ Le brie de Meaux d\u00e9licieux. \/ Il vous dira que, malheureux, \/ Par votre absence je languis \/ Au point d’en perdre l’app\u00e9tit. \/ Et c’est pourquoi je vous l ‘envoie. \/ Quel sacrifice c’est pour moi!<\/em>\u00a0(source:\u00a0Duizend gezichten van zuivel<\/em>). Famous is the anecdote about the Congress in Vienna in 1814\/1815, when Talleyrand, to lighten the mood, organized a competition between the attending nations which produced the best cheese. Brie was the unanimous favourite and received the honorary title\u00a0roi des fromages, et fromage des rois<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Craponne or Salers<\/h4>\n

The\u00a0fromaige de crampone<\/em>\u00a0is a pressed cheese of cow milk originating from Craponne in the Auvergne. The modern name of this cheese is\u00a0Salers<\/a><\/em>, a variation of\u00a0Cantal<\/a><\/em>. Salers is still produced with raw milk from cows grazing on mountain pasture. But, while Cantal is made all year through, the production of Salers is limited from April 15 to November 15.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Hyssop\"Hyssopus<\/h4>\n

A small shrub with tiny purple flowers,\u00a0Hyssopus officinalis<\/em>. You can grow it easily in your own garden. The taste of the leaves resembles thyme. The plant originates from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, where it was a kitchen herb in classic times. The taste is rather dominant, use it sparingly. According to Alan Davidson (The Oxford Companion to Food<\/em>) hyssop helps the digestion of fat, which makes it a very good herb in fatty meat dishes.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Marjoram<\/h4>\n

In Latin\u00a0Origanum majorana<\/em>. The kitchen herb oregano is wild marjoram,\u00a0Origanum vulgare<\/em>. Marjoram is the cultivated variety, but very old, it is already used in classical Greek and Roman kitchens. In a temperate climate like the Netherlands marjoram is an annual herb, it has trouble surviving the winter. Oregano is stronger, but tastes better in a warmer climate.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/h2>\n

The editions below were used by me. Links refer to available editions.<\/p>\n