Long Wortis

I have shelf control issues when it comes to buying new cookbooks. This month’s acquisition was a copy of Cockatrice and Lampray Hay by Constance Hieatt, a book I have wanted to own since it first came out in 2012. She co-wrote very first medieval cookbook I ever purchased (Pleyn Delit), and several others since. I opened it at random when it arrived, and it landed at recipe 61 – Long Wortis. It was perfect as I had kale from my CSA basket that needed cooking up and I’m not terribly fond of kale so it was an excuse to try something new.

The book has 99 recipes from the Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS F 291, written in Middle English in the fifteenth century, with a modern English transcription and cooking notes.

Long Wortis – Take green; trip off the leaves and parboil them in water. Then take them and press them, then cut them so that every blade is an inch long. Put those greens into a pot with fresh broth of beef and mutton and capons; be sure that the broth is rich. Then fry bread in grease; put this bread into the pot. When it is time to go to dine, add saffron and salt and give forth.

I cut the stems out of my kale (four large pieces) and cooked it in a bit of water until it was tender-crisp, then drained it and cut it into small pieces. Then I boiled up aabout four cups of mixed beef and chicken broth and added the kale pieces back in. I probably made too much broth, thinking this should be more of a soup than just flavoured greens. In the end, I scooped out the greens into a bowl for serving and just added a tiny bit of broth. For the croutons, I buttered two slices of homemade stale sourdough bread on both sides, and cut it up, then fried it. Next time, I would just add chicken or duck fat to my frying pan and fry the croutons in the hot fat; much simpler! To finish, I added pinch of saffron to the bowl of greens before adding the croutons. I didn’t add salt because the greens were already salty enough for my taste.

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Random Thoughts Lead to a Merovingian Oven

A few days ago, something sparked my interest in Roman bake ovens, known as the testum or clibanus. It seemed like a great idea for baking at camping events, since such an it works very much like an earthenware Dutch oven. Down the rabbit hole I went!

First, here is a blog post by food historian Sally Grainger, who co-wrote a great critical edition of Apicius and a book of her redactions of Apicius recipes. She thinks the clibanus may actually have worked more like a modern tajine. https://blog.britishmuseum.org/from-parthian-chicken-to-flat-breads-experimenting-with-a-roman-oven/

From there, I started reading about Roman cooking pots (https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.ca/&httpsredir=1&article=3278&context=luc_diss) and Italian culture and food (https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/102484/banducci_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y). Somewhere in there was a mention of a book on Merovingian feasting and cultural identity by Bonnie Effros that is on my shelf. That got me re-reading the book but also searching to see if the Merovingians had a similar kind of oven. After all, they took over lands that had been occupied by the Roman Gauls.

The Merovingians don’t seem to have taken over this particular cooking tool, which is probably explained by their cultural preference as Frankish former nomads for roasted foods, rather than baked. But in my searches for Merovingian ovens, I came across a find from Viarmes, a town in the Val d’Oise, north of Paris. It was discovered using rescue archaeology near the town hall, where there were also some lovely finds from the 13-14th C chateau of the counts of Chambly. They were chamberlains to King Philip IV (le bel).

The oven was found between a 9th C wall and a tower of the chateau. According to the Institut national de recherches archaeologiques preventives, the oven dates from about 600 AD and was used for smoking meats.

(Source: https://www.images-archeologie.fr/Accueil/Recherche/p-3-lg0-notice-IMAGE-Fouille-d-un-four-merovingien-preserve-miraculeusement-entre-le-fosse-XIe-s.-et-la-tour-du-chateau-a-Viarmes-Val-d-Oise-2013..htm?&notice_id=9990)

You can read more about all the finds here: https://journals.openedition.org/archeomed/9356

So my grand plans for a bake oven and a testum remain on hold for now, because is one is later period than my current cooking interests, and the other is too early. But now my desire for a smoke oven for my sausages is stronger than ever.

 

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Visit to St Gallen

A few months ago, I needed to go to Geneva for work and heard that there was a lace exhibit in St Gall. Coincidentally, someone had posted about a particular tablet weaving example that was supposedly in another museum in the same town. St Gall is not exactly nearby, but if you are flying to Switzerland from Canada and can arrange your flight to go through Zurich instead of Geneva, it is practically around the corner – so I went a day early. The town itself is quite lovely, and I revelled in being back in a place where I could use my toddler-level German, eat bratwurst, and listen to church bells. Here are some of the museum photos, plus a few of the town.

Diethelm Blarer’s waffle iron, c. 1540 – With this waffle iron, holiday-day bakery was made – in this case, referring to Saint Gall (Gallus). Diethelm Blarer was the first abbot after the Reformation and the iconoclasm of 1529. With the depiction of Gallus he refers to the long tradition and roots of the monastery. Probably he he used the Gallus waffles to celebrate the new artistic equipment of the monastery church and the inauguration of the Gallus Altar.

In the 15th century, St Gallen was the leading textile city in the Lake Constance region. Their first-class linen fabrics were in demand all over Europe. The trade relations of the St Gallen merchants ranged from Warsaw to Valencia, from Gdansk to Venice.

With the linen trade a lot of money flowed into the imperial city. The “White Gold” supported numerous livelihoods: the respected weaver as well as the simple cooper who manufactured the barrels for transport. The surrounding area was also involved in textile production. In the area under the control of ​​the Prince Abbots of St Gallen and in the Appenzellerland the raw material, the flax, was cultivated and processed. The city specialized in the weaving and finishing of linen fabrics. The St Gallen merchants were responsible for sales. They were well connected in Europe. In addition to fabrics, they also dealt with other goods and brought them from their travels: furs, metal or wax, but especially spices. In addition, there was all sorts of “world knowledge” about foreign cities and countries people and culture.

The decline of the linen industry began in the 1720s. In its place came the production of cotton fabrics. The spinning and weaving gave many people in Eastern Switzerland an opportunity – in the countryside mostly as a sideline to agriculture

In the year 1400 in St Gallen, around 2000 100-meter long bleached cloths were exported. In 1530 the number had risen to 10,000, and in 1610 the number was 24,000. This was enough to stretch 6 1/4 times from the earth to the moon.

A multilingual city (around 1540)
One will not soon find another city in which one can and does need more foreign languages, especially Spanish, French, Lombard, as well as Hungarian and Bohemian; for daily trades with all these countries take place, in addition to the usual business with Austria, Bavaria, Swabia and Franconia. (Joachim von Watt aka Vadian, a scholar, humanist, reformer, and mayor of St Gall, who was born to a wealthy family of linen merchants from that city).

The next picture has some poorly labelled objects but I believe only the bronze kettle and possibly the trammel were pre-1600.

I think this trammel was post-1600, but it was too magnificent to overlook. It was at least six feet long.

There was also an exhibit of late-Antique finds from Mels, a community in the canton of St Gall.

During excavations in 1978, walls of the oldest church in Canton St Gallen were recorded. Within these walls, 38 graves were uncovered. Funerary objects prove that the oldest building was erected in the first half of the 6th century – around 200 years before the first written mention in 765.

The church burials were for members of the Roman upper class.  One woman wore an elaborate silver-rosette trimmed cap (and likely a veil, judging by the veil pins) and a mediterranean-style bead necklace. One man was identified as a noble horseman by his silver saddle fittings, another wore a silver ring with a monogram. The addition of combs in the grave of women and men shows the great importance of the hairstyle as a form of social demarcation. (I can’t explain why I have no pictures of the combs). Since Christianity was already established here, there are no explicitly Christian symbols among them.

With the construction of the first church, a long development of construction was initiated with numerous enlargements, additions and new buildings. To this day, the parish church is the spiritual center of Mels.

Silver saddle fitting. It is interesting to note the stirrups at this early date:

Rosettes, veil pins and necklace:

Late antiquity in the hinterland of Lake Constance
In recent years, Roman finds from the Saint-Gall area hinterland of Lake Constance have piled up. The area is located outside the known settlement zones in the area of Lake Constance and the large west-east road connection running along it. It is all single finds, without known archaeological context. The interpretation is difficult: are they traces of the withdrawal of the population to safer places in the hinterland? Or are they traces of the late antique soldiers that tried to keep the area under Roman control?

Small town luxury
Wooden objects from Eschenz from left to right: handle, net float, wooden shoe, spinning whorl, trimmed yew stick, cup.

 

Coins and fibulae from the 5th C.

Finally, because it amused me, a statue for religious parades. This was from the 1600s or 1700s.

And some pictures of the cathedral and town. I didn’t bother with much of the cathedral as it is relatively modern.

An odd little wall painting in an area I suspect should have been off-limits to the public (door was open, but the hallway was full of gardening supplies and plants). It appears to be older than most of the cathedral. Possibly it was once on an exterior wall?

St Gallus, I think. I liked the bear. Taken outside the music room in the abbey.

The inner part of the cathedral, with monks stalls. I think that is part of St Gallus’ reliquary to the right.

Carolingian era bell near the reliquary of St Gallus in the cathedral church.

Church of St Lawrence, a town church right near the abbey.

And finally, a few half-timbered houses. I have no idea of their age. The chocolate shop across from the cathedral is probably quite new, but the other could be older.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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