Continued from Cuisine of My Ancestors: German
My English ancestors dominate my genealogical timeline roughly between 1200 and 1500 A.D. Those dates span the Plantagenet and Tudor periods of England. For planning a meal, I chose the Tudor era (1485 - 1603) because there's quite a bit of information available on what they ate. The Tudor period began after Henry Tudor VII snatched the throne from Richard Plantagenet III, and then married Richard's fiance to appease public opinion. It ended with the death of the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I (daughter of Henry VIII).
Menu
Tarte Owte of Lente
Salad of Greens
Perys en Composte
Hippocras
Tarte Owte of Lente (Cheese Tart)
Crust
It's amazing how many recipes for "authentic" or "traditional" British tarts and pies call for store-bought crust. After a bit of research, I found a recipe from A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye published in 1545. (That link will take you to the Internet Archive, where you can download your own free public domain copy.) Unlike modern shortcrust, Tudor crust used the hot water method.
Here's the original recipe:
"Make youre coffin after this maner, take a lyttle fayre water and half a dyche of butter and a little saffron and settle all this upon a chafyngdyshe tyll it be hoate then temper your flower with this sayd licuor, and the whyte of two egges and also make your coffyn. . . Then putte (your filling) into your coffyn and laye halfe a dyshe of butter above them end so close your coffin, and so bake them."
(Note that the term "coffin" for pie crust was in continued use up to the 1700s, where it is found in Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery for various meat and fruit pies.)
Rough translation:
"Make your crust after this manner. Take a little fair water and half a dish of butter and a little saffron and put it in a chaffing dish until it's hot enough to temper the flour. Add the liquid and white of two eggs. Mix, shape, add filling, and layer half a dish of butter on top. Close the crust and bake."
The amounts I used were adapted from Anne Boleyn's Tudor Apple Pie at Love British History.
- 6 tbsp butter
- ½ cup water
- 2 eggs
- 1 for the dough
- 1, beaten, to glaze the tart before baking
- 1½ + cups all-purpose flour
- salt
Put the butter and water into a small saucepan and heat gently until warm and melted together. In the meantime, sift flour and salt into a bowl then pour hot water/butter mixture into it, stirring to combine. Once it's just come together, crack in the egg and stir again. Cover and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes. Roll out and shape tart before filling.
Recipe Notes:
- The dough was way too soft and I ended up adding probably another half cup to get a workable consistency.
- To shape, I rolled it out after chilling, cut a 10" circle (using a bowl as a form) and folded up the sides to shape.
- The texture after baking was flaky and tender.
Cheese filling
I sourced two original recipes for the filling (and quite a few modern ones).
- A Book of Cookrye, by A. W., London, 1591. (Originally published 1584.)
- Gentyll Manly Cokere ( MS Pepys 1047, c. 1490)
I used the second one. Here's the original recipe
Take neshe chese and pare hit and grynd yn A morter and breke egges and do ther to and then put yn buttur and creme and mell all well to gethur put not to moche butter ther yn if the chese be fatte make A coffyn of dowe and close hit a bove with dowe and collor hit a bove with the yokes of eggs and bake hit well and serue hit furth.
Translation (courtesy of Godecookery.com)
Take soft (neshe) cheese and pare it and grind it in a morter and break eggs and do thereto and then put in butter and cream and mix all well together. Put not too much butter therein if the cheese be fatty. Make a coffin (pie shell) of dough and close it above with dough and color it above with the yolks of eggs and bake it well and serve it forth.
Modern interpretations based on the original recipe vary greatly because no ingredient amounts are given. For the cheese, they ranged anywhere from 100 to 225 grams for a 9-inch tart. Most suggested a hard cheese to obtain the thick paste-like consistency of the batter after mashing the cheese. Some added lots of eggs to make it more like quiche. I found a very helpful video from the Historic Royal Palaces YouTube channel, 16th Century 'Tarte Owte of Lente': Tudor cookalong. No ingredient amounts are given, but it gave me an idea of what the tart dough and cheese mixture should look like.
Here's my recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups grated cheese*
- 2 egg yolks
- nob of softened butter
- salt and pepper
- 2- 3 tbsp cream to make a workable cheese paste
Mixing
- Mash cheese and egg yolks into a thick paste, working in the butter, salt, and pepper
- Add a little cream as needed
- Should be the consistency of cookie dough (see video mentioned above)
- Spread the filling into the shaped bottom crust
- Add the pastry lid.
- Brush lightly with beaten egg
- Bake at 350ºF (180ºC) for 30 - 45 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown.
- *What's wanted here is a cheese that won't get gooey and melty but will hold its shape with cooking. Cheshire cheese was said to be a favorite of Elizabeth I, so that's what I first looked for although I didn't find it.
- Other suggestions for a pre-1600s cheese would be Wensleydale (1000), Gorgonzola (879), Comté (1000), Emmenthal (1542), Gruyére (1100s), Grana (1200), , or Cheddar (1500).
- Of those I found very few, but did find what I hoped was a fairly traditional cheddar.
I found this imported cheddar at Aldi and it worked really well. Dan and I have often commented how American cheeses like American cheddar have no flavor. Well, this one did. High end grocery stores sometimes carry specialty cheeses, so next time I'm near one I'll have to take a look. The recipe is definitely a keeper and I wouldn't mind trying other flavors.
While my tart wouldn't win any beauty contests, I was quite pleased with how it turned out. Especially considering I had no clue as to what I was doing.
Salad of Greens
This is an Elizabethan recipe from The Tudor Travel Guide website. It's based on a 1570 Italian cookbook entitled The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi. "Opera" here translates "works" which in this case are recipes because the author was chef to several popes of the period. (You can download a public domain copy here, although it's in Italian.)
Ingredients
- Assorted greens: beet leaves, sorrel, chard, parsley, lettuce, kale, spinach, etc.
- Assorted fresh herbs: sage, rosemary, thyme, mint, lemon balm, basil, cress, salad burnet, tarragon,etc.
- Leeks, sliced
- Olive oil
- Red wine vinegar
- Salt
- Pepper
- Fresh edible flowers if available: nasturtiums, violets, pansies, borage, calendula, French marigolds, honeysuckle, rose petals, clover, chickweed
Preparation
Wash, sort, and mix the greens and herbs. Dress with oil, vinegar and salt & pepper. Decorate with leek slices and fresh flowers.
Recipe notes
- It was winter when I made this so I was somewhat limited for fresh herbs and flowers.
- Mine contained lettuce, kale, chard, chickweed, dandelion greens, parsley, oregano, sheep sorrel, spinach, and slices of leeks.
Perys en Composte (Pear Compote)
The Tudor English apparently loved their desserts because there are quite a few recipes for them. I chose this one because it's very different from any of the other desserts we've tried so far.
The original recipe is from Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books at the Internet Archive (page 12).
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Here is a translation from A Boke of Gode Cookery website.
"Pears in Compote. Take wine and cinnamon, & a great deal of white sugar, and set it on the fire and heat it hot, but don't let boil, and strain; then take fair dates, and pick out the stones, and cut thin, & add; then take pears, and pare them and boil them, and cut them in thin slices, and place in the syrup; then take a little sandalwood, and add, and set it on the fire; and if you have quinces, add them, and look that it stand well with sugar, and well laid with cinnamon, and add salt, and let it boil; and put it in a wooden container, & let it cool, and serve."
I found several modern versions for this around the internet. Here's mine:
- 4 - 6 pears (may substitute a quince for one if available)
- 2 cups red wine
- white sugar to taste* (I used 2 tbsp)
- 1 stick cinnamon
- 1/2 cups pitted, chopped dates
- pinch salt
Heat wine, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Meanwhile pare, core, and quarter pears. Add pears, dates, and salt to heated wine mixture, simmer until pears are cooked. Remove cinnamon stick. Cool and serve.
Recipe Notes
- Apparently sandalwood was used for coloring and several modern versions substituted red food coloring. I figured the red wine would color the pears well enough and as the picture shows, it did.
- *I find "to taste" frustrating in recipes. The original recipe called for "a great deal of white sugar" whereas modern recipes changed it to one tablespoon. I can think of two reasons for this.
- Older wines (drier or turning to vinegar. See introduction to Hippocras below) so these would likely be used for cooking, hence the need to sweeten.
- It's possibly a reflection on type of pears they had. For example, cooking pears aren't as sweet as table pears. Also riper pears would be sweeter, of course, but more likely to get mushy with cooking, so firmer pears were likely used.
- Recommendation: taste the wine and the pears and add sugar (or not) for the sweetness you prefer. The dates help sweeten it too. My pears were fairly hard and bland, so I used 2 tablespoons of sugar.
- It smelled quite wonderful while the pears were cooking.
Hippocras (Spiced Wine)
The oldest recipe for Hippocras dates back to 1390, but there are many variations for it. It is a cold-steeped spiced beverage using red or white wine, spices, and usually sugar. Of all the recipes (there's a nice collection of hypocras recipes at Medieval Cookery, scroll to the bottom of the page), the foundation spices seem to be cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Variable ingredients include: spikenard root, galangal (a rhizome in the ginger family), pepper, marjoram, rosemary, cardamom, and grains of paradise (Aframomum melegueta. a gingery flavored pepper from West Africa).
The spices are to be crushed, bruised, or powdered.
I'm guessing the sugar is especially for older natural wines that are turning to vinegar. They wouldn't have had modern methods of stopping the fermentation process, so new wines would be sweetest, and they would get drier and more sour as they aged, eventually turning to wine vinegar (still a useful product for cooking and dressing salads as in the recipe above).
I adapted my recipe (based on what I had) from Max Miller's (Tasting History) Making Hippocras at Home YouTube video. It's a no-added-sugar recipe.
- 1 quart red wine
- 1/2 oz (14 gm) cinnamon sticks
- 1/2 oz (14 gm) fresh ginger
- 3 small sprigs fresh rosemary
- 1 tsp whole cloves
- 1/2 tsp peppercorns
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Crush the spices and add to a jar of wine. Stir to mix and let sit for 1 to 2 days. Strain and serve warm or cold.
Recipe notes:
- I crushed the whole spices and bruised the rosemary with my kitchen hammer. This exposes more of the surface area of the spice and so imparts more flavor.
- If I had whole nutmegs and cardamoms I would have used those instead of powdered.
- Mine steeped for 3 days
- It was excellent with the cheese tart.
I'll close this very long post with a link to last year's Christmas series,
Next up, our Norman French meal.
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