According to Wikipedia, Peking Duck, originally named “shāo yāzi” (燒鴨子), was mentioned in the Complete Recipes for Dishes and Beverages (飲膳正要) manual in 1330 by Hu Sihui (忽思慧), an inspector of the imperial kitchen.[2][3] The Peking roast duck that came to be associated with the term was fully developed during the later Ming dynasty,[1][4][5] and by then, Peking duck was one of the main dishes on imperial court menus.[6]The first restaurant specialising in Peking duck, Bianyifang, was established in the Xianyukou, close to Qianmen of Beijing in 1416.[7]
I couldn’t find a recipe under the name shao yazi in Soup for the Qan, which is the English translation of Hu Sihui’s manual. I did find a recipe for roast wild goose (or cormorant or duck), and another for broiled yellow hen that I think would result in the crispy skin that is so typical of Peking Duck. The hen recipe also has spices that would give a flavour profile approaching that of my duck. In contrast, the roasted goose recipe relies on onions, ground coriander and salt, with possibly some unnamed spices, and the whole bird is cooked inside a sheep’s stomach.
I have eaten at Bianyifang! Or at least at one of its branch restaurants. It was my first time trying Peking Duck, in about 1996.
I used a modern recipe for Peking Duck, which was not truly authentic but worked well for my kitchen and time availability. For the pancakes, I used this recipe: Chinese Mandarin Pancakes.
Blue and white plate with two small pancakes. The upper one is flat and topped with slices of duck with matchstick pieces of cucumber, carrot and green onion, topped with Hoisin sauce. The one below is wrapped around the filling, which peeks out from each end.
For my second loaf, I put about half the rye flour with all the water and let it ferment for around 18 hours. Then I added the remaining flour, rye grains and about 50 g of pumpernickel leftover from the last loaf. It was supposed to be grated but it was far too hard for my hand grater, and was almost too much for the grater attachment on my elderly food processor. Apparently the recipes that add grated pumpernickel used around 15% of the flour amount, which would have been more like 75g, but I went with what I had since some recipes don’t use it at all.
I didn’t bother with a second rise since it had already been fermenting for a long time and it doesn’t really rise anyway. Instead, I lined my new Pullman bread pan (a pan with a lid) and put it in the oven at 280F.
Took it out after just over 9 hours. It’s still just a dark brown, but the crust is softer (and it was bedtime so I was done with baking for the night). I left it in the pan overnight with the lid on.
The bread in its fancy new panFinished bread with a slice cut off for my breakfast.
As you can see from the finished loaf, the whole rye grains are very prominent. They are also quite chewy. For my next batch, I’ll either add them to ferment with the first batch of flour, or I’ll add a second fermentation period with all ingredients for at least 12 hours. The starter and grated pumpernickel made no discernible difference, so I may or may not bother with them in future. For a slightly softer loaf, I will either shorten the bake time by an hour or – if I want to try for a darker bread lower the temperature to 230F and leave it in for the same amount of time (or even a bit longer).
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting in on most of a session on pumpernickel bread, led by food historian William Rubel (williamrubel.com). I missed some of the history as I was listening in from work over my lunch hour and kept getting interrupted. I look forward to seeing his write-up soon.
I did catch the bits about it being recorded from the 1700s or possibly the 1600s), and seen as coarse peasant food that was very good for the bowels. Somehow by the 1900s it had switched to being the base for very fancy open-faced sandwiches. Perhaps the switch was also related to its effect on the bowels, as ideas about what constitutes healthy food began to change? All I can say is that my bread was extremely filling!
William’s aim was to try and get as black a bread as possible, using only the simplest ingredients. That meant coarsest ground rye flour, malted whole grains of rye, water, and possibly some starter and/or grated pumpernickel from a previous loaf. The original loaves were often baked in huge batches in wooden pans over very long heat for many hours. The bread doesn’t rise much and the pans have covers to keep the moisture in.
Using William’s baker’s math and the fact the rye flour I could find came in 1 pound packages, here’s what I used:
Ingredients
1 pound rye flour
45 grams sourdough starter
520 grams water just off the boil
174 grams lightly malted rye grains (used for making blonde beers, from my local brewing supply shop)
William suggested you could start with all the water and half the flour, let it ferment for twelve hours and then add the rest of the ingredients and ferment it for a bit more before baking. I added all my flour at the same time and let it ferment for the day, then added the remaining ingredients and let it ferment overnight.
For heat, William suggested baking at somewhere between 285-330F in his initial post. Later, he dropped that lower temperature following new information. As a result, I started mine at 310F for three hours using a metal loaf pan lined with parchment paper and covered with aluminum foil.
It had barely started to change colour so I dropped the temperature to 170 with the intention of letting it bake overnight. I chickened out and turned off the oven after an hour and restarted it at 310 the next morning for another eight hours.
Pumpernickel bread after baking for three hours
When I finally took it out, it was very dark brown but not coal black. The top was getting crusty and once it had cooled it was hard to cut (though the centre was still soft). this tracks fairly well with the historic records of it being chopped with an axe!
The flavour was delightful – every bit as sweet as William had promised.
Finished pumpernickel loaf on a white plate
I have more flour and rye grains, and even a bit of the last loaf so will be trying the recipe again. I have ordered myself a Pullman loaf pan with a lid, which should help keep even more moisture in. Next time, I will try with only half the flour and all the water to start, and I’ll drop the temperature even lower, likely into the range of 265, and for a longer period.
Take a salmon, well cleaned and washed, and take its spices which are long pepper, Galingale and ginger; and all this should be well ground with salt, in such a way that there is not too much spicing, but just enough, then prepare the turnovers, and put the salmon in, and scatter the spices over and under it and all around; and then cover the turnover and take it to the oven to cook: and once it is cooked, if you wish to eat the salmon cold make a hole in the bottom crust so that the juices run out because with the juices it does not keep well. And you should know that salmon should be eaten in the month of October when ot begins to get cold.
Ingredients:
4 salmon fillets with skins removed. You can chop them into pieces or use whole. I chopped mine so they would fit more easily into the empanada
1 tsp each galingale, long pepper, ginger and salt, ground together. If the galingale is really hard, soak it in a bit of water first.
Make a pie crust recipe of your choice. I used the one prepared by Mistress Eluned in last year’s calendar. Divide it in quarters and roll into four circles.
Add the salmon to one half of the dough, and sprinkle it with the spices, both on top and below.
Fold the other half of the dough to cover the salmon, than pinch the edges firmly to seal. If the dough won’t stick together, brush with a little water to make it stickier.
Put on a cookie sheet and bake in a preheated 350F oven for 20 minutes. Eat while still hot or poke a whole in the bottom to drain out juices if you want to eat them cold later.
These empanados are quite large, and the dough can can easily be divided into eight portions so that they come out more “snack-sized”.
Source: The Libro de Cozina by Ruperto de Nola, 1529, translation and commentary by Vincent F. Cuenca, 2001, p 66, and another version known as “Libre del Coch”, 1529, by Lady Brigid no Chiarain found at http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MANUSCRIPTS/Guisados-art.html, recipe 181.
According to Wikipedia, the Libre del Coch is the first documented use of the term empanada. This recipe serves four as a main dish, but you could also divide your dough and filling into eight snack or appetizer sized empanadas.
My friend Dorothea of Holme hosted a dumpling session at War of the Trillium earlier this month, where we tried to define dumplings. To me, dumpling is most commonly the kind of food described when you look up the work “manti” in Wikipedia: a spiced meat mixture wrapped in a thin sheet of wheat dough which is then boiled or steamed. This type of dumpling is popular in most cuisines of Central Asia, Afghanistan, West Asia, South Caucasus, Turkey, the Balkans, Muslim parts of China, and the former Soviet countries (notably Ukraine and Georgia). The size and shape of dumplings (mantu/manti/pierogis/peteha/kinkhali vary significantly depending on geographic location.
Similar dumplings are found further east, known as jiaozi and baozi in China (and what we know as wontons or potstickers in Canada), mandu in Korea, buuz in Mongolia and momo in Tibet. This is where definitions of dumplings get confusing. There are also steamed bread-like buns called mantou in China, mandu in Korea, and manjū in Japan.
The earliest recipe I know of for manti was written by Muhammed bin Mahmud Shirvani in his 15th C manuscript adding to the earlier Arabic cookbook by al-Baghdadi. His is a steamed dumpling with a minced lamb and crushed chickpeas filling that is flavoured with cinnamon and vinegar and garnished with sumac. The manti would be served garlic-yoghurt sauce.
We also have Welserin’s recipe 193, which is what Dorothea made for us to try. Here is the recipe, taken from David Friedman’s site.
Going west, we have ravioli and tortelli in Italy (numerous recipes in various medieval and Renaissance cookbooks), but also ravieles in Form of Curye, rabels in the Innsbruck Manuscript and boiled krapfen in Sabrina Welserin’s cookbook. The rabel and krapfen recipes are very similar. The kreplach (dumplings served in a broth) of Ashkenaki Jewish cooking may have appeared at round the same time.
193 How to make chicken dumplings
Take the meat from two chickens. After it is cooked chop it finely, mix grated Parmesan cheese in with it and color it yellow and stir it together. You should also put mace and pepper into it. After that prepare a dough. Make a thin flat cake and put the above described filling on it and form it into a dumpling and join the two ends together. Cook it in broth as long as for hard- boiled eggs and serve it warm.
Mention of kreplach leads me to another category of dumpling, the version we associated most with that word in North America. These are the bread dumplings, Knödel or matzo type, balls of dough that are boiled in a broth, or top a stew. Volker offers several dumpling recipes of this type, and the blog Give it Forth also offers a meat dumpling as one for guissell and related recipes, plus one for juschelle of fish.
So what is not a dumpling? We considered empanadas, spring rolls and calzones, all foods with a dough exterior and a filling. We decided that they didn’t count if they were deep fried or baked as the primary cooking method. What about the dumpling-like toppings on apple pan dowdy or blueberry grunt? They are steamed/baked over a fruit base rather than with water or broth so probably not. Tamales? They are definitely steamed but they use a completely different starch (cornmeal) and retain their shape while cooking thanks to the banana leaf wrapper. We classified it as a “maybe”. These were our own arbitrary categories. There is no hard and fast definition, and others do count empanadas and spring rolls as dumplings.
All in all, it was a lively hour of discussion, punctuated with yummy treats.
To prepare different eggs for the religious. Take eggs and hard-boil them. She’ll and cut them in half, pounding the yolks with parsley, marjoram other good herbs, and spices, then stuff the white with this mixture. After that, take butter or oil and hot water. Place the eggs into the liquids, then mix raw eggs with verjuice, wine, parsley, and saffron and pour the mixture above the stuffed eggs, boiling all the ingredients; for monks and the religious.
Ingredients
2 eggs, hard boiled
1 1/2 tsp dried parsley. Triple this amount if using fresh
1/2 tsp dried marjoram. Triple this amount if using fresh
Other herbs such as savoury, rosemary, thyme or oregano can also be added to taste
1/4-1/2 tsp each salt, and pepper (to taste)
1/4 tsp saffron, crushed
1 Tbsp oil or butter
1 Tbsp water
1 raw egg
2 Tbsp each verjuice and white wine
Peel the eggs, slice them in half and remove the yolks. Mash the yolks with 1/2 tsp of the parsley, plus marjoram, some of the salt and pepper and any other herbs you wish. Return the yolk mixture to the eggs, without overfilling. The recipe does not indicate this, but using the yolk mixture to “glue” two halves of the egg together is an option.
Separately, mix together the raw egg, the remaining parsley, saffron, verjus and wine. I used a little more salt in this mixture as well.
Put the oil or butter and water into a small pot or pan, then add the stuffed eggs and heat quickly. Next, add the raw egg mixture and stir it gently, without moving the eggs too much. You should end up with something similar to soft scrambled eggs.
Serve the scrambled mix topped with stuffed eggs immediately as they are best when hot.
source: Johannes Bockenheim “Registrum Coquine”, Introduction, Translation and Glossary by Marco Gavio de Rubeis, 2021. The original is 1st half of 15th C, probably after 1417.
Weeding the purslane from my garden and turning it into a medieval dish is becoming an annual tradition. I have written about it here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
This year I decided I wanted to preserve some for future use. The blog Give it Forth: Adventures in Medieval Cookery has a nice collection of 16th-17th C recipes for preserving purslane, including the answer to a question from a previous year: purslane is indeed a cooling herb and was used to lower fevers and soothe inflames stomachs. I didn’t feel like doing a sweet or vinegary version, so in the end I followed the instructions in The Cooks’s Guide from 1664.
To pickle Pursla•e to keep all the year. TAke the biggest stalks picked clean, the• strew bay-salt first into your pot, and then th• stalks of Purslane, and then salt again, so do ti•l your pot be full, then tye it up close and keep it cool.
I simply stripped off the leaves and thin stalks, chopped the larger stalks into bit-sized pieces, and layered them with coarse salt. Once again, I wished for the huge stalks of purslane grown for food instead of the little weeds in my garden. This was a tedious job and resulted in enough for about half a pint of purslane and salt mixture.
I expect the end result will be very similar to the salted herbs that were a tradition in the province of Quebec and may date back to the same period. According to someone in my local gardening group, every Québécoise housewife in the Lower St. Lawrence once had her own recipe. The basic recipe is to any herbs you have (parsley; celery is nice; a bit of carrot is a must; as are chives or green onions; I also used a bit of savoury and rosemary when I made mine). Add 1/4 to 1/3 parts coarse salt. Mix well and allow to macerate in the fridge for a few days. Then stuff into sterilized jar(s). It’ll keep a long time in fridge. Mine have been sitting happily in the fridge since December.
The 2023 Ealdormere Cooks Calendar had a theme of pies, which I decided to interpret as hand pies: in this case, samosas. The research for a recipe led me down delightful rabbit holes in various medieval cookbooks as I searched for a recipe to recreate. My redacted recipe is at the very bottom, but please enjoy scrolling through all the samosa recipes I found from the 13th to 16th C, and from Egypt to India.
Samosas made with lavash bread, with ingredients of the filling in the background.
Kitab Al-Tabikh by Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Muhammad b. al-Karim, the Scribe of Baghdad, is a 13th C recipe book from Baghdad that has samosa recipes. I have three different editions, and the recipes in each are sufficiently different and the ordering of the recipes is such that I am not 100% certain whether it is the same recipe.
The first is the 1939 translation by A.J. Arberry, reproduced in Medieval Arab Cookery (p. 72).
Maqluba (literally, turned). Take and slice red meat, then chop with a large knife. put into the mortar, and pound as small as possible. Take fresh sumach, boil in water, wring out and strain. Into this place the minced meat, and boil until cooked, so that it has absorbed all the sumach-water, though covered to twice its depth: then remove from the saucepan, and spray with a little lemon-juice. Lay out to dry. Then sprinkle with fine-ground seasonings, dry coriander, cumin, pepper and cinnamon, and rub over it a few sprigs of dry mint. Take walnuts, grind coarse, and add: break eggs and throw in, mixing well. Make into cakes, and fry in fresh sesame-oil, in a fine iron or copper frying-pan. When one side is cooked, turn over on to the other side: then remove.
Sanbusaj. Take meat as described in the preceding recipe (ie for Maqluba). Make thin bread and cut up, then stuff with the aforesaid meat after cutting it into strips: make them triangular, and fasten down with a little dough. Pit into sesame-oil: then remove. The variety called mukallal (literally “crowned”) is stuffed, instead of with meat, with sugar and almonds ground fine and made into a dough with rose-water, or with a sweet called Sabuniya (a mix of sugar syrup, honey, ground almonds and sesame oil that is cooked until thick and allowed to set in thin sheets), and then fried in sesame-oil. Some take it out of the sesame-oil and put it into syrup, remove from the syrup, and leave it in fine-ground scented sugar, with musk and camphor if desired.
The second is from A Baghdad Cookery Book translated by Charles Perry, on page 78:
Sanbusaj. As for Sanbusaj, it is that you take the meat described in the making of maqluba and cut up the thin bread used for that and stuff it with the mentioned meat, after cutting it into strips. Make it triangular (i.e. fold it around the filling to make triangular samosas), then stick it together with a bit of dough and fry it in sesame oil, then take it up. As for that which is called al-mulkallal (crowned, viz. glazed), it is that you stuff it with sugar and finely ground almonds kneaded with rose-water, or with halwa sabuniyya, instead of meat, and fry it in sesame oil. Some people take it out of the sesame oil (and) put it in syrup, then they take it up from it and leave it in finely pounded sugar, spiced with musk and camphor, for him who wants it.
Perry notes that sanbusaj is presumably from Middle Persian sambosag, from se “three” (referring to the triangular shape) and ambos “bread with seeds in it”. Further, the “bread” is a sheet of raw dough. Conceivably, sanbusaj might have been made with pieces of baked flatbread, glued together with raw dough as described, but other medieval descriptions of it (including the quote from Minhaj which appears in the margin), not to mention samosa-making in the modern world, are more consistent with raw dough.
Maqluba. Take lean meat and cut it into strips, then pound it with the cleaver, then transfer it to the mortar and pound it as fine as possible. Take fresh sumac (berries), boil them in water, then strain after macerating it well. Put in the pounded meat and boil it until it is done and has absorbed all the sumac water, the water covering it twice (I.e. by twice its depth). Then take it up from the pot, sprinkle lemon juice on it and spread it out to dry. Then sprinkle it with some of the finely pounded spices – dry coriander, cumin, pepper and cinnamon – and [crumble into it] bunches of dry mint. Take walnuts, pound them coarsely and add to it. Take eggs, break them, throw them on it and mix them well with it. Then fry as cakes with fresh sesame oil in a thin iron or copper pan. When (one) surface of them is done, then turn over the other surface. When it is done, take it up. For the purposes of samosas, I assume that the step of frying as flat cakes is not necessary.
The third version is fromAnnals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens by Nawal Nasrallah (p. 190), which has a recipe and two poems (that are not part of the original text, but are from about the same time period).
[For the filling,] take meat from the shoulders, the inner thigh, rump, and sheep’s tail fat. Remove the blood vessels and finely pound the meat on a wooden board, using a knife. Add the white part of fresh onion, leek leaves, cilantro, rue, and a little cultivated mint. Pound all the ingredients together quite well. Pour as much as needed of Nabatean murri. Add coriander seeds, black pepper, cassia, cloves, as much as you like of aromatic spices (a mix of spices such as cinnamon, cassia, black pepper, cardamom, ginger, caraway, and galangal) and ginger. Mix the meat with the spices, add some olive oil, and cook it until it is done (in other recipes, there are more details on how to cook the filling: the meat mixture is browned in oil first then water is added. Cooking is resumed until meat is done and all moisture evaporates). Prepared this way, the meat [filling] is called isfidhbaj (white and plain).
Making sanbusaj:
If you like it to be sour, add to the meat mixture as much as you like of pulverized masl (dried yogurt whey). You may use rakhbin (dried buttermilk), sumac juice or any other sour ingredients, as you wish God willing. When the meat mixture is ready, use it to stuff ruqaq (thin sheets of bread) then roll the pieces into triangles, squares, or rectangles (according to the Istanbul manuscript, the pieces are sealed with starch dissolved in some water).
If wished, you may add dried fruits or nuts to the meat stuffing such as walnut, almond, coconut, pistachio, hazelnut, pine nut, or any other fruits. You can also decorate them with eggs the way some people do in banquets (walayim) and public feasts (simatat).
Alternatively, you may shape them Babaki style (named after the Persian king Ardashir Babak, who was famous for his crown shaped like a sin with its radiating rays). Take fermented dough and roll it out very thin. Cut out rounds using a concave wooden mold, similar to a huqq (small bowl). Stuff these rounds with the meat mixture, and seal them by pressing all around the edges with the fingernail.
Fry the pastries in zayt maghsul (washed olive oil) or sesame oil (shayraz). Take them out when they brown (ihmarra) and eat them with whatever you prefer of sauces made with vinegar or mustard. This is the way to make all kinds of sanbusaj excluding the sweet varieties.
Nasrallah also has a recipe for shrimp-filled samosas (p. 237), and another with the same name but is actually more like a filled dumpling (manti or pierogi type, cooked in a broth (p. 280).
Sanbusaj (filled pastries) of shrimp. Clean and boil the shrimp. Pound them with a knife along with boiled taro root if in season and you wish to use it. Sprinkle on the shrimp a small amount of the white part of fresh onion and the juice extracted from sliced onion. Sprinkle, as well, [ground] dry spices and aromatic spices and herbs. Add murri (liquid fermented sauce). If you like it tart, add sumac juice. Wrap mixture in thin pieces of bread and make them into sanbusaj. fry them in sweet oil and serve them. They are scrumptious.
Kitab Wasf Al-At’ima al-Mu’tada(The Description of Familiar Foods) builds on Kitab al-tabikh, but has many additional recipes. It was completed in 1372. It has three sanbusaj recipes. I worked with the translation by Charles Perry, found in Medieval Arab Cookery:
Recipe of Sanbusaq (samosa), p 382. Take all lean meat, without fat, and remove the tendons, and boil it lightly. Then pound it in the mortar and dry it in the air. You mince (or strip) four bunches of parsley, and you mince (or strip) a bunch of green mint for it. You pound the weight of half an ounce of pepper, half an ounce of caraway, three sticks of Ceylon cinnamon, a race of ginger (a piece of fresh ginger, but the size is unclear) and the weight of a mithqal of atraf tib of cardamom and cloves. Then you put that pounded meat in the pot and you put the minced parsley [sc and mint] on it, and you put half the spices on it, and you fry it. You put the quantity o [the juice of] 12 lemons on it and you leave it until it thirsts and dries out. Then put it in the bowl [zubdiyya] and throw half the spices on it and mix it well. You take kunafa (a fine pancake, not the vermicelli-like modern product of the same name) and roll it up and stuff it with it and seal it with dough and fry them in the tajine until they float. It comes out good.
Recipe of Sanbusak Hamid [sour samosa], p 386. Take whatever of good lean meat you wish, and boil it, then tear it up and take it away. Then take the vegetable ingredients, which are parsley, its stalks minced; and onion, its heart taken and minced with it (the coarser parts – stalks, heart – are being minced with the green, leafy parts); and mint. Then take blanched almonds and split them in two. Toast hazelnuts and pound them coarsely. Then combine the meat and the ingredients, after pounding the parsley lightly. Then colour everything with saffron. Then throw in the spices which will be mentioned (though not specified in this recipe). Then boil on the fire a little vinegar in which there is a little green lemon [juice]; the lemon is only used on the meat and the ingredients before they go down to the fire. And when the vinegar has heated on the fire, throw the ingredients in it, then stir until you know that the ingredients have taken consistency. Throw the spices in it, then take it away and cool it. Take care that there not be [too] much vinegar in it. And when it is finished off, take thin flatbread or kunafa and cut it up as usual, then stuff it. Have a little flour that you have kneaded fine to cloak the end of the filling with, so that it does not run out in the tajine. And when you have used up the filling, take the cauldron [dist], pour a sufficience of sesame oil into it and fry the sanbusak in it, then take up. This is the bland version of it, God the Most High willing.
Recipe of Al-Sanbusak Al Hulw [sweet samosa], p. 386-7. It is on the pattern of what we have mentioned of the recipe for the first sanbusaq except there is no vinegar or lemon juice in it. If you want, sweeten it with sugar. You made that. So understand that (something is missing in the original texts). Take peeled almonds, then you pound them with a little pistachio, then you put them through a wheat sieve. Then you take for them their weight in sugar and pound it fine. Then add it to them, then throw a little bit of spice on them for the consistency. Then you enrich it well with sesame oil. Then you join its parts and dry it, and after that you toast it in a cauldron on the fire. You will have coloured it with sufficient saffron. When it is through toasting, throw on enough bees’ honey to unit its sides. Then throw on musk, rose-water, camphor and a little crushed sugar. Then cut up thin flatbread or kunafa and stuff with this stuffing. Then fry them and take up.
Another 13th C Syrian Cookbook, Kitab al Wuslah ila l-Habib fi Waf al-Tayyibat wal Tib (Scents and Flavors, edited and translated by Charles Perry), has four samosa recipes:
First Recipe (6.2) – Take leg and loin meat, pound on a chopping block with a cleaver, and boil until done. Strain off the water and pound in a mortar until soft. Put in a brass pan and add melted tail fat along with coriander seeds, Chinese cinnamon, mastic, and pepper, and cook on the fire until it contracts. Then add two parts minced parsley, one part mint, and one-half part rue, and bring to the boil. Add lemon juice and vinegar and boil until they reduce, then stuff in sanbusak wrappers in the usual way. This is the best kind.
Second Recipe(6.3) – Add sumac, walnuts, and pistachios to the filling.
Third Recipe(6.4) Stuff sanbusak wrappers with pieces of sweetmeat instead of meat, and fry. These make for a nice garnish.
Fourth Recipe (6.4) – Color bread crumbs with saffron and add pounded sugar, honey, and sesame oil, following the recipe for asyutiyyah pudding. When done, add poppy seeds and pistachios and stuff into the sanbusak too.
A Treasure Trove of Variety and Benefits at the Table, a 14th C Egyptian Cookbook translated by Nawal Nasrallah has also four samosa recipes:
115 Recipe for sweet sanbusak (filled pastries). You need sugar qatr (sugar cane molasses) or bee honey, rosewater, hazelnuts, sesame oil, and crepes (ruqaq al kunafa). Pound the sugar. Toast the hazelnuts, grind them coarsely, and knead them into paste with molasses, ground sugar, and rosewater. Alternatively, you may use bee honey [instead of molasses] to knead it. Cut the kunafa sheets (waraq) into strips 4-fingers wide. Put a small amount of the stuffing on each of the pieces, as much as you see suitable, and roll them with the stuffing, all the way down. Seal them with a small amount of [thin] dough, and fry them in sesame oil. Arrange them on plates, sprinkle them with pounded sugar, toasted hazelnuts, and rosewater, and serve.
116 Recipe for sour sanbusak (meat-filled pastries). You need some herbs (such as mint, parsley and cilantro), sesame oil, vinegar, black pepper, hazelnuts or almonds, and kunafa (crepes). Finely pound all the meat you are using, shape it into a single disc as large as a [round of flat] bread or a bit smaller, depending on how much meat you are using. Boil it in a frying pan (tajin) and then flip it, and skim the froth. Keep it until it cooks, and then take it out of the pan and pound the meat one more time, remove all the blood vessels. Suspend the frying pan on the fire, and fry the pounded meat in it once again with sesame oil until it browns. Pour the vinegar on it, and finely chop the herbs onto it and continue folding them in until they wilt. Scald and skin the almonds and grind the coarsely. [If using hazelnuts,] toast them and pound them similarly, and add them to the meat. Pound the black pepper and throw it into the pot. Continue cooking until all the vinegar evaporates.
Cut the kunafa sheets into strips 4-fingers wide. Remove the meat mix from the fire, and after it has cooled down, put as much of it as is needed on each thin sheet of dough, and roll it all the way down. Seal the pieces with a bit of [thin] dough and fry them in sesame oil. Snip off the tips of some green herbs, spread them on the vessels, and arrange the pastries over them. Sprinkle them with a small amount of jasmine [water] or something else.
126 Recipe for sanbusak (filled pastries) (accidentally attached to another recipe but not given its own number). Put some pounded meat in a pot and let it sweat along with a piece of Ceylon cinnamon, a bit of mastic gum, and onions sliced but left intact. When the meat is done sweating [ie., all juices released have evaporated], fry it in sesame oil to remove all undesirable greasy odors. Add sumac juice to the meat; put enough in to sour it. Let it cook until all the liquids evaporate. Add some chopped lemon preserved in salt, mint, and aromatic spices (such as cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg). [Fill and fold as in recipe 116 above], and fry them in fresh sesame oil, but before doing so, smear the pieces with saffron dissolved in rosewater. This is the recipe I redacted for the cooks’ calendar. My version can be found below.
127 Recipe for making sanbusak filling. Take 1/2 ratl (1/2 pound) meat and boil it as described earlier [above recipe]. Pound it again and let it dry out in the open air. [Also take] 4 bunches of Macedonian parsley and one bunch of fresh mint, both chopped finely; 1/2 uqiyya (15 grams/1 tablespoon) black pepper; 1/2 uqiyya caraway seeds; 3 sticks of Ceylon cinnamon; a couple of nodes from a ginger rhizome, 2 dirhams (6 grams/1 teaspoon) each of spice blend, cardamom, cloves, spikenard, and betel leaves.
The Sultan’s Feast, a Fifteenth Century Egyptian Cookbook by Ibn Mubarak Shah (edited, translated and introduced by Daniel L. Newman), offers several recipes.
81. samosas (sanbusak). It requires thin sheets of kunafa (a paper-thin pancake made on a special polished griddle, very similar to a modern Lavash flatbread) and sweetmeat, as well as coarsely pounded hazelnuts. Toast the sugar and the hazelnuts. Knead with sugar dissolved in water (likely boiled until it has gained a consistency so that it can be used instead of honey) or honey. Cut the sheets, stuff them and seal with a bit of dough. You must sprinkle some rose water on the sugar. Fry in sesame oil, and after arranging them on plates, sprinkle with sugar, hazelnuts and rose water.
82. Sour Samosas (sanbusak hamid). As for the sour variety, this requires herbs, sesame oil, vinegar, pepper, hazelnuts or almonds, and kanafa sheets. Finely pound all the meat together and shape like a disc to suit the size of a flatbread (between half and inch and an inch in thickness), or smaller, depending on the quantity of the meat. Then, boil and turn over in the pan. Skim the froth until it is cooked. Take out and pound finely. Remove the veins of the meat and hang the pot to cool down. Add sesame oil and fry the pounded meat in it until it is browned. Pour the vinegar into the pan and chop the vegetables in it, turning them over until they wilt. Blanch the almonds and pound coarsely. Add them to the pot. Pound the pepper and add it. Keep the pot on the boil until all the vinegar has dried out. Cut up the kanafa sheets to a width of four fingers and remove the seasonings from the fire. Let it cool down. Take the required amount of filling, put it in a sheet and fold. Then, seal with a bit of dough. Fry in sesame oil. Cut up the fresh herbs, put them on platters and add the samosas to it. Sprinkle a bit of jasmine, or something else, on top and serve.
87. Recipe for samosas (sanbusak). Take pounded meat and fry in a pot. Then sweat it, together with a piece of cinnamon, a bit of mastic, and a sliced onion. When the meat has released its juices, fry it in sesame oil in order to remove any other impurities. Then throw on the juice of toasted sumac (berries). Let it cook until the water has evaporated. Cut in some lemon and mint. Leave the aromatic spices in. Fry with fresh sesame oil. Before frying dye with saffron dissolved in rose water.
267. Pound the meat very finely and boil it. Don’t leave it alone so that it does not coagulate into a lump. When the meat has been tenderized and dried, it is fried until no liquid remains[in the pan]. Chop up the vegetables parsley, fresh coriander and mint, and pound (dried) coriander, caraway seeds and hot spices. Mix the meat with the vegetables. Pound walnuts and almonds and mix them in, or sprinkle on a little lemon [juice], so that the pounded spices do not overcook. Add a little sumac for the same reason, fry in sesame oil or sheep’s tail fat.
290. A kind of sanbusak. Take thigh and loin meat and pound it with a cleaver on a wooden board. Boil until it is done and then drain off the water. Pound in a mortar until it is smooth, and then put it in a brass pot and add sheep’s tail fat on it, together with dried coriander, cassia, mastic, pepper and roast. Add one part chopped up parsley, one part of mint, and half apart of rue. Boil everything. Then add tart. I égard to it and boil until it becomes white vinegar. Then, add lemon juice to it and boil several times. Afterwards fill the sanbusak sheets. This is the best way to make them,
291. Another kind. Add sumac, shelled pistachios and walnuts to the [sanbusak] filling.
292. Another kind. Take breadcrumbs and dye them with saffron. Sift through a sieve and add pounded sugar, bee honey and sesame oil. Then, proceed as you would with an Asutiyya (a type of bread pudding, consisting of baked flatbreads filled with nuts, honey, etc.). When it is done, add black poppy seeds and pistachio kernels, and use this to stuff the sanbusak with.
More recipes can be found in the Nimatnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu. (translated by. Norah M. Titley, Routlege: 2005, p. 119), an Indian book of recipes dated 1495-1505.
Another recipe, for the method for samosas: take finely minced venison and flavour some ghee with asafoetida and fenugreek. Mix the minced meat with saffron and put it in the ghee. Then bake asafoetida, salt, cumin, and fenugreek. Put cardamoms, cloves, coriander one ratti of camphor and one ratti of musk into the mince and cook it well, and a half quantity of finely minced onions and a quarter of minced died ginger into the meat. When it has become well-cooked, sprinkle it with rose water and take it off and stuff the samosas. Make a hole in the samosas with a stick and fry them in sweet-smelling ghee until they are tender. By the same recipe, samosas can be made from any kind of meat that is desired.
Another recipe for meat after that manner: take very finely ground mince and mix saffron or turmeric together with cardamoms, cloves, coriander, pepper, salt, lime juice, camphor, musk, onions and fresh ginger. Heat some ghee and flavour it with asafoetida and put the mince with it. Make it tasty with ambergris and rose water and take it off. Having made flour dough, make two loaves and put the mince between them. Cook the loaf, making it firm and well-cooked and then remove it. Put camphor, musk and rosewater into sweet-smelling ghee and, having made the loaves in the above-mentioned way, put the ghee on them.
Making Samosas (f.83b)
1/8 tsp ground mastic
Sanbusak (filled pastries) from recipe 116 in Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table
1 pound ground lamb
1 piece cinnamon bark
Raw sesame oil (not toasted)
3 tsp dried sumac reconstituted in about 1/4 c water
1 medium onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
1 preserved lemon, chopped finely and with the seeds removed
Sprig of mint, chopped (about 2 Tbsp fresh), or 1 tsp dried
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom, ground
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp saffron dissolved in 1 Tbsp rosewater
3 c all-purpose flour
1 c water
1/2 tsp dough
Heat 1 Tbsp sesame oil in a pan, then add the onion and lamb, cinnamon bark, and mastic, and fry until the meat is mostly cooked and the onions are soft. Add the sumac and water, and continue cooking until the liquid has evaporated. Add the preserved lemon (it can be salty so you may wish to use less), mint and the remaining spices. Remove the cinnamon bark piece and adjust the spices to taste. The recipe is quite flexible and some versions add ground walnuts, almonds, pine nuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, cumin, coriander, ginger, fenugreek, asafoetida, lime juice, musk, camphor, pepper, cilantro, rue, leek leaves, coconut, eggs, parsley, caraway seeds, and pepper (obviously not all at once).
Form into a cone flat bread (see instructions below). Fill the cone with meat, then seal the top shut with more soft dough. Alternatively prepare a stiff dough (see instructions below) and roll it out but do not bake. Cut into 4 inch wide squares, form cones and pinch the join to seal. Add meat and pinch the top to seal.
Soak the saffron in rosewater, then brush on the samosas. Fry in sesame oil until the samosas are lightly browned and crisp.
Recipe makes about 12-15 samosas.
Samosas made with raw dough.
Samosa (Sanbusak) pastry
For the casing, you have two options. The first is closest to the version that appears most frequently in period samosa recipes, but it is fussy. The instructions are not 100% clear, but Charles Perry suggests a flatbread, like modern lavash (an Iranian/Armenian flatbread). He notes that some medieval recipes use raw dough, as do modern samosas.
For lavash:
3 c all-purpose flour 1 c water ½ tsp salt
Knead together 2 cups flour, ½ – 1/3 cup water and ¼ tsp salt into a stiff dough, then allow it to sit for 30 minutes. Roll it out into a long oval as thinly as possible and bake for 2-3 minutes on a pizza stone or upside-down cookie sheet that has been preheated in a 500°F oven. Cut the bread into strips or squares about 4 inches wide (a palm width), form into a cone and seal with some softer dough. Fill the cone with meat, then seal the top shut with more soft dough.
For modern samosas:
Knead together the flour, water and salt into a stiff dough. Roll the dough out, as above, but do not bake. Cut into 4-inch squares, form cones and pinch the join to seal. Add meat and pinch the top to seal.
Dough cut to make samosa casings. If using a flatbread such as lavash, it would look very similar.Make a cone to hold your filling. Pinch the dough to seal the cone. If using flatbread, use some raw dough to make a seal.Samosa cone with filling.Samosa with the top pinched shut. It is now ready to
Elsebet is a dear person who happens to have a late-period German persona, so I was delighted to make snacks for her vigil. She wanted sausages, so I made my favourite Thuringian bratwurst, plus a Coburger bratwurst and the bratwurst found in Recipe 25 of Das Kochbuch von Sabina Welserin. I also made some little sourdough white buns (with a bit of added yeast), and a mustard (recipe is from Ein Neue Kochbuch, found here.
The Coburger was more about the flavours than the technique. Coburgers should be long and thin (31 cm long) but I opted to make them small, and grill them in advance. There are various spicing options, but I went with 3 garlic cloves and the juice of a lemon with one pound of pork and and 1/4 pound of salt pork. Here is an image of the the Bratwurstmänle, who is found on the roof of city hall in Coburg, with a bratwurstmas (measure) in his hand.
Greenish statue of a man holding a long bratwurst measure in his right hand. The statue is on a red tiled roof. The statue is from 1622 and is said to be St Maurice, the patron saint of Coburg.
The Sabrina Welserin bratwurst used 1 pound of pork, a half pound of beef, 4 oz bacon, 1/2 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp pepper 3/4 tsp sage and 1/2 tsp marjoram.
Back: part of my new mug from Horus Eye Pottery, mustard in a pot made by Kirsten Nicholls of Mythical Merchant, bread, honey cake made by my friend Marina. Front: Coveugwr, Thuringia and Sabina Welserin bratwursts, a bit of a plate of apple cake also made by Marina.
I came across this great little article today and thought it was worth sharing. The information about pre-contact tamales was really useful, even if the author doesn’t give all her sources. It answers a number of questions I had when living in El Salvador.
I have made tamales before, but they are a lot of work. Now I want to make them again. Maybe a project for a camping event, cooking them directly in the ashes instead of steaming? It could go very badly, but it would be fun.
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