Continued from Cuisine of My Ancestors: Viking
My ancestral roots trace back to the Anglo-Saxons from the 400s AD up to the Norman Invasion (1060). Like the Vikings, both the Angles and the Saxons were Germanic in origin. After the Romans left, they (and the Jutes) were the next to invade Britain.
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| Attribution: by mbartelsm - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
I read that some Britons begged the Romans to come back and help them fight off the invaders, but the Romans never returned. The Anglo-Saxons dominated British culture and language for the next 600 years. In fact, the Anglo-Saxon language is also known as Old English.
Considering that the Saxons and Angles come from neighboring regions, it's logical that many of the foods they ate were similar. The land of the British Isles being richer, however, would have enabled better yield and more variety in their diet. In planning this meal, however, I tried to find something different from our Viking meal.
Anglo-Saxons diet
- Meat: pork, mutton, beef, chevon, poultry (chicken, ducks, geese,), game birds (wild ducks, plover, grouse, herons, wild geese), hare, venison, wild boar
- Fish: herring, salmon, eel, pike, perch, flounder, whiting, plaice, cod, brown trout, oysters, mussels, cockles
- Grain: barley, rye, oats, wheat (most expensive), also buckwheat, spelt
- Dairy: butter, fresh cheese, milk
- Eggs
- Vegetables & legumes: cabbage, carrots, 'Welsh carrots'; or parsnips, burdock, onions, leeks, wild garlic, legumes, peas, beans
- Fruits: apple, pear, plum, elderberry
- Nuts: walnuts, hazelnuts, acorns
- Herbs: mint, sage, chamomile, parsley, nettle, fennel, mustard seed, sorrel
- Beverages: ale, mead, wine, fruit juice, herbal teas
- Sweetener: honey
Cooking techniques
- Open hearth in cauldrons and pots: stews and pottages
- Flat stones or iron griddles for bread
Preservation techniques
- Drying
- Salting
- Smoking
Recipes weren't written down, so the recipes I did find were mostly based on descriptions. Who ate what depended on social station. Peasants and tenant farmers would have had the poorest foods and diet, while land holders would have fared much better.
As with the Viking recipes, even "authentic" recipes I found had modern substitutions. I suppose this is understandable, but I did try to stick with ingredients that were likely used or as close to it as I could come. I've made notes of my own substitutions in the recipe notes below.
Menu
Recipes
Game Bird and Bacon Stew
The original recipe is found in Tjurslakter Kookboek, a free PDF of Viking and Saxon recipes. I cut the recipe to make it for two.
Ingredients
- 4 pieces of American bacon, chopped
- 4 pieces of Canadian bacon, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 game birds, or chicken breasts
- 8 oz mushrooms, chopped roughly
- 3 oz walnut pieces
- 1, 12 oz bottle of ale
- 1/4 cup water
- salt to taste
- Fry the bacons and garlic in a dutch oven until lightly browned
- Add chicken and brown on all sides
- Add mushrooms and walnuts and cook for a few more minutes
- Add liquid and salt cover and bring to a boil.
- Simmer for 2 to 2½ hours.
- Serve with large slices of bread to soak up the broth.
Recipe notes:
- I planned to use Cornish hens for the birds, but couldn't find any. So I substituted chicken breasts.
- The original recipe just called for bacon. The recipe is British, and I know their bacon is different from American bacon.
- American bacon is made from fatty parts of the belly. Generally smoked.
- British bacon is sliced from the belly and loin. Not smoked.
- Canadian bacon is made from the loin.
- I settled on a combination of American and Canadian bacon as the closest to which I could come. These were more of a flavoring than main ingredient, but wow, the flavor they added was fantastic.
- The broth in the stew was very thin because no thickeners were used. So the bread (recipe below) was perfect to sop up the broth.
Gebyrmed (Anglo-Saxon Leavened Bread)
The most challenging item on my menu was bread. Most of the Saxon recipes I found were for kichells (hearthbreads i.e. flatbreads) like the ones I made for our Viking meal. One source said instead of making them flat, the dough can be rolled into balls and baked, with the caveat, "There is a fine line between gummy-undercooked and done-but-impossibly-hard; good luck finding it."
After digging deeper I came across a scholarly paper by a Russian linguist which focused on Anglo-Saxon bread. (The Domain Of Bread In Anglo-Saxon Culture by Irina Yanushkevich. The link will download the paper). The basis of the paper was source documents in Old English. Interestingly, I discovered that Old English (Anglo-Saxon) has a word for leavened bread (gebyrmed), as well as for unleavened bread (þeorf from þeorfnes, meaning freedom from leaven. þeorfsymbel is the Feast of Unleavened Bread). The Old English word for leaven, yeast, or barm is beorma.
Here's her description of making gebyrmed:
"The dough was kneaded in a wooden trough which was cut out of a split log. The leaven was made by souring a handful of flour stirred in water or milk and left in the open for fermentation because wild yeasts were present in the air. After that small birch sticks were dipped into the leaven and dried; they could be soaked whenever needed. Such leaven was not always working, so the bread was probably coarse and hard, especially if the flour and the other ingredients had not been ground thoroughly. As brewing and baking went hand in hand, the foam from fermenting the beer with hop was also added to the dough; such kind of leaven (barm < Anglo-Sax. beorma) produced lighter, softer, and more flavored bread."
Here's my adaptation:
Make the sourdough batter:
- 1 cup warm whey
- 2 cups flour (I used half whole wheat and half barley flour)
- Cover bowl with a cotton dishtowel and allow to sit in a warm place, until it begins to bubble from wild yeasts (at least several hours, overnight would be better).
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 1½ tsp ale yeast*
- Let proof until bubbly
- Mix the sourdough starter and yeast water together
- Add 1 tsp sea salt and enough flour to knead the dough until no longer sticky.
- Shape into loaves and let rise several hours.
- Bake on a pizza stone for about an hour at 350°F (180°C).
Recipe notes
- *The original recipe calls for barm. Instead, I substituted ale yeast. It is different from baking yeast in that it doesn't rise as quickly or as well, and is stronger flavored. So it seemed like the best substitute for barm that I could come up with.
- It rose better than I expected. Between the heavier whole grain flours and not using baking yeast, I wasn't expecting it to rise at all, but it did and the flavor was delicious.
Honey Oatcakes
Original recipe from English-heritage.org.uk.
- 1½ cups porridge oats (I used rolled oats)
- 1/2 cup melted butter
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/4 cup chopped dried apples
Mix all ingredients and shape into small cakes. Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Recipe notes:
- I can't buy porridge oats so I used rolled oats. However, I was disappointed that I couldn't shape the mixture at all. The oats didn't want to hold together. I managed somewhat, as you can see in the picture.
- I took the question to permies.com (an international site), and after an interesting discussion I learned that porridge oats (as the recipe called for) are more like our quick oats, i.e. finer cut that American rolled oats. Even so, I doubt the Anglo-Saxons had this kind of oats available.
- This recipe is readily found on the internet and seems to be primarily geared toward kids. That observation plus the use of modern processed oats causes me to doubt the modern version's authenticity as a historic recipe.
What did we think?
The stew was absolutely fantastic and I wished I'd made a full batch. The only seasonings were the ale and salt, and it needed nothing more, although I have to admit that the Canadian bacon added a lot of wonderful flavor. This will definitely be a regular on our winter dinner menu rotation.
The mix of wheat and barley for the bread was delicious as well, although I am unlikely to make this recipe again. This is because ale yeast is considerably more expensive than bakers yeast and because I can't buy barley grain or flour locally. Any good hearty whole grain bread would work just as well, however.
I won't make that recipe for the oatcakes again either. They were very tasty but somehow didn't seem very authentic, I think because of the rolled oats. For our ancient Celtic meal I tried something different, so that recipe next time.
To finish up this post, here's a link to my Anglo-Saxon Christmas song post. It has two songs, actually. One a church chant in Old Roman, the other a more modern Christmas carol sung in Old English.
Christmas Songs of My Ancestors: Anglo-Saxon
Next, our Celtic meal.
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