#english medieval cookery

[thejoyofseax]

Decision Made

After much, much rumination, and reading of Peter Brears' Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England, and going back through the Arabic books again, and thinking about what effects I want the feast to have... I've settled on English.

There's quite a bit of thinking behind this, but essentially, the flavour I want to hit with this is "harvest". And one of the key things about harvest foods is that people look forward to them, they're familiar, they're comforting and comfortable, and they don't need explanation. The fact that we can do that better with medieval English food than medieval Irish food in Ireland will be a matter of discussion for a later post.

So. Brears gives exactly five recipes that include apples: three desserts (an apple cream , an apple mousse and apple fritters), an apple pie and a rather odd apple omelette. I'm going to leave out the apple omelette, I think, because of the familiarity issue (and also, it's not the most practical dish for a meal for more than about 8 people).

The rest will all be done. The remainder of the current plan is for a good-sized pork roast (maybe two, depending on the numbers attending) with apple sauce as the main feature, with frumenty, a couple of vegetable dishes (to be sourced from Brears), a couple of plain-cooked vegetable options (carrots and peas, say), and some savoury pies (at least one vegan). Then a few different apple pies (fairly plain; with cinnamon; with blackberries), the desserts from Brears, and a few other fruit desserts.

We're catering to at least one vegan (which will take care of incidental vegetarians) and probably at least two coeliacs, so I'll work up options for them against the dishes they definitely can't have. That'll almost certainly be rice in vegetable stock against the frumenty (which contains both gluten and eggs), and I'll make up a nut roast against the meat. I'm not very picky about allergy and diet-matching food being period; I'm more intent on feeding people good food first and then, if possible, being period-plausible. Vegan food simply isn't period-plausible*, so a nut roast will be fine.

I have a theory that I'll be able to do a gluten-free hot-water-crust pastry fairly easily (there's almost no kneading for it, so no development of gluten), and if I can do that with a plant-based butter, it allows for the vegans as well. If it turns out good enough, I'll just use that for all the pies. I love hot-water pastry; my hands are much too warm for me to ever have been very successful with the more ordinary as-cold-as-possible pastries.

I might look at adding a few more savoury dishes to fill out the table a bit, optimising for colour as much as anything else. Tudor food has an awful tendency to be brown, so I'll be looking to vary that as much as possible. The carrots and peas will help with that already.

*Although Mistress Constanza did make a very fine vegan feast from al-Warraq a number of years ago. A vegan diet is a little more possible with the documented recipes from Arabic cultures than otherwise, but isn't realistically sustainable without modern food supply lines and indeed modern technology for vitamins. In England's meat-obsessed and Ireland's dairy-obsessed medieval cultures, veganism would have been a deeply unlikely choice; the Lenten fasting diet was as close as it got.

[fatehbaz]

Christmas pudding [...] [is] a boiled mass of suet - a raw, hard animal fat [...] often replaced with a vegetarian alternative - as well as flour and dried fruits that is often soaked in alcohol and set alight. [...] [I]t is a legacy of the British Empire with ingredients from around the globe it once dominated [...].

Christmas pudding is a relatively recent concoction of two older, at least medieval, dishes. [...] “Figgy pudding,” immortalized in the “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” carol, appeared in the written record by the 14th century. [...] During the 18th century, the two ["plum pottage" and "figgy pudding"] crossed to become the more familiar plum pudding – a steamed pudding packed with the ingredients of the rapidly growing British Empire of rule and trade. The key was less a new form of cookery than the availability of once-luxury ingredients, including French brandy, raisins from the Mediterranean, and citrus from the Caribbean.

Few things had become more affordable than cane sugar which, owing to the labors of millions of enslaved Africans, could be found in the poorest and remotest of British households by mid-century. Cheap sugar, combined with wider availability of other sweet ingredients like citrus and dried fruits, made plum pudding an iconically British celebratory treat, albeit not yet exclusively associated with Christmas.

Such was its popularity that English satirist James Gillray made it the centerpiece of one of his famous cartoons, depicting Napoleon Bonaparte and the British prime minister carving the world in pudding form.

In line with other modern Christmas celebrations, the Victorians took the plum pudding and redefined it [...], making it the “Christmas pudding.” In his 1843 internationally celebrated “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens venerated the dish as the idealized center of any family’s Christmas feast [...].

Three years later, Queen Victoria’s chef published her favored recipe, making Christmas pudding, like the Christmas tree, the aspiration of families across Britain.

Christmas pudding owed much of its lasting appeal to its socioeconomic accessibility. Victoria’s recipe, which became a classic, included candied citrus peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemons, cloves, brandy and a small mountain of raisins and currants – all affordable treats for the middle class. Those with less means could either opt for lesser amounts or substitutions [...]. Eliza Acton, a leading cookbook author of the day who helped to rebrand plum pudding as Christmas pudding, offered a particularly frugal recipe that relied on potatoes and carrots. [...] The high alcohol content gave the puddings a shelf life of a year or more, allowing them to be sent even to the empire’s frontiers during Victoria’s reign [...].

---

In the 1920s, the British Women’s Patriotic League heavily promoted it – calling it “Empire Pudding” in a global marketing campaign. They praised it as emblem of the empire that should be made from the ingredients of Britain’s colonies and possessions: dried fruits from Australia and South Africa, cinnamon from Ceylon, spices from India and Jamaican rum in place of French brandy.

Press coverage of London’s 1926 Empire Day celebrations featured the empire’s representatives pouring the ingredients into a ceremonial mixing bowl and collectively stirring it.

The following year, the Empire Marketing Board received King George V’s permission to promote the royal recipe, which had all the appropriate empire-sourced ingredients. Such promotional recipes and the mass production of puddings from iconic grocery stores like [Sains-bury's] in the 1920s combined to place Christmas puddings on the tables [...].

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All text above by: Troy Bickham. "How the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food." The Conversation. 8 December 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Image and caption shown unaltered as they appear published by Bickham along with the article's text.]

[petermorwood]

That’s a Parsnip Pie. (@dduane​’s own blogpost is here.)

She read a tweet about it that worked as a cooking prompt, leading to this Twitter thread.

The thread includes a link to this article, whose writer didn’t like it for various reasons including its appearance (pies with a lattice rather than a lid are apparently Just Not Right) and a recipe whose ingredients seem out of whack, with far too much lemon and not enough everything else except parsnip.

(I later found this article, whose writer seems much more in favour.)

Both articles make a comparison to pumpkin pie: a veggie-based egg custard with such a characteristic taste that “Pumpkin Spice” exists in its own right. However, pumpkin is much more bland than parsnip.

The “Food and Cooking of the Middle Kingdoms” project - set in a world where potatoes don’t exist and other roots take their place - has shown parsnips to have a noticeable pepperiness that’s easier to make use of than ignore.

It’s also easier to make use of in a savoury dish like “Coiner’s Bake” (adapted Pommes Dauphinoise) than in something sweet.

At least until DD made this pie.

All the details are in that Twitter link, but in short, rather than trying to hide the parsnip pepperiness, she worked with it by adding Long Pepper to the spice mix.

She also avoided excessive sourness by reducing the lemons from two to a half, then gave a different tang with grated root ginger not dry powder.

All this dialled the “taste” of the dish back from 1954 and past those Regency literary references of 1810. It’s now far closer to the flavours of medieval recipes we’ve made.

However, it’s not pumpkin pie, so it’s better not to make vague comparisons that might set up tastebuds for something they won’t get.

This is parsnip pie. And it’s good.

To our collective surprise, while we’ve got “English Food” (Jane Grigson), “The Cookery of England” (Elizabeth David) and ”Food and Drink in Britain” (C. Anne Wilson), we don’t have a copy of Dorothy Hartley’s book “Food in England”.

That’ll be put right ASAP.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness...It means, in fine, that you are to see imperatively that everyone has something nice to eat.

- John Ruskin

The history of spice is almost as old as human civilisation. It is a history of lands discovered, empires built and brought down, wars won and lost, treaties signed and flouted, flavours sought and offered, and the rise and fall of different religious practices and beliefs. Spices were among the most valuable items of trade in ancient and medieval times.

As long ago as 3500 BC the ancient Egyptians were using various spices for flavouring food, in cosmetics, and for embalming their dead. The use of spices spread through the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean and Europe. Spices from China, Indonesia, India, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) were originally transported overland by donkey or camel caravans. For almost 5000 years, Arab middlemen controlled the spice trade, until European explorers discovered a sea route to India and other spice producing countries in the East.

A walk through the old souk or as its called the spice souk in Deira, a much older part of Dubai than the shinier futuristic side, is something I would recommend to anyone coming to Dubai. If you want history, you won’t see it in modern Dubai which is in a hurry to build the future. But come to the spice souk, and haggle and have some chai, and you can smell the history of the old Arab spice trade.

For a gourmand like myself who loves to cook with spices, this is a taste of heaven.

[greaseonmymouth]

#chickens cannot be contained by orthography

copying my own tag because I'm reading through the medieval cookbook linked in my previous reblog, and:

CHYKENNS IN CAWDEL. XXXIII.

Take Chikenns and boile hem in gode broth and ramme hem up. þenne take zolkes of ayrenn an þe broth and alye it togedre. do þerto powdour of gynger and sugur ynowh safroun and salt. and set it ouere the fyre withoute boyllyng. and serue the Chykenns hole oþer ybroke and lay þe sowe onoward.

CHYKENS IN HOCCHEE. XXXIIII.

Take Chykenns and scald hem. take parsel and sawge withoute eny oþere erbes. take garlec an grapes and stoppe the Chikenns ful and seeþ hem in gode broth. so þat þey may esely be boyled þerinne. messe hem an cast þerto powdour dowce.

I actually thought some of these sounded familiar so I decided to check out my old buddy Henrik Harpestreng and his late 1300s cookbook and check this out (my hasty translations from the Old Danish below):

20. Mæn sculæ takæ fullcumæn høns oc skæræ thæn i twinning oc latæ thæm siuthæ i en grytæ vtæn watnæ. a gløthæ. oc latæ sithæn til thæt søth thær thæræ wrthær af. pætercili mintæ pipær. oc smolt. oc ædik oc salt

One should take a whole hen and cut it in two and let it cook in a pot without water. on embers. and add then that broth of herbs of. parsley mint pepper. and melted fat. and vinegar and salt.

22. Mæn sculæ steek eth høns oc skæræ thæt i stykki oc latæ thær til ant soth oc smolt oc lit klof løøk oc wiin oc salt oc æggi dydær. oc wællæ thæt høns thær i

One should fry a hen and cut it into pieces and make broth and melted fat and garlic and wine and salt and egg [idk]. and add the hen to it

I guess some things are eternal. check out his recipe for sweet & sour sauce:

7. Latæ mæn til sinæp fiarthing swo mykæth hunnung æssæ sinæp ær. oc malæ thæt mæth goot ædik. tha haldæ mæn thæt goot sæx vkæ

take a quarter* of mustard and add to as much honey as there is mustard. and mix it with vinegar. that will then keep for six weeks

*a fiarthing/fjarthing/fjerding is a unit of meeasurement that is 1/4 of another measurement but it's not given here how much that is.

Henrik Harpestrengs kogebog: https://tekstnet.dk/harpestreng-nks70r/metadata

The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Compiled, about A.D. 1390: https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8102/pg8102-images.html

Ok so I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of researching period food & recipes, and,,,,

"one fifteenth century recipe contains the word "Chickens" four times-with four different spellings, of which the first is "Schyconys.""

excuse me medieval people but what the fuck

[scarletunit6]

Yes, we do have a wide and varied cuisine in Britain today, no more do we suffer under the image of grey boiled meat! After years of disparagement by various countries (especially the French) Britain now has an enviable culinary reputation. In fact some of the great chefs now come from Britain, I kid you not!

However Britain's culinary expertise is not new! In the past British cooking was amongst the best in the world. Mrs Beeton is still one of the renowned writers of cookery books, her creations have now gained international popularity, years after her death.

Traditional British cuisine is substantial, yet simple and wholesome. We have long believed in four meals a day. Our fare has been influenced by the traditions and tastes from different parts of the British empire: teas from Ceylon and chutney, kedgeree, and mulligatawny soup from India.

A BRIEF HISTORY

British cuisine has always been multicultural, a pot pourri of eclectic styles. In ancient times influenced by the Romans and in medieval times the French. When the Frankish Normans invaded, they brought with them the spices of the east: cinnamon, saffron, mace, nutmeg, pepper, ginger. Sugar came to England at that time, and was considered a spice -- rare and expensive. Before the arrival of cane sugars, honey and fruit juices were the only sweeteners. The few Medieval cookery books that remain record dishes that use every spice in the larder, and chefs across Europe saw their task to be the almost alchemical transformation of raw ingredients into something entirely new (for centuries the English aristocracy ate French food) which they felt distinguished them from the peasants.

During Victorian times good old British stodge mixed with exotic spices from all over the Empire. And today despite being part of Europe we've kept up our links with the countries of the former British Empire, now united under the Commonwealth.

One of the benefits of having an empire is that we did learn quite a bit from the colonies. From East Asia (China) we adopted tea (and exported the habit to India), and from India we adopted curry-style spicing, we even developed a line of spicy sauces including ketchup, mint sauce, Worcestershire sauce and deviled sauce to indulge these tastes. Today it would be fair to say that curry has become a national dish.

Among English cakes and pastries, many are tied to the various religious holidays of the year. Hot Cross Buns are eaten on Good Friday, Simnel Cake is for Mothering Sunday, Plum Pudding for Christmas, and Twelfth Night Cake for Epiphany.

Unfortunately a great deal of damage was done to British cuisine during the two world wars. Britain is an island and supplies of many goods became short. The war effort used up goods and services and so less were left over for private people to consume. Ships importing food stuffs had to travel in convoys and so they could make fewer journeys. During the second world war food rationing began in January 1940 and was lifted only gradually after the war.

The British tradition of stews, pies and breads, according to the taste buds of the rest of the world, went into terminal decline. What was best in England was only that which showed the influence of France, and so English food let itself become a gastronomic joke and the French art of Nouvell Cuisine was adopted.

Hand, L.R. (2019). British Food - British culture, customs and traditions. [online] Learnenglish.de. Available at: https://www.learnenglish.de/culture/foodculture.html. ‌

[armthearmour]

Papyns

I went for it this morning and decided to make a 15th century English egg dish called Papyns from this site.

The actual medieval recipe reads,

"Papyns. Recipe clene cow mylk, & take þe flour of rice or of whete & draw þe flour with sum of þe mylk, & colour it with saferon & let it boyle, & do a lityll hony þerto; þan tak water & well it in a frying panne; þan cast in brokyn egges & fry þam hard in þe water, & lay .iij. in a dysh & þe colourd mylk þeron, & serof it forth."

with a translation as such,

"Poached eggs. Recipe: clean cow milk, & take the flour of rice or of wheat & draw the flour with some of the milk, & color it with saffron & let it boil; & do a little honey thereto; than take water & well it in a frying pan; then cast in broken eggs & fry them hard in the water, & lay 3 in a dish & the coloured milk thereon, & serve it forth."

The interpretation calls for 3/4 cup of flour. Don't use that much, 1/4 cup is probably more appropriate. Otherwise, the sauce turns to goop.

After fixing my mistakes (by adding a ton of milk and honey) I would up with a sauce that was still too thick, but edible, and actually pretty good!

Presentation may be a bit sub-par though...

[transgenderer]

@tanadrin mentioned "amber" isnt germanic, so i looked up the etymology, and

mid-14c., ambre grice "ambergris; perfume made from ambergris," from the phrase in Old French (13c.) and Medieval Latin, from Arabic 'anbar "ambergris, morbid secretion of sperm-whale intestines used in perfumes and cookery" (see ambergris), which was introduced in the West at the time of the Crusades. Arabic -nb- often is pronounced "-mb-."

In Europe, amber was extended to fossil resins from the Baltic (late 13c. in Anglo-Latin; c. 1400 in English), and this has become the main sense as the use of ambergris has waned. Perhaps the perceived connection is that both were found washed up on seashores. Or perhaps it is a different word entirely, of unknown origin. Formerly they were distinguished as white or yellow amber for the Baltic fossil resin and ambergris "gray amber;" French distinguished the two substances as ambre gris and ambre jaune.

i guess amber wasnt that common until the modern period? also, they dont seem like similar substances? i guess theyre both kind of waxy/resinous? idk, its very odd. anyway, this made me google baltic amber, and

The Baltic region is home to the largest known deposit of amber, called Baltic amber or succinite. It dates from 44 million years ago (during the Eocene epoch).[1] It has been estimated that these forests created more than 100,000 tons of amber.[2] Today, more than 90% of the world's amber comes from Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia. It is a major source of income for the region; the local Kaliningrad Amber Combine extracted 250 tonnes of it in 2014,[3] 400 tonnes in 2015.[4]

?!?! its not clear to me why theres such a ridiculous amount of amber here, its so common it washes up on the beach! it seems like the three major areas were on the coast at the time of formation (theres also significant deposits on the coast of japan). something about coastal conifers is really good for producing huge amounts of amber i guess, keeps them preserved or something. they were definitely massive forests but there have been massive forests like everywhere so that cant be enough. this source says

When resin is secreted, it’s not certain that it will be turned into amber. More often than not, it gets weathered away. First of all the resin needs to be chemically stable and not degrade over time. It has to be resistant to sun, rain, extreme temperatures, and microorganisms like bacteria and fungi. There are two types of resin produced by plants that can fossilize. Terpenoids are produced by gymnosperms (conifers) and angiosperms. They are composed of ring structures made from isoprene (C5H8) units. Phenolic resins are only produced by Angiosperms. An extinct type of trees called medullosans produced another unique type of resin.

The next factor is that the resin needs to be in the right conditions to fossilize. Young amber could be transported in seawater (it floats), and then buried under sediment to fossilize. In the Baltics, glaciers knocked down many trees and buried them, allowing them to fossilize. Wet clay and sand sediments preserve resin well because they don’t contain much oxygen and the sediments eventually transform into rocks. Intense pressure and temperatures cause the resin to become a solid orange gem. First molecular polymerization forms copal (young amber) and then the heat and pressure drive out terpenes and complete the amber transformation

so i guess its exactly like normal fossils, needs to be buried in sediment just right to preserve it, and forests+glaciers+coast isnt common enough in large enough quantities to cause other massive deposits? anyway, neat!

[nomanwalksalone]

ON DECONSTRUCTION

by Alexander Freeling

Ferran Adrià could never be accused of being too straightforward. The celebrated Spanish chef made his name with dishes that were part science experiment, part conceptual art. Familiar dishes made utterly strange by a cocktail of tricksy humor and laboratory technique.

As Silviya Svejenova and colleagues put it, “Adrià’s artistry is in the contrasts (hot–cold, soft–crunchy, solid–liquid, sweet–savory), the concepts (e.g., foams), the techniques (e.g., spherification), and the creative methods (e.g., deconstruction).”

Deconstruction, in this case, means taking a dish and altering its physical properties (texture, appearance, temperature) until it becomes something utterly different. The aim is often to make food that looks alien until the moment you taste it, but then triggers a memory of something entirely familiar. Or you are presented with a total man-bites-dog inversion of the expected that somehow works. A vegetable course comes as a series of glossy gelatin blocks which reveal themselves to the tongue (but not to the eye) as distinct and familiar vegetables. “Kellogg’s paella,” a famous high-concept composition, involves saffron-fried puffed rice, served with a seafood broth to turn the Spanish dish into an imitation of American breakfast.*

The use of humor and disguise in cooking is far from new. Liber Cure Cocorum, a medieval English cookbook, gives instructions for lacquered pork meatballs disguised as apples. Epulario, or The Italian Banquet describes a pie containing live birds that fly out when the crust is broken. Adrià’s signature is the marriage of this playful attitude with serious interest in science and new ideas. He once called his work “stovetop philosophy”; the legendary restaurant el Bulli that he operated until 2011 “was a sort of gastronomic-philosophical media lab.” Inside, everything from memories to raspberries were broken down—deconstructed almost to the molecular level—and then reformed and remixed with cunning, wit, and a helpful chemist.

The heyday of deconstruction in philosophy wasn’t so different, despite the grandiose claims of its cultured despisers and self-appointed champions. It was about taking ideas out of their normal contexts, pulling and pushing them until they no longer fit in their original place and could be used in new ways. And like the cooking, it was accompanied by a love of humor, surprise, and scientific jargon.

When it comes to menswear, the term deconstruction can suggest a few different things. Sometimes it’s a synonym for unstructured: soft jackets, unfused shirt collars, and free-flowing dresses come to mind. But these strategies for casual ease have been around for generations. For the humor, irony, and inversion of culinary deconstruction you have to go from tailoring to streetwear and high fashion. Think ugly sneakers for beautiful people, ultra-rare but mass-produced box logo sweaters, and shockingly expensive clothes imitating commonplace uniforms (perhaps imagine a cobrand between a Parisian fashion house and a German logistics firm). To find comparable scientific prowess, on the other hand, nothing comes close to the specialist world of techwear.

The avant garde needs its workaday partners. Simple, nutritious food. Smart industrial design. Practical clothes. But these things in turn need people who push at their limits. What the ultimate limits are depends on your art. An architect must resist gravity. A chef is constrained by their imagination but also the health codes. (The true peak of avant garde cookery might be something delicious but fatal, a taste that must only be imagined, or else enjoyed but once.) For fashion, the immutable object is the human body, be it corseted or cosseted, built into a bold silhouette or lovingly draped. In that context, deconstruction is really just another word for dress up: playing with contexts, appearances and expectations in an effort to shock and delight.

* NB. not to be confused with this truly challenging recipe for chicken, rice and All-Bran® cereal.

[thejoyofseax]

Feast Planning: Féile na nÚll

I'm going to be cooking at the Barony of Eplaheimr's Féile na nÚll (The Apple Festival) in late August. I have my kitchen crew lined up, the playlist has been edited, and we're starting to think about the feast menus. I'll no doubt have a number of posts along the way, which I'll edit in as links here, but this is the basics of my thinking on what needs to happen.

First item is that the menu should contain apples, in quantity. This is basically a thematic element, and shouldn't be hard to fulfil.

Second item is that it should cover carbs, vegetables, and protein for everyone, coeliacs, vegetarians and vegans included. I generally do my best to produce period-accurate food* that works for people with allergies, and then ease off a little for the people who are on voluntarily restricted diets like vegetarians and vegans (vegans can't be fully fed with period-accurate foods at all, so we just can't manage that). The cold-weather menu should be forward on stews, hot pies, and other warming stuff - think of sterotypical medieval/fantasy tavern food. The warm-weather menu should have more fresh fruit, cold pies, and so on - think Edwardian picnic. I'd like to be able to say "this feast menu is as accurate as we can make it for late August in the year XXXX in Y place". Y place is either Ireland (preferred, but hard to verify), England (much easier to verify), or Baghdad (also relatively easy to verify). For Ireland and England, we'll go for later period, 1550+, so we can have pies from good ovens. For Baghdad, it'll be ~1025, because that's when Nawal Nasrallah's translation of al-Warraq was current.

Further thinking on the Arabic/Irish/English question

Decision Made (English)

Menu & Post-Cookery Analysis

At some other time I'll expand on my thinking on efforts to reproduce period food and how we're just never going to know if we have it right or not.

[otherworldlybooksgoddess]

Five Exceptional Fantasy Books Based in Non-European Myth

Photo by Josh Hild

Don’t misunderstand me: I love reading well-written fantasy with roots in the familiar Celtic and English folklore of my childhood, but with the vast majority of High Fantasy being set in worlds closely akin to Medieval Europe, and a large amount of of Mythic Fiction drawing on legends of similar origin, sometimes the ground begins to feel too well trodden.  There is, after all, an entire world of lore out there to draw from.  That’s why I’m always thrilled to find excellent works of what I call “the Realistic Sub-Genres of Fantasy” based in or inspired by myths from other cultures.  Such books not only support inclusiveness, but also expand readers’ experiences with lore and provide a wide range of new, exciting realities to explore. So, if you are looking for something different in the realm of Fantasy, the following novels will provide a breath of fresh air.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wrecker

In this beautifully written novel, Wrecker draws on both Middle-Eastern and Jewish mythology to tell the stories of two unwilling immigrants in Edwardian New York and the unlikely friendship that springs up between them.  Chava, an unusually lifelike golem created for peculiar purposes, has only days worth of memories and is practically childlike in her innocence.  Ahmad the Jinni has lived for centuries, but is trying to reclaim his forgotten past. The former is as steady and calm as the earth she’s made from while the latter is as volatile and free-spirited as the fire within him.  Both must learn to live in an unfamiliar new culture and find their places in a city too modern for myths even as they hide their true natures.  It’s a wonderful metaphor for the experiences of immigrants everywhere, who often find themselves feeling like outsiders—isolated and even overwhelmed— as they struggle to adapt to life in an alien society.  

Full of memorable characters, vivid descriptions, and interesting twists, The Golem and the Jinni takes readers on a journey that is driven as much by internal conflict as external action.  The setting of 1900’s Manhattan is well-researched and spectacular in its detail.  Wrecker blends two old-world mythologies into the relatively modern Edwardian world with a deft hand.  The result is not only fascinating, but also serves to illustrate the common early-twentieth-century experience of an immigrant past colliding with an American future.

The Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes

One part Detective Mystery and one part Magical Realism, this novel invites readers to experience modern-day Ghana in a way that is both authentic and profound.  When Kayo, a forensic pathologist just beginning his career, is pushed into investigating a suspected murder in the rural village of Sonokrom, the last thing he expects is to have a life-changing experience.  Soon, however, he gets the acute sense that the villagers may know more than they’re letting on. When all of the latest scientific and investigative techniques fail him, even as odd occurrences keep dogging his steps, Kayo is finally forced to accept that there is something stranger than he thought about this case.  Solving the crime will require more than intelligence and deduction; it will require setting his disbelief aside and taking the traditional tales and folklore of an old hunter seriously.  Because whatever is happening in Sonokrom, it isn’t entirely natural.  

This novel is brilliant not only because of its deep understanding of Ghanaian society and realistic setting, but also because of Parkes writing style.  The narrative is gorgeously lyrical and everything within it is described with a keen, insightful eye.  The dialogue is full of local color, and while some may find the pidgin English and native colloquialisms difficult to follow, I found that the context was usually enough to explain any unfamiliar terms. Sometimes the narrative feels a little dreamlike, but that is exactly the way great Magical Realism should be.  The Tail of the Blue Bird insistently tugs readers to a place where reality intertwines with myth and magic, all while providing an authentic taste of Ghanaian culture.

The Deer and the Cauldron by Jin Yong

During the reign of Manchu Emperor Kang Xi, China is in a state of barely-controlled sociopolitical unrest.  Many of the older generation remember the previous dynasty, and there still remain vestiges of a resistance movement hidden among the populace.  As his forces continue to hunt down the malefactors, called the Triad Societies, the boy-emperor turns to his unlikely friend and ally: a young rascal known only as Trinket.  This protagonist is a study in contrasts: lazy yet ambitious, cunning yet humorous, roguish yet likable, foul-mouthed yet persuasive. Born in a brothel, Trinket has made his way by his wits alone.  At age twelve, he accidentally sneaked into the Forbidden City—a bizarre occurrence in itself—afterward befriending Kang Xi.  Now, rising quickly through the ranks, he is on a mission to (ostensibly) find and weed out the Triad Societies, and he uses the opportunity to infiltrate various organizations, playing their leaders against one another for his own gain. With a dangerous conspiracy brewing in the Forbidden City itself, however, he is forced to choose sides and decide what is most important to him: friendship, fortune, or freedom.   Supernatural occurrences, daring escapades, and moments of deep introspection abound as Trinket struggles to navigate the perilous maze his life has become.

This novel is like a gemstone: bright, alluring, and many faceted.  At times it may seem somewhat simple on the surface, but looking closer reveals new depths and multiple layers.  Full of intrigue, action, horror, and even laughs, The Deer and the Cauldron mirrors not only the complexities of its setting, but those of the China the author himself knew during the Communist revolution. By blending together history, fantasy, realism, humor, and subtle political commentary, Yong not only beautifully captures these social intricacies but also creates a narrative that is as thoroughly engaging as it is unapologetically unique.

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Magical realism related to food has almost become a movement in itself, with novels like Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Joanne Harris’ Chocolat, and Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells all finding their places in readers’ hearts.  Originally published in 1992, Like Water for Chocolate helped create this fascinating trend, and it has become something of a modern classic in the fantasy genre.  

The narrative centers around Tita de la Garza, a mid-twentieth century Mexican woman possessing deep sensitivity, a strong will, and a special talent for cooking.  Born prematurely, Tita arrived in her family’s kitchen, tears already in her eyes.  It is in that room where she spends most of her childhood, being nurtured and taught by the elderly cook, Nacha.  The relationship that flourishes between Tita and her caregiver is a special gift, as it provides the girl not only with the compassion and support her own mother denies, but also with a passion and skill for creating incredible, mouth-watering dishes.  At Nacha’s side, Tita learns the secrets of life and cookery, but she also learns one terrible fact: thanks to a family tradition, she is destined never to have love, marriage, or a child of her own.  Her fate, rather, is to care for her tyrannical widowed mother, Mama Elena, until the day the older woman dies.  With a vibrant, independent spirit, sixteen-year-old Tita flouts this rule, falling deeply in love with a man named Pedro who asks for, and is denied, her hand in marriage.  Undaunted, the young man agrees to wed one of Tita’s older sisters, Rosaura, instead, as he believes this to be the only way he can be close to the woman he loves.  Thus begins a life-long struggle between freedom and tradition, love and duty, which is peppered throughout with supernatural events and delicious cuisine.  So great is her skill in cooking that the meals Tita prepares take on magical qualities all their own, reflecting and amplifying her emotions upon everyone who enjoys them.  Controlled and confined for much of her existence, food becomes her outlet for all the things she cannot say or do.  The narrative itself echoes this, by turns as spicy, sweet, and bitter as the flavors Tita combines.  At its heart, this is as much a tale about how important the simple things, like a good meal, can be as it is a story about a woman determined to be her own person and choose her own fate.

Cuisine is fundamental to this novel, with recipes woven throughout the narrative, but that is only a part of its charm.  In the English translation, the language is beautiful in its simplicity.  The characters often reveal hidden depths, especially as Tita grows up and is able to better understand the people around her.  Heartfelt in its joys and sorrows, Like Water for Chocolate glows with cultural flavor and a sense of wonder.  It’s a feast for the spirit, and like an exquisite meal, it never fails to surprise those who enjoy it.

The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

When I first read this novel, I found the early chapters enjoyable and engaging, but felt the story was no more than a typical, if especially well-written, work of mythic fiction.  The deeper I got into the narrative, however, the more wrong I was proven.  The City of Brass is anything but ordinary. While basing her work in Middle-Eastern lore and history, Chakraborty nonetheless manages to create a setting and story that are both wonderfully unique. Lush, detailed, and bursting with magic and intrigue, this book spans the lines between several sub-genres of fantasy without ever losing its balance.  

Beginning in eighteenth-century Egypt, the narrative follows a quick-witted antiheroine. Nahri doesn’t live by the rules of her society.  She doesn’t believe in magic or fate or even religion.  Orphaned for most of her life, survival has required her to become a con artist and a thief.  As a result, she is practical and pragmatic, a realist who has never even considered donning rose-colored glasses, and the last person who would ever expect anything supernatural to occur. Which, of course, means that it does, but the way in which it is handled is intricate and interesting enough not to feel trite. When Nahri’s latest con—a ceremony she is pretending to perform and doesn’t believe in even slightly—goes awry, and the cynical young woman finds herself face to face with a Daeva.  Magical beings, it transpires, are real after all, and this one is furious.  To both of their dismay, he’s also bound to Nahri, who soon realizes that he has an agenda of his own.  In return for rescuing her (and refraining from killing her himself) Dara, the Daeva warrior Nahri accidentally summoned, wants her to pull of the biggest con of her life: pretending to be the half-human heir to the throne of his people.  Worse still, she soon realizes that Dara, whose mentality sometimes seems a little less-than-stable, actually believes she may be exactly who he claims.  He has something planned, and his intentions may not be in her best interest.  Dragged unwillingly into a strange world of court intrigue, danger, social upheaval, and magic, Nahri quickly discovers that some things remain familiar.  People are ruled by prejudices, the strong prey on the weak, and she can’t fully trust anyone.  The stakes, however, are higher than ever, and Nahri will need all of her wits, cunning, and audacity if she wants to survive.

This novel was thoroughly enjoyable, and in fact prompted me to buy the following books in the trilogy as they became available. Chakraborty’s style is lyrical, her world building is superb, her plot is intricate, and her characters are well-developed.  She not only frames unfamiliar words and ideas is easily-comprehensible contexts, but weaves those explanations smoothly into the narrative. The culture, mythology, and history surrounding her tale are all carefully researched, but the tale itself is nonetheless unique. What begins feeling like a fairly ordinary mythic fiction novel will pleasantly exceed readers’ expectations.

So, while we, as fantasy readers, love the works of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Charles de Lint, there is also a plethora of other enchanting books to enjoy.  Exploring magical realism and mythic fiction based in cultures and folklore from all around the globe ensures that our to-read lists will always hold something unexpected and exciting to surprise us.  So, if you’re starting to feel like you’re in a bit of a reading rut, or if you’re simply looking to expand your horizons, open up new realms of imagination by opening up one of the novels above.  Who knows see where it will lead you?  You may just discover a new favorite to add to your bookshelf.  Happy reading!

[petermorwood]

My friend and I were talking about Asterix movies ať lunch and the Englishmen have Everything with Mint Sauce joke came up (idk how it's in french/english, but that's the Czech version). Anyways, we managed to google some mint sauce recipes, but they mostly say it's served with lamb, and that's it. So, I am turning to you, the local expert on food (and medieval weaponry :D) in this corner of tumblr. Can you tell us more about this weird meat dressing and how it's used? Please and thank you.

First thing is to remember that Asterix is a comedy, and an easy source of humour is to turn national traits up to 11. So the Ancient Britons stop fighting at 5 PM every day to drink hot water with a spot of milk in it (putting tea in the hot water comes later, thanks to Getafix the Druid). They also drink warm beer, drive on the wrong side of the road, have a long-standing plan for a tunnel to France Gaul, say things like “Jolly good show, what?” and to Obelix’s disgust eat their wild boar boiled, with mint sauce.

Oddly enough, the historical English preference was for roasting. In “Beef and Liberty”, Ben Rogers provides lots of period quotations from European travellers about England’s roast-centric cuisine being “simple, but hearty and good”. They were less complimentary about attempts at more elaborate cooking, but IMO a lot of that was just a return serve in the still-ongoing match of xenophobia tennis.

As for mint sauce...

...it looks like grass-clipping soup - an appearance shared with numerous other green sauces more common in Europe than the UK - but the unsubtle nose-stinging whiff of pickled toothpaste is all its own.

In Britain it’s almost the last survivor of historical herb-based sauces - coriander (cilantro), lovage, sorrel, parsley etc. - but most commercial mint sauces, based as they are on vinegar, are far harsher than originals which would have used verjuice, the juice of sour fruit like unripe grapes, green apples etc. This is available from various sources, and is well worth having in the cupboard.

Mixing a spoonful of modern mint sauce with yogurt, sour cream or even mayonnaise is a definite improvement; so is 1 spoonful of it with 3 of basil pesto; anything to reduce its minty, vinegary one-note aggression.

According to FoodsOfEngland.com, mint sauce is mentioned in 'The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy' by Hannah Glasse (1747), though without a recipe, which suggests the sauce was so familiar and easy to make that instructions weren’t needed. Oddly enough, both mentions are in connection with cooking and serving pork in the style of lamb. There’s also a recipe for making pork taste like venison - I’d have thought making it taste like wild boar would have been easier, but never mind.

These are scans from our Prospect Books facsimile copy:

Mint sauce for lamb is one of a group of this-for-that sauces which include apple sauce for pork, cranberry sauce for poultry or game, and parsley sauce for fish (here in Ireland it also goes with boiled bacon and ham), while mustard and horseradish, the traditional accompaniments for beef, aren’t really sauces when used alone. So what are they?

It’s easy to get into a tangle about what to call a thing from a jar which goes with meat: it’s not a gravy, so is it a sauce, a condiment, a relish, a preserve or a pickle? There should be one thing to name them all, one thing to find them, one thing to bring them all and in the pantry bind them...

Sorry, got a bit distracted.

“Tracklement” fits the bill. Though it sounds old, FoodsOfEngland suggests it 'appears to have been invented’ in 1954 by Dorothy Hartley for her book “Food in England”. However since it’s a social history as well as a collection of recipes, what it may have done was pin a dialect word down in print for the first time. 

In addition, William Tullberg, founder of “Tracklements”, which makes mustards, pickles, chutneys etc....

...said that ‘tracklement�� was what his Lincolnshire grandmother called accompaniments to meat; he was born in 1932, which suggests that Granny’s word goes back into at least the late 1800s.

 You pays yer money and you takes yer choice. :-D

[tipsycad147]

Potions

A potion (from Latin potio "drink") is a magical medicine, drug in liquid form.

In mythology and literature, a potion is usually made by a magician, dragon, fairy or witch and has magical properties. It is used for various motives including the healing, bewitching or poisoning of people. For example, love potions for those who wish to fall in love (or become deeply infatuated) with another; sleeping potions to cause long-term or eternal sleep (in folklore, this can range from the normal REM sleep to a deathlike coma); and elixirs to heal/cure any wound/malady.

Creations of potions of different kinds were a common practice of alchemy, and were commonly associated with witchcraft, as in The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

During the 19th century, it was common in certain countries to see wandering charlatans offering curative potions. These were eventually dismissed as quackery.

In modern fantasy, potions are often portrayed as spells in liquid form, capable of causing a variety of effects, including healing, amnesia, infatuation, transformation, invisibility, and invulnerability

 Concoction was the process of digestion, as conceived by Aristotle who theorized that this was the result of the heat of the body acting upon the material, causing it to mature and ripen. Liquid broths, cocktails and potions which are similarly formed by heating or blending multiple ingredients are now referred to in this way. Concoctions are only considered drinks and or liquids. Any creation made out of food is considered cookery or cuisine.

An elixir (from Arabic: إكسير Iksīr; from Greek ξήριον xērion "powder for drying wounds" from ξηρός xēros "dry") is a clear, sweet-flavoured liquid used for medicinal purposes, to be taken orally and intended to cure one's illness. When used as a pharmaceutical preparation, an elixir contains at least one active ingredient designed to be taken orally.

An extract is a substance made by extracting a part of a raw material, often by using a solvent such as ethanol or water. Extracts may be sold as tinctures, absolutes or in powder form.

The aromatic principles of many spices, nuts, herbs, fruits, etc., and some flowers, are marketed as extracts, among the best known of true extracts being almond, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, lemon, nutmeg, orange, peppermint, pistachio, rose, spearmint, vanilla, violet, and wintergreen.

 Herbal teas — less commonly[ called tisanes (UK and US /tɪˈzæn/, US also /tɪˈzɑ��n/) — are beverages made from the infusion or decoction of herbs, spices, or other plant material in hot water. They do not usually contain caffeine. Herbal teas should not be confused with true teas(e.g., black, green, white, yellow, oolong), which are prepared from the cured leaves of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis), nor with decaffeinated tea, in which the caffeine has been removed. Like beverages made from true teas, herbal teas can be served hot or cold.

Spagyric /spəˈdʒɪrɪk/ is a word in English that means "alchemy." Some people have coined the use of the word to mean an herbal medicine produced by alchemical procedures. These procedures involve fermentation, distillation, and extraction of mineral components from the ash of the plant. These processes were in use in medieval alchemy generally for the separation and purification of metals from ores (see Calcination), and salts from brines and other aqueous solutions.

A tincture is typically an alcoholic extract of plant or animal material or solution of such, or of a low volatility substance (such as iodine and mercurochrome). To qualify as an alcoholic tincture, the extract should have an ethanol percentage of at least 25–60% (50–120 US proof).[citation needed] Sometimes an alcohol concentration as high as 90% (180 US proof) is used in such a tincture. In herbal medicine, alcoholic tinctures are made with various ethanol concentrations, 25% being the most common.

Herbal tinctures are not always made using ethanol as the solvent, though this is most commonly the case. Other solvents include vinegar, glycerol (also called glycerine), diethyl ether and propylene glycol, not all of which can be used for internal consumption. Ethanol has the advantage of being an excellent solvent for both acidic and basic (alkaline) constituents. A tincture using glycerine is called a glycerite. Glycerine is generally a poorer solvent than ethanol. Vinegar, being acidic, is a better solvent for obtaining alkaloids but a poorer solvent for acidic components. For individuals who choose not to ingest alcohol, non-alcoholic extracts offer an alternative for preparations meant to be taken internally.

Some solutions of volatile or non-volatile substances are traditionally called spirits, regardless of whether obtained by distillation or not and whether they even contain alcohol. In chemistry, a tincture is a solutionthat has alcohol as its solvent.

[kitsunebi-uk]

Victuuri medieval AU epic fic

Progress Update

Exciting news - ‘All Our Yesterdays’, my WIP, is nearing completion, currently at 18 instalments and over 830,000 words. I anticipate that when it’s finished, it will be 20 instalments long and come in at just over 900,000 words. First draft to be done in 5 or 6 weeks, all being well, and then another month of editing. I’ll then release on AO3 at a rate of one instalment per week, just like my last fic, ‘All That We See or Seem’. (Which has recently received more than 10,000 hits - thank you to everyone who has visited!) 

This fic has taken me almost a year of daily work so far, and I’ve kept with it through six months of one of the worst health crises of my life. Because I believe in what I’m doing, and YOU the readers have helped me believe in it, with your wonderful feedback and encouragement. I set out to challenge myself to write something as detailed and intricate as I thought I could handle, and somehow I’ve managed to remain just this side of disaster all the way through, even when I was so ill I could barely do anything else. I love this story, and I hope you will love it too. The final two instalments, which I am in the process of planning, will each take Yuuri and Victor in very different directions, and I can’t wait to explore that - just like I have in all the instalments up til now.

Once again, I’d like to thanks @themayflynans for her tireless support and encouragement, and beta services par excellence; @sheepskeleton for the fantastic art she’s been developing for this fic, and @adrianners for her translations of modern to Middle Yorkshire English, which have enabled me to bring the language of the time to life in ways that would otherwise have not been possible.

Click here for a preview from Part 2 that I posted here on Tumblr a little while back. And I’d like to share with you a sample of some online resources I’ve gone back to again and again - they’re like old friends! Enjoy, and thanks so much for your support - I can’t wait to be able to share this fic with you!

King Richard the Second wiki

Medieval longsword fighting 1

Medieval longsword fighting 2

The 12 Italian longsword guards

Boucicaut’s exercises for knights

How to play nine men’s morris

How to build a wooden gear clock

How to use an astrolabe

A Boke of Gode Cookery

[arablit]

10 Recipes from Medieval Arabic Texts

10 Recipes from Medieval Arabic Texts

Medieval Arabic cookery books are a delight:

Photo credit: Anny Gaul.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were — among other things — a wonderful period for Arabic cookery compilations, several of which have recently been translated to English. The thirteenth-century cookbook Scents and Flavors was edited and translated by Charles Perry, a culinary historian who has translated a number of…

[thefulldance]

“Although the tradition of making these cakes dates back to the medieval period, John Mollard's 1803 recipe seems to be the earliest printed recipe for an English Twelfth Cake. These elaborately decorated cakes were an important element in the celebrations for the feast of the Epiphany. They were at the height of their popularity when Mollard wrote his cookery book. It was the custom for each guest at a Twelfth Day entertainment at this time to take on the role of a particular character for the whole evening. This was achieved by choosing a card at random from a pack. These were illustrated with images of various comic characters. As well as the King and Queen, who led the revels, there were many others – Counseller Double Fee, Mrs Prittle Prattle, the Dutchess of Puddle Dock, Toby Tipple and Sir Tun Belly Wash were all popular. The evening’s entertainment ended with the finale of cutting the elegantly iced cake, which was usually very large and decorated with two crowns for the king and queen and sugar paste or wax images of the other characters.”

1: “ This impressive Twelfth Cake, which was baked and decorated on our Taste of Christmas Past course is ornamented with gum paste devices printed from original eighteenth century moulds.The icing is coloured with cochineal in the manner of the day. The two crowns, standard decorations used on cakes of this kind, were constructed from ten individual shapes pressed from the mould below, a rare survivor from the late eighteenth century. The other ornaments were all printed from two carved wooden moulds or confectioner's boards.Designs for these cakes varied considerably, but that above made with the tools of the Georgian confectioners trade gives a pretty fair impression of these remarkable precursors of the Victorian Christmas Cake, which seems to have usurped the role of the Twelfth Cake in the 1860s.”

2:  Eighteenth century crown sugar mould.

3-4:  “The front and back of a typical confectioner's board carved with various "devices". The dove with the olive branch, the swag and drop and the small crown were all used to ornament the Twelfth Cake depicted above. This mould is unusual in that it is carved from chestnut. Most were carved from box or pearwood.”

5: “A nineteenth century fruitwood mould carved by the celebrated confectioner William Jarrin, whose portrait is shown opposite. Jarrin was famous for his elaborately decorated Twelfth Cakes, which graced the window of his shop during the Christmas season. Motifs of this kind were pressed out of gum paste and stuck back-to-back to form standing figures. They were probably designed as Twelfth Cake ornaments. The unsteady looking gentleman on the right is meant to be a drunkard, rather like Toby Tipple opposite above. These moulds are very difficult to use. They were dusted with starch before the sugar paste was pressed in to them.A flat bladed knife was drawn across the mould to remove excess sugar paste and the motifs were knocked out by tapping the mould at an angle on the surface of the table. It takes a lot of practice to perfect the technique. The gum paste was made with one ounce of gum tragacanth to a pound of powdered sugar and mixed with a little water to form a stiff pastillage paste.”

Recipe: “Take seven pounds of flour, make a cavity in the centre, set a sponge with a gill and a half ofyeast and a little warm milk; then put round it one pound of fresh butter broke into small lumps, one pound and a quarter of sifted sugar, four pounds and a half of currants washed and picked, half an ounce of sifted cinnamon, a quarter of an ounce of pounded cloves, mace, and nutmeg mixed, sliced candied orange or lemon peel and citron. When the sponge is risen, mix all the ingredients together with a little warm milk; let the hoops be well papered and buttered, then fill them with the mixture and bake them, and when nearly cold ice them over with sugar prepared for that purpose as per receipt; or they may be plain”, John Mollard, The Art of Cookery (London 1803)