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.
The purslane grew particularly large this year, so I was able to harvest enough for another recipe test. Several English herbals from the late 16th C mention purslane in vinegar but I went with a 17th C recipe. There were two of interest: one used salt and the other used sugar along with the vinegar. I prefer briny pickles to sweet, but had already preserved some purslane in salt, so decided to try the following recipe, which comes from the blog Give It Forth. Unfortunately I don’t have access to the whole cookbook as it is not available to me on-line, and I couldn’t find a copy of the 2010 printed version. No matter: the recipe itself is quite straightforward.
Purslain pickled. (The English And French Cook, 1674)
Gather them at their full growth, but not too old, parboil them and keep them in White wine Vinegar and Sugar.
I did change the recipe a bit on the advice of the blog author, and used apple cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar.
A canning jar filled with pickling liquid and green purslane stems against against a grey background.
This recipe is basically a 17th Century Vitamin Water/Gatorade from the Colony of Avalon living history site in Newfoundland. I have made 19thC version
Ingredients 1 cup (125g) fruit, washed and lightly crushed (we used mixed berry, rhubarb, and a new variation with clementines) 1 cup (200g) sugar 1 cup (235ml) red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
Directions In a medium bowl, add fruit and sugar and stir until well combined. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until juice exudes from fruits and starts to combine with sugar to form a syrup, about 24 hours. Strain fruit mixture through a fine-mesh strainer set over a medium bowl, pressing lightly on solids to express any remaining juice. Scrape any undissolved sugar into bowl with syrup. Whisk in vinegar. Transfer syrup to a clean bottle. Close the bottle, label with date, and shake vigorously. Refrigerate, shaking bottle periodically until sugar is completely dissolved, about 1 week. The shrub can be refrigerated for up to 1 year; the acid and sugar preserves the syrup and keeps it tasting bright and fresh.
I did my version using only rhubarb, as I still had lots in my garden. It has become my new favourite drink.
The champagne of gatorades is served with sparkling water in my favourite reproduction Germanic cup.
This recipe has only the slimmest of medieval connections. my friend Darrell, who I have known for more than 30 years through the Society for Creative Anachronism, and who is the driving force behind the Dark Ages Recreation Company, gave me some of this jam back in the summer. It was his mother’s recipe so it probably dates back to the mid 19th C. It was so delicious I asked him to share the recipe (keep in mind that I don’t actually like jam very much).
10 cups rhubarb, cut into chunks 1 1/2 to 2 cups sugar (I like it even less sweet than Darrell does) 2 cans of pineapple chunks 2 packets of pectin
Cook everything together until the rhubarb is broken up, then pour into clean jars and seal. I processed mine in the canner for 10-15 minutes to be extra sure of a good seal.
Somehow I forgot to take a picture of this one, but it wasn’t very exciting anyway; just light-coloured jam. It is nice and chunky and delicious on ice cream. Instead, you get a picture of Darrell, taken as he was working at the forge.
Man with a reddish beard and moustache, wearing a leather apron, safety goggles and a welder’s mask with the shield flipped up.
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.
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