Cooking Farts

My medieval cooking group has been feeling the lack of regular get-togethers, so yesterday we hosted a Zoom meeting where we all cooked something in our own homes and compared notes. As a theme, we almost all worked from the same cookbook, James Prescott’s translation of Eenen seer schoonen, ende excellenten Cocboeck. This cookbook by Karel Baten (Carolus Battus) was first published in 1593, and has recipes that reflect Baten’s roots in the region of southern Netherthands and what is now Belgium. I made recipe 11:

11. How to make small-whore’s-farts.

Take roasted white-bread, wine, eggs, ginger, and sugar. Mix well together and bake hereof small-cakes in the pan with butter and scrape thereon sugar and serve.

• 1 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1 TBSP sugar
• sugar for sprinkling

Mix in a pan, then roll and shape into flattened balls. Fry in a pan with butter, then sprinkle with sugar. The result had a gingery, alcoholic flavour with just enough sweetness. The recipe made six.

This recipe made me curious to compare it with a traditional Quebecois recipe called Nun’s Farts (Pets de nonne; Pets de soeurs has a similar name, but the recipe is quite different – more like a cinnamon roll) from Le guide de La Cuisine traditionnelle Québécoise by Lorraine Boisvenue, published in 1984. This recipe has northern French or Belgian roots, though I couldn’t pin down a precise date. It is apparently similar to a profiterole recipe, but I can’t say because I don’t know enough about profiteroles. I can only say that the ones shown in a Google search look suspiciously like doughnut holes.

Pets de nonne:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 TBSP sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 TBSP rum

Put th water, butter sugar and salt in a po and bring to a boil. Take it off the heat and add all the flour, then stir energetically for two minutes. Allow it to coul a little before adding the eggs, one by one, while continuing to stir. Add the vanilla and the rum and mix thoroughly. Drop (carefully!) spoonsful of dough into a large fryer; in order that they be well named, slide each spoonful of dough in two batches in the frying, without breaking the dough. Turn the dough only once. Drain on absorbent paper and serve sprinkled with icing sugar.

I simply them in a large frying pan with lots of oil, rather than in a deep fryer, so mine puffed up, but were not particularly round.

This was like a very eggy, almost custardy doughnut. I didn’t find that the vanilla or the rum added much. Next time, I would add more vanilla and a rum with more distinctive flavour, such as Screech. The recipe made about 2 dozen pets de nonne.

Having compared both recipes, the next time I make old-whores-farts, I will add another egg and fry in more butter – aiming for a bit of the deep fryer effect that made the nun’s farts puff up.

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Village-Style Chicken with Sour Cherries

This recipe comes from Scents and Flavors, A Syrian Cookbook, edited and translated by Charles Perry (New York University Press, 2017). The original, Scents and Flavors the Banqueter Flavors (Kitab al-Wuslah ila l-Habib fi Waf al Tayyibat was Tib), was compiled in Syria some time in the mid 13th C, and it contains 635 recipes (closer to 700 in some editions of the text). The recipe is the 71st in Chapter 5: Chicken Dishes – Sweet, Sour, and Other Varieties.

Village-style chicken with sour cherries – Boil ripe sour cherries with a little water. Strain and thicken on the fire with sugar. Add mint and a fried chicken.

This was very simple, but I did do a few deviations. I couldn’t bear to get rid of the cherries so I mashed them but didn’t strain. I used about half a cup of cherries, and about a tsp each of sugar and dried mint. I didn’t measure closely, but added a bit until it tasted “right”. Instead of frying a whole chicken, I fried up four bone-in thighs with skin. There is a lot of scope on exactly how to fry the chicken, so I opted to chop up a piece of lemon preserved in brine and add it. Preserved lemons are very typical of North African and Middle Eastern cooking, and when the cherry sauce was added to the chicken, it resulted in a complex mix of sweet and salty flavours.

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Fibulae, and a swimming update

I made some fibulae for largesse and delivered them today.

These were fun to make and i have enough beads left to make a few more. I had purchased beads and wire to do these last summer, but had no real incentive until I started the Roman “bikini” project. However, it turns out I won’t need them for that purpose. I did a proof of concept test today with the linen underwear tied on over my regular bathing suit. The linen stretched out a little when wet, but was easily tied more snugly. The strophium was the most challenging to keep in place because I use my back and pectoral muscles when I swim, especially doing freestyle. It worked better for breast or side stroke and when just puttering along at a casual pace. The wet linen was very see-through when I got out, so for modesty’s sake I will probably use neutral coloured modern underwear underneath when taking pictures or even when testing again in a more public place. Although swimming nude was probably the norm for both men and women, as can be seen in this miniature from August in the Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry (1413), it would not go down well at the local public beach today.

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Roman “Bikini“

I had planned to test this design in the water today (over my regular suit, in a shallow area in case of a fail). However, there was thunder and lightning so no swim today. But is was so excited to have it done that you get to see it at home.

You can read more about the original garments here: https://siglindesarts.wordpress.com/2020/07/06/swimming-gear-and-rolled-hems/

I have worn the strophium, or breastBand for several hours to test it out and it is remarkably comfortable. In fact, I made myself a second one for wearing underneath garb. It is a simple long strip of fabric that wraps around me just over three times. Mine happens to be joined in several spots because I pieced together leftover linen scraps. It’s about 7 inches wide, because that‘S the size of linen i had available. I have tried tying it underneath the breasts (didn’t match the image/), simply wrapping and tucking (worked once but unable to replicate successfully) and wrapping then tucking and tying between the breasts (matches the look fairly well, is comfortable and feels secure).

Options for the singulaculum were a giant my triangular “diaper” tied in front with the point tucked in, or a long strip with triangles sewn on the top sides to give a vaguely T shape. The triangle ends get tied in front and the long end comes up from behind and gets tucked in over or under the tied. I went with tucking so that the knot is hidden. Width was determined by available fabric. I like the strip with triangles version because it is less bulky. If making this again, I would like larger triangles to hide my belly because I am vain.

 

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Chopped liver

I had a craving for liverwurst, or chicken liver pate. Unfortunately, liverwurst is made with pork livers, so that will need to wait for another day because what I had was chicken livers.

I couldn’t find a medieval recipe for liver pate, so I looked at chopped liver. After all, this is a well-known traditional Jewish dish. It turns out, though, that medieval European Jews didn’t eat chopped liver. According to https://toriavey.com, history  Ashkenazi Jews In Germany bred and raised geese as the poultry of choice. The first Jewish chopped liver recipes were actually made from goose liver. However, she offers no evidence for this. Eat and Be Satisfied, a social history of Jewish food, Notes that chicken disappeared from the tables of European Jews in the early Middle Ages and was not consumed regularly. By 1326 there is a reference to Jewish fowl dealers in Cologne, but the Friday night chicken meal probably only started to be common in the 15th C, due to a shortage of meat.  In contrast, chicken was eaten on weekends, holidays, and when someone was sick in medieval Egypt, even though this community ate little other meat.

One of the earliest recipes for something that looks like chopped liver comes from the Kitab al-Tabih fi-l-Maghrib wa-al-Andalus fi ‘asr al-Muwahhidin (The Cookery Book on North Africa and Andalusia in the Time of the Almohades), a thirteenth C anonymous cookbook translated by Lucie Bolens and reproduced in Eat and be Satisfied. It is the stuffing for “Jewish Chicken Recipe”. Clean a chicken. Mince the offal with almonds and soft breadcrumbs, some flour, some salt, some fennel, some pounded coriander. Add six Braten eggs and four measures of water. Put the chicken on the fire in a clean pot with five spoonfuls of soft oil, and do not cease stirring until it is toasted all over evenly. Then mix it with the prepared stuffing so that the sauce is thickened and well seasoned. Pour the stuffing all around, garnish with some sprigs of fennel and rue, some sprigs of mint, some ground almonds, and you are able to present it, God willing.

A French recipe from Du Fait du Cuisine (written around 1420, with this recipe found on the medievalcookery.com website) is as follows:

61. For the chopped liver: he who has the charge of the chopped liver should take kids’ livers – and if there are not enough of those of kids use those of veal – and clean and wash them very well, then put them to cook well and properly; and, being cooked, let him take them out onto fair and clean boards and, being drained, chop them very fine and, being well chopped, let him arrange that he has fair lard well and properly melted in fair and clean frying pans, then put the said chopped liver in to fry and sauté it well and properly. And then arrange that he has a great deal of eggs and break them into fair dishes and beat them all together; and put in spices, that is white ginger, grains of paradise, saffron, and salt in good proportion, then put all of this gently into the said frying pans with the said liver which is being fried while continually stirring and mixing with a good spoon in the pans until it is well cooked and dried out and beginning to brown. And then when this comes to the sideboard arrange the aforesaid heads on fair serving dishes, and on each dish next to the heads put and arrange the aforesaid chopped liver.

I boiled a little over 2 kg of chicken livers, then chopped them fine. Then I fried the chopped liver in about 1/2 c of chicken fat.   In a separate bowl, stir together 5-6 eggs, 2 tsp ground ginger,  1 tsp grains of paradise, 1 1/2 tsp salt, and a very large pinch of saffron. There was more saffron than planned, but it tastes fine. Stir the egg mixture into the liver and continue cooking and stirring until the dish is dry and crumbly. Pile on a plate to serve, and decorate or top with herbs such as parsley (this part is not in the recipe, but it is decorative).

The Toriavy traditional chopped chicken liver recipe uses schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) and hard-boiled eggs, as well as onions.

This is just a small plate of the chopped liver – there’s plenty more where that came from!

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Swimming gear and rolled hems

I finally tracked down some images from the 1595 Booke of the Art of Swimming. As suspected, swimmers were all men and all naked. Clearly, this would not do for my own swimming project.

I have a couple of pairs of short pants for wearing under dresses in hot weather, and they have been used for swimming before (though not by me) in the ocean at l’Anse aux Meadows. They will do, but they are bulky; rather like board shorts. As a moderately serious swimmer, I am used to a much tighter-fitting suit.

The only later evidence I am aware of for skimpier bottoms is for men’s underpants. There are some images, but also this pair from Lengberg Castle, from the same find as the Lengberg bra. And that bra, while tempting, was likely worn attached to a skirt, which helped keep it in place. This article has an excellent background on such bras.

You can read more about the underpants here.

Therefore, I have chosen to look back to Roman athletes for my inspiration. In Sicily, there is a mosaic with ten female athletes, wearing the breast wrap known as a strophium, and a subliglaculum, which is a form of loin cloth. The strophium is fairly straightforward – just a long band of cloth that is wrapped and either tied or wrapped/tucked snugly.

All this has led me to reducing my stash of linen as I sew myself a strophium and subliglaculum. This in turn led me to learning how to sew a rolled hem. I am not sure how I managed to avoid learning it up until now.

On a somewhat related note I don’t want to lose track of this version of a strophium, which is a much longer breast band that works perfectly under Renaissance clothing. It is made with about 4 yards of fine fabric, cut about 8” wide. It is wrapped starting under one arm, can be adjusted to either flatten or lift the breasts (as desired) and finished by pinning in place. The maker notes that her own great-grandmother wore one most of her life, and her grandmother used one as a teen.

 

 

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Purslane Salad

Purslane is usually seen as a weed in North America, but it is popular in salads in places like Turkey and Greece, and it is also eaten as a cooked vegetable. It does not appear to have reached England until the late 16th C. My purslane comes from my community garden plot, and probably horrifies other gardeners, but it makes me happy.

I harvested a batch this morning, along with some rocket (arugula), mustard greens, and lettuce, and made a simple salad with an oil and vinegar dressing. Rocket has had a reputation since the time of Virgil as a sexual stimulant (hot and dry), so it needed to be mixed with lettuce, which was believed to have the opposite effect because it is cool and moist. I’m not sure where purslane falls in terms of humoural theory, as it is a succulent and therefore quite moist, but it has a tangy sour flavour, sometimes described as lemony.

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