COCATRICE AND LAMPRAY HAY

Transcription

1 LATE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY RECIPES FROM CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE OXFORD An Edition, with Commentary, including Suggestions for Cooks Constance B. Hieatt PROSPECT BOOKS 2012

2 First published in 2012 by Prospect Books, Allaleigh House, Blackawton, Totnes, Devon TQ9 7DL. 2012, editorial matter, Constance B. Hieatt. The editor, Constance B. Hieatt, asserts her right to be iden tified as editor of this work in accordance with the Copy right, Designs & Patents Act No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder. BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA: A catalogue entry of this book is available from the British Library. Typeset and designed by Lemuel Dix and Tom Jaine. The illustration on the title-page is by Doris Heins. The cover illustration is Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, It is from Ms. Bodl. 264 (fol. 73 v ), the Romance of Alexander, with miniatures illustrating legends of Alexander the Great by the Flemish illuminator Jehan de Grise and his workshop, ISBN Printed and bound by the Gutenberg Press, Malta.

3 Table of Contents Preface 9 Introduction 10 Bibliography of Works Cited 23 Cocatrice and Lampray Hay (Corpus Christi College MS F 291) 1. Cocatrice Chawdroun for Swan Lette Lardes Chyknes Farsed Macrel Farsed Caudel Ferre Ruschw of Fysch Ruschews of Flesch Petitone Chinche Annimels Farsed Pouderid Byf Lechid Lumbard Tartis Per muson Tartis Gyngile Crustade with Flesch Flawmpoynt Dareals Ʒelowe Rastone For to Kepe Pescoddis fro Midsomyr tyl Cristemess Kepyng of Venyson Lampray Hay 57 5

4 23. Pyk in Latymer Sawse Almounde Oystrys in Grave Tayles Soppis Dorre Blawmmager Tenches or Sooles or Plays in Cyve Morterews of Fysch Eles in Sorry Rappe Muskelys in Browet Creme of Almonds Boyled Furmente wyth Purpeys Blawnche Porre Oystres in Cyve Blandʒere Mayled Perry of Pesyn Frasyd, be þei Whyte or Grene Aturmyn is a Stondynge Potage Tenche or Breme in Brasy Tenches in egurdows Nowmblys of Porpeys Perys in Surrip Jussel for Lentyn Froys for Lenten of Thre Colours, Eche One Closyng on Oþir Eggs in Lentyn Tartis Crustade Dareals Flaumpoynt Perceyt Cawdel of Almandis Peris and Quyns Baken Fresh Lawmprey or Lawmprey Anantes Bakyn Breme Baken Capon and Beef Stuwed Venysoun in Broþʒ Ravyols 99 6

5 59. Jowtis Jussel Long Wortis Charlet Blanche Mortrews Browet Sarsenesse Cunninges in Grave Hennys in Cyve Bore in Pevered Bukenade Fyletis in Galentyn Garbage of Gyce in Mose Pygge in Sauge Pyg or Pygges Feet or Smale Chykenys in Egredous Traps in Surrip Gosnade Eyryn in Cokyr Blanke Fretour Clonnenonne Morterews Mawmone Blawmanger Bor in Comfeet Alesed Bef Powmedorres Capons in Connse Cabage Capoun in Urinele Two Cunnyngs of One Potage Morterews of Wylkys of Kelling Lechyd Lumbard Gely of Pyk, Tenche, or Perche Grwuel with Milk Let Lorry Eyren in Poche Tayles 140 7

6 95. Creme Boyle Jowtys Flawnys Crustade Appylmose 143 Supplement to the Concordance 145 Glossary and Cross-Index of Recipe Titles Used as Lemmas 173 8

7 Preface My primary debt as author of this edition is to the archivists of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who made access to the manuscript possible for me and for my late colleague, Sharon Butler, over the considerable period of years it took for us to copy, and meditate on, the text. Dr Butler was no longer with us when I finally got to the stage of planning the edition, but her careful transcriptions were a great help to me. Another colleague who gave me valuable help is, again, Professor Brenda Hosington, of the Université de Montréal. As she has done before, she checked various sources in British libraries for me at a time when I found travel difficult; and Ellen Nodelman earned my deep gratitude for rescuing the text from a confused state in which it could not have printed correctly. Constance B. Hieatt December

8 Introduction This manuscript, which can be dated to the last quarter of the fifteenth century, is thus described in Coxe s catalogue of Oxford college manuscripts, 1 Vol. II, p. 127: Codex, partim membranaceus et partim chartaceus, in 4to minimo, ff. 123, sec. xv. 1. A curious collection of recipes in cookery, ninety-five in number, with a list of content prefixed. fol A book of miscellaneous receipts in medicine, cookery S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson firmly assigns the manuscript itself to the fifteenth century and says, Provenance unknown. The dialect of the greater part of the MS (ff. 3 53, 55 v 68) is Norfolk. 2 The second section is messy, casual, and probably sixteenth century; mostly medical, with a few confections such as gingerbread here and there. The table of contents for section 1 actually begins on fol. 1 v listing the end of the contents, nos ; titles of 1 24 appear on 2 r and on 2 v. Recipes are numbered in the table of contents; and there is also numbering at the top of many of the pages of the actual recipe section, discussed below as a key to what is, or is not, missing from the collection. The recipes themselves begin on fol. 3 r and end at the top of fol. 68 r. The table of contents is in a different, less formal, hand; the ink here is dim, 1. H. O. Coxe, Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum qui in collegiis aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur (Oxford, 1852). 2. The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist viii. A Handlist of MSS Containing M.E. Prose in Oxford College Libraries (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp

9 INTRODUCTION and the pages are worn and stained and not as legible as the recipe pages. The writing on fols. 53 v 55 r is different from the rest of the recipe section: presumably a second scribe took over temporarily. The order of the recipes is quite eccentric. There are clumps of more-orless related recipes, two of which are signalled by subheadings ( Baken Mete for the pastries in recipes and Baken Mete for Lentyn for those in 48 51), and a good many others not so heralded, ranging from two recipes for preserving foods for later use (20 21) to a long section of Lenten dishes in But there is no discernable overall rationale and no resemblance to the order of any other collection. It is, in fact, rather contrary to custom: most collections with a clear order start with the simpler pottages and save the elaborate concoctions known as subtleties for later, often at or near the end, but this one begins with a very spectacular subtlety : Cocatrice, representing the fabulous beast better known nowadays as a basilisk. Nor do the recipes themselves show any sign of a relationship to any other collection or collections, although they are mostly recipes which were well known in the period and had many exemplars elsewhere. This seems to be, unlike any other collection of the fifteenth century, a collection with no identifiable source(s), although it must have had at least one, as indicated by the reference in the first recipe to a preceding one. It is one which is notable for the degree to which directions are often spelled out; 47, Eggs in Lent, for example, is much more detailed than any other recipe I have seen for this dish: but so, if to a lesser extent, are most of the other wellknown dishes here. This feature would appear to mark the collection as a very late one. I have noted elsewhere 3 a tendency of later medieval English recipes to spell out procedures at greater and greater length and to add and/or vary ingredients (p. 9). An instance here is the third recipe, Lette Lardes, which represents a very popular dish in this period: the Concordance of English Recipes Thirteenth Through Fifteenth Centuries 4 lists nineteen recipes under the 3. In Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, eds., Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (Including the Forme of Cury). London: EETS s.s. 8, Oxford University Press, 1985, pp Constance B. Hieatt and Terry Nutter, with Johnna H. Holloway (Tempe, Arizona: ACMRS, 2006). 11

10 lemma Lete Lardes, and A Gathering of Medieval English Recipes 5 lists two more in its continuation of the Concordance. I have not tried to count the length of every example here: some represent a simpler version which does not call for dyeing the dish in three different colours and would naturally be a bit shorter. The earliest version of the three-colours recipe is that which appears in the fourteenth-century Forme of Cury, which has about 155 words. Two later examples, are, surprisingly, a bit shorter: that of An Ordinance of Pottage 6 and the Noble boke of cokery, 7 which is directly derived from the former collection, but two of the later recipes which occur in Thomas Austin s Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books 8 run to slightly over 200 words. The Corpus Christi recipe is the longest, at almost 250 words. However, in some cases even these extensive details are somewhat mystifying. For example, the recipe for Rissoles of Fish (7), which contains no fish, gives such confused directions for stuffing the pastry and cutting it up that no amount of emendation would make it really clear; it has to be explained in a following Commentary. Also, there is quite often an obvious confusion of the order of steps, as in the fifth recipe, Stuffed Mackeral, when we are told to colour the almond milk after we have been told to pour it into a platter and put the roasted fish on it. In many cases, such confused order suggests the tone of a cook voicing afterthoughts along the lines of Oh, I forgot to tell you to Consider, for example, recipe 82, for Alesed beef. 9 After directing us to stuff slices of beef with a mixture of parsley, hyssop, savory, onions, and beef suet, seasoned with pepper, cinnamon and salt, then roll them up and roast them on a spit, the recipe continues, Sette a pot with swete broþ on þe fyr. Mynce oinʒouns & dates & tak reyseynges of coraunce & cast þerto also stounyd maces or clows & canel. Tak fygges; grende hem in a morter with crustes of bread; drawe hem up with wyn or goode ale; cast þis draught into the pot & saffroun qwan þe pot seþ. Cast þerto þes lechys 5. Ed. Hieatt (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2008). 6. Ed. Hieatt (London: Prospect Books, 1988). 7. A facsimile of Pynson s 1500 edition, the best full text of this collection, is forthcoming; Mrs Napier s 1882 edition is incomplete because it was based on a manuscript missing quite a few pages. 8. London: EETS o.s. 91, 1888, repr Beef Birds : this is the dish given the lemma Alows of Beef in the Concordance. 12

11 INTRODUCTION rostyd er þu put in þi lycour, and boyle it togeder. This takes us back to the beginning of the recipe, but leaves just when the meat is to be put in somewhat questionable. More significantly, an unusually large number of the recipes here give exact quantities for at least some of the ingredients: for example, 1 lb fruit, ¼ almonds for 8 dishes. This aspect of the collection is what makes it really remarkable: very few other medieval English culinary collections give any such measurements. I have noted only three which ever do, and none of them to anywhere near such an extent. These are: BL MS Arundel 334, 10 and six corresponding recipes in the Noble boke of cokery which come from that source; at least one recipe in the Liber Cure Cocorum, 11 also reproduced in the Noble boke of cokery ; and three recipes in Bodleian MS e. Mus The last-named source is the only one in which the quantities given are extensive enough to be really meaningful. For example, the recipe there for Leche Lumbarde calls for a half-pennyworth of pepper, half that quantity of sanders, and half a loaf of grated bread to a quart of clarified honey. The one Liber Cure Cocorum recipe reproduced in the Noble boke of cokery is far less helpful: in a Chicken Compost, one is to use a pint of honey, but there is no indication of what the quantities are of the chicken or other ingredients. The Noble boke of cokery recipes from Arundel 334 vary in helpfulness; some similarly give the quantity for only one or two of several ingredients, some give more illuminating guidance. Here, we often have proportions which will really assist modern analysis. Recipe 44, for pears in syrup, calls for 40 pears, ½ quart honey and a potel (two quarts) of ale for 20 dishes, plus an ounce each of pepper and cinnamon. It does not specify quantity or weight for other ingredients, which include minced dates, currants, and mace probably because the quantities were negligible and/or variable according to the cook s taste. However, even if only partial, these notations may be of significant help in the ongoing debate about how highly spiced medieval dishes were likely 10. Edited (but incorrectly labelled 344) in A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household (London, 1790), and by Richard Warner, Antiquitates Culinariae: Tracts on Culinary Affairs of the Old English [repli cating the incorrect label] (London, 1791; facs. London: Prospect Books, 1981). 11. BL MS Sloane 1986, ed. R. Morris (London, 1862). 12. Printed in A Gathering of Medieval English Recipes: cf. note 5 above. 13

12 to be: the quantities for this particular dish would work out to something between a quarter and half teaspoonful of pepper and cinnamon per pear. That would make the pears notably spicy, especially if they were small, and medieval fruits were likely to be smaller than those we raise today. Most modern recipes for pears in a spiced syrup call for such a quantity of cinnamon for three (or more) pears, not one. No modern recipe I have seen calls for pepper, although some call for additional spices. On the other hand, however, the spices in recipe 56, capon braised with beef, are very modest in amount: for 12 capons and 12 good-sized pieces of beef loin, cooked in over a gallon of ale or wine, we are told to use a quarter-ounce each of pepper and cinnamon, which amounts to less than a tablespoon of each seasoning to this considerable quantity of meat and liquid. Other seasonings are also called for, but in similarly small amounts. Evidently, then, some dishes were a lot more spicy than others. The elaboration of these recipes is one of the indications that they emanate from a very well-to-do establishment, as is the fact that almost all of them include various seasonings including spices, even the simplest of dishes. For example, a recipe for dried (split, apparently) peas (39) calls for onions, parsley, honey, saffron, and pepper, as well as a bread thickening. However, the seasonings in more than half the dishes here are standard and repetitive: pepper, cinnamon, saffron and salt in almost everything, with only a few other seasonings, of which mace, ginger and sugar are the only ones which appear with any frequency. But another noteworthy feature is a very wide use of figs, especially in fish dishes, often ground and apparently as a thickener, and a general proliferation of sweetness. Dates and honey appear constantly, as do other sweet ingre dients. One striking instance is the use of ground figs as well as dates and currants in the sauce for a Beef Alows dish, Alesed Beef (recipe 82), as noted above. And the figs are apparently a conspicuous feature here, since the quantity of these alone is noted: half a pound for 8 servings. Other fifteenthcentury versions of this popular dish do not normally call for a sauce at all. The features of this recipe collection discussed so far mark it as exhibiting all the tendencies of late fifteenth-century recipes to an extreme degree: no other elaborates its recipes to such great length, or gives so many exact measurements of ingredients, or goes further in sweetening its meat and fish recipes with dried fruits and other sweeteners, although some go 14

13 INTRODUCTION almost as far in the latter respect. 13 The Corpus Christi collection can be described as the ultimate fifteenth-century cookery book: it carries all the tendencies of recipe writing of its period about as far as they can go. That does not mean that these recipes show the characteristics of sixteenth-century recipes rather than of their medieval predecessors. The writers of the following century did not continue those tendencies which had become so noticeable in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages. Recipes of the following three centuries frequently specified quantities of ingredients, but not usually as helpfully as the Corpus Christi collection; Martha Washington s Booke of Cookery, an eighteenth-century compendium of recipes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has very few specifications of quantities in the cookery section, although rather more in the Booke of Sweetmeats which completes the manuscript. 14 Recipes headed by a convenient list of ingredients giving exact quantities did not appear until well into the nineteenth century. In the US, this change is usually credited to Fannie Farmer, whose Boston Cookery-School Cookbook first appeared in Recipe writers of the sixteenth century still tended to use rather more sweet ingredients in meat or fish dishes than we would use today, although not as many as their fifteenth-century predecessors; but in the matter of elaborating recipes, they generally went in the other direction and produced simpler, shorter versions when they were passing on recipes of medieval origin. However, the recipe for Chauden for Swan found in the Corpus Christi collection, where it is number 2, runs to over 150 words. Such a recipe occurs in both A Booke of Cookrye 15 and Gervase Markham s The English Housewife, 16 both of which run to about 80 words. The recipe for Caudle in the Corpus Christi collection, number 6, is given 125 words; that in Thomas Dawson s The Good Housewife s Jewell 17 has only 36. The Corpus Christi recipe for blancmanger (number 28) has 13. A noteworthy example is the collection of eleven recipes for the feast of St. Lawrence in Bodleian MS e. Mus. 52 (see notes 5 and 12 above). 14. Ed. Karen Hess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). 15. Ed. A.W., London, 1581; facsimile, Amsterdam and Norwood, N.J., Ed. Michael R. Best (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1986); originally published Ed. A.B., London: Southover Press, 1996; originally published 1596,

14 192 words; the sixteenth-century versions are much changed, resembling a modern blancmange rather than its medieval ancestor, but the wordage is still reduced: 129 words in A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye 18 and one of the three in The Good Housewife s Jewell contains only 37. This, then, is an extreme example of a fifteenth-century cookery book, not one showing features typical of the sixteenth-century. As such, it exhibits a lot of unusual, and sometimes baffling, vocabulary. For example, many recipes calling for pork, and at least one for veal, tell us to use a bypece of the meat, a word not to be found in the MED, the A-ND, the OED, or Cotgrave, under any spelling I could think of. It must mean a secondary cut of the meat, not one of the prime cuts normally used for roasting (or alternatively, in the case of a ham, smoking), to go by the analogy of such words as bypath and byway : but I could find no example of it among the many rather obscure by- words listed in the OED. I suspect we have lost a possibly useful word in bypiece. Other problems may arise from the scribe s hand or his miscopying: a phrase in the very first recipe for cocatrice appears to be rufpyn of the calf : but even if I have misread the first peculiar word, the phrase is baffling since at this point the subject is apparently a cock, not a calf. This editor saw no alternative but to emend to the ruff [a word appearing a few lines later] of the cock, although what kind of ruff a cock plucked for cooking would have is another question. 19 A few of the titles are puzzling. Some which look reasonable do not turn out to be so, such as the fishless Rissoles of Fish mentioned above. A remarkable example is Lampray Hay, recipe 22, which has nothing to do with either lampreys or hay. Others show no detectable relationship to any other word or recipe, such as Clonnennone, or Clanenone possibly some of these n s should be read as u s. This one is a recipe for fried stuffed eggs; perhaps -en[n]one represents a corruption of a spelling for eggs, such as eyroun, but the Clo/an element remains baffling. 18. Facsimile of the edition ed. Anne Ahmed (Cambridge: Corpus Christi College Cambridge, 2002). 19. The English Dialect Dictionary gives cock s comb, but this doesn t seem to fit the context here at all. 16

15 INTRODUCTION Spelling in general is often a problem here. It is rarely consistent: the scribes appeared to think all vowels interchangeable. In the first recipe, for example, sew is spelled sauwe, souwe, and sowe. Both scribes use abbreviations constantly, but with varying meanings; a line above a vowel usually represents n or m, but sometimes must mean es, for example. All such abbreviations have been expanded in the text, as have such abbreviations as w t for with and þ t for that, but it must be borne in mind that some expansions may be incorrect. When u clearly represents v, it is so transcribed. The consonant (or semi-vowel?) ʒ appears in some expectable contexts, such as the word ynowʒ, but sometimes seems quite out of place, as in the occasional spelling of broth as broþʒ: which is also sometimes spelled broht, suggesting that the th spelling for þ was currently sometimes misunderstood (it is used correctly in the word forth a few times). The collection is almost, but not quite, complete. One leaf has obviously been torn out between fols. 12 and 13: that the leaf missing here was in the book when it was originally bound is witnessed by a corner of paper between these leaves. The folio numbers were obviously added at a later date. The missing leaf contained all of recipe 14, Tartis permuson, except the title, which is at the bottom of 12 v, and the last words of the last sentence which are on the top of 13 r. Following immediately is 15, Tartis gyngile, which is a mere two and a half lines giving a non-lenten version of the preceding recipe: that is, calling for flesh instead of the fish evidently called for in the missing preceding recipe. The title of 14 probably means Parmesan tart; recipes for a tart of this name occur in a number of Italian collections 20 and some French ones. 21 It is always a long, complex recipe in some versions, using poultry and/or pork: Melitta Weiss Adamson gives the Viandier s version as an example of 20. For example, the Liber de Coquina (ed. Marianne Mulon, Deux traités inédits d art culinaire médiéval, Bulletin Philologique et Historique, 1971 for 1968), V. 6, pp ; in Libro di Cucina del Secolo XIV, ed. Ludovico Frati (Leghorn, 1899, facs. 1979), 112, pp ; in Due Libri di Cucina ed. Ingemar Boström (Stockholm, 1985), A.1, p In the Viandier of Taillevent (ed. Terence Scully, Ottawa, 1988), no. 197, pp , Tourtes parmeriennes. Chiquart s Du Fait de cuisine (ed. Terence Scully, in Vallesia 40 [1985], pp ) has two versions, one for meat-days (#21) and one for fishdays(#40); in Scully s translation, Chiquart s On Cookery : A Fifteenth Century Savoyard Culinary Treatise (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), pp and

16 a particularly elaborate medieval recipe, 22 but that is simple in comparison to Chiquart s meat-day version. The only other example in English appears to be the Tart permusan of New York Public Library MS Whitney 1, 23 no. 148, which also calls for fish. It may, at first glance, appear rash to conclude that the words on the top of 13 r are part of recipe 14 rather than an intervening recipe. While the average recipe in this collection occupies a space only equal to one side of a leaf, some recipes are considerably longer; 56, Capon and beef stuwed, begins on fol. 41 r and runs almost to the end of 43 v, covering more than five sides. That there is no intervening recipe between Tartis permuson and Tartis gyngile in the table of contents is not much help, since it is not a reliable guide to the original contents when it omits five recipes still to be found in the manuscript. I note, with regret, that either I or Bruno Laurioux was apparently misguided by the table of contents in our description of this collection in the Répertoire, which states that it originally contained 98 recipes. This is obviously wrong: if we add to the table of contents 95 recipes, one of which does not actually appear in the text, the five in the manuscript not noted in the table of contents, we get 100, not counting any which may be missing and unnoted in the table of contents. Ogilvie-Thomson may have had such a calculation in mind in saying that there are 100 recipes here, although, in fact, one of those is only represented in the table of contents; this edition thus contains 99, not 100, recipes. The best guide to the original number is the numbering on the tops of many pages in the recipe section, which appears to be that of the original scribe, with the numbers apparently added soon after the recipes were copied. While these are in Arabic numerals rather than the Roman numerals invariably found in the recipes themselves, it is an early version of Arabic numerals perfectly consistent with a fifteenth-century date; in fact, it corresponds remarkably closely to some examples from the twelfth fifteenth centuries found in Capelli s Dizionario de Abbreviature latine ed italiane. 24 This numbering appears only on pages containing the titles of at least one recipe; it does not correspond to folio numbers or what would be 22. Food in Medieval Times, Westport, Connecticut, 2004, p Printed in A Gathering Of Medieval English Recipes; cf. n. 5, above. See p th ed., Milan,

17 INTRODUCTION page numbers if sides were separately numbered. It refers to the numbers of the recipes for which the titles appear on the numbered pages even if the title of the recipe appears on the last line of a page and the recipe itself is on the following page. The numbers correspond exactly to the recipe numbers in the table of contents through recipe 17, Flawmpoynt. The numeral 17 appears at the top of fol. 14 r. The recipe itself, preceded as usual by its title, starts at the very bottom of this folio, and is completed on fol. 14 v, which ends, as many other recipes do, with the quantities of ingredients needed. But the next folio, fol. 15 r, is headed , not 18 or 19. The first line of the folio contains the title of the recipe which is numbered 19 in the table of contents: Dareals ʒelowe. Further, recipe 18 in the table of contents, Broke crustes, is the one which does not appear in the text at all. There is no other recipe in the table of contents which is not to be found in the text; on the other hand, the table of contents numbers the recipes surrounding the five it omits as if these five did not exist. It thus appears that a sheet has been lost from the text between fols. 14 v and 15 r, and that this contained two recipes, 18 and 19, only one of which is noted in the table of contents, since what is there numbered 19 appears here as 20. It may have started with a few last words of recipe 17, since the quantities which end fol. 14 v do not include a statement of how many dishes, or tarts, this quantity will suffice for, as such lists invariably do elsewhere. At any rate, since 18 is noted in the table of contents, we can deduce that this loss occured not only after the page-top numbers had been written but also after the table of contents had been (rather carelessly) compiled. From recipe 20 (number 19 in the table of contents) the top-ofthe-page numbering in the text is consistently two numbers higher than the numbers I have assigned (counting only recipes which actually occur in the text) as showing what is there today. In light of the consistency of the top-of-the-page number, it seems fair to conclude that recipe 14, Tartis permuson, covered both sides of a missing sheet, since the numbering indicates that the next recipe is indeed recipe 15, not 16 or 17. This means that the collection originally contained 101 recipes, consisting of the 99 now found in the manuscript plus two missing on a leaf between fols. 14 and 15; nothing else has been lost, except a leaf on which almost all of recipe 14 was written. 19

18 Instead of following the edited text with separate sections for a selection of adapted recipes and a glossary, as I did in my edition of An Ordinance of Pottage, this volume will follow each edited recipe with its translation, concluding with a commentary including, where appropriate, suggestions for cooks. Those who wonder what a word in the original Middle English means can look at the translation; when the meaning is dubious that is stated in a footnote. The suggestions for adaptation in the commentary sections are usually not fully spelled-out recipes, but suggestions which should be enough for the experienced cook. Sometimes, the translated recipe gives enough guidance on procedure anyway: for example, the directions for making Petitone (9) are admirably explicit in telling the cook to put a plate over the pan and turn it upside down to turn out the omelette. But these are often confused medieval recipes, and anyone s adaptation is bound to be partly guesswork. Therefore, directions more like those of Elizabeth David than like those of Fannie Farmer seemed appropriate, giving cooks a chance to exercise their own judgment and preferences, as their medieval forebears did. Those needing further guidance on times, temperatures, etc., can consult a more standard cookbook for example, on how long to roast a chicken and at what temperature. When such suggestions for adaptation give exact measurements, these presume you will wish to make a dish which will serve only four to eight diners. While I have taken account of the quantities specified in the recipes themselves (when they are so specified) and tried to make the measurements proportionate, I could not duplicate them because they are all for either 8 or 20 servings, which means from 16 to 80 diners: medieval servings were always for two (generally at high table only) or four diners. In any case, exact amounts for minor spices seemed particularly inadvisable. As remarked above, pepper, cinnamon, saffron and salt were fairly standard, and unless a quantity is specified, as in the case of the spicing for pears and a dish of capon with beef mentioned above, we can assume the quantity was so small as to be unremarkable. I suggest that you treat them as you do pepper and salt in modern recipes which do not give exact quantities for those seasonings, i.e. sprinkling on cinnamon and saffron as sparingly as you do pepper and judging the salt to taste. But you may wish to skip the saffron much of the time: saffron in every dish may seem a bit too much for modern diners. And there does not seem any 20

19 INTRODUCTION reason to be much more generous with ginger and mace, unless a larger quantity is specifically recommended. And note that honey is called for in more than half the recipes: unless there are indications that this is meant to be a noticeably sweet dish, treat this as also a routine seasoning, to be added in very small quantities. Another frequent ingredient in these recipes is grated bread, used as a thickener: often specified as wastel bread, which simply means white bread of high quality. A medieval loaf would have been a round one, weighing perhaps a pound. 25 Stale bread suitable for grating must have been always on hand in a medieval kitchen; this is not always the case in the modern kitchen, but not-so-stale bread is perfectly suitable for making bread crumbs in a food processor. You should remove the crusts first, especially if it is a good crusty bread. It is best to make the bread crumbs and set them aside before you put moister ingredients, such as meat, in the processor. But also, if you are thickening something cooked in liquid, you can simply tear up crustless slices of bread and put them in the food processor or a blender with a suitable amount of the cooking liquid; blend to thicken it, then stir it back into the pot. In any case, do not even dream of using packaged bread crumbs from the supermarket: they would have a nasty, gritty effect. Like all medieval recipes, a good many here call for almond milk. To make this, blend ground almonds (as finely ground as you can get or make them) with a hot liquid and squeeze through a cloth or rub through a strainer lined with a coffee filter: almond milk should be smooth, not gritty. When recipes differentiate between a first thicker and second thinner almond milk, this means you are expected to be economical and save the ground almonds left in the cloth (or filter paper) when you have rubbed through the first, thicker milk to make a second batch with the same almonds. Most of the recipes in this collection call for a pound of almonds, when they specify quantities; my suggested quantities assume you wish to make a quarter of the medieval quantity, thus a quarter-pound (4 oz) of almonds 25. A good source of information about medieval bread is Peter Brears, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England, Totnes, 2008, Chapter 7. For fuller information, see C. Anne Wilson, Food & Drink in Britain from the Stone Age to the Present (London, 1973), Chapter 7. 21

20 per recipe. For this, the appropriate amount of liquid is about one cup (8 fl oz, scant 250 ml.); but if you are making a second thinner milk with the same almonds, use about double the amount; recipes calling for both generally expect you to boil down the mixture containing the thinner milk until it is very thick indeed and can well absorb the better milk. The most important part of the commentary is often an explanation of the difficulties in the recipe in light of other versions of the same recipe which could be located by consulting the Concordance. Without that help, I would have found it difficult to explain much of what goes on here, even though I was, by the time I undertook editing this manuscript, familiar with most of the corpus of Middle English recipes. The late Sharon Butler and I had begun to transcribe the recipes in this manuscript around 1980, but, recognizing its difficulties, did not try to do anything with it other than excerpt one recipe: Chinche (no. 10), junket, which appears in Curye on Inglisch Part V (p. 155). I am very glad now I did not try to go further with it at a time when I did not know enough to handle it successfully. The volume ends with a supplement to the Concordance, covering all the Corpus Christi recipes plus the recipes previously published in A Gathering, where they appeared without page numbers in that volume s supplement to the Concordance. But this made them difficult to locate in a volume containing recipes from more than twenty manuscripts, so it seemed best to include them, with this further information, plus a few corrections, here. In addition, I have included some corrections and additions to the original Concordance, and one revised gloss (to Cockatrice) which seemed clearer than the original gloss. The table of contents on pages 5 8 above should be sufficient to serve as an index to the recipes here, but readers are referred to the notes and comments on each recipe for explanations of unusual words and difficult titles: bearing in mind that some of the titles are inexplicable. The secondary title (in square brackets) on the title line of most recipes in the following text is the entry in the original manuscript s table of contents, where that entry differs from that given in the body of the text. 22

21 Bibliography of Works Cited REFRENCE AND GENERAL BACKGROUND Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Food in Medieval Times. Westport, CT, Bartlett, Jonathan. The Cook s Dictionary and Culinary Reference. Chicago, Brears, Peter. Cooking and Dining in Medieval England. Totnes, Capelli, Adriano. Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane, 6th ed. Milan, Coxe, H.O. Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum qui in collegiis aulisque Oxon iensibus hodie adservantur. Oxford, Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford, Hieatt, Constance B., Carole Lambert, Bruno Laurioux, and Alix Prentki. Répertoire des Manuscrits Médiévaux Contenant des Rescettes Culinaires, in Du Manuscrit à la Table, ed. Carole Lambert, Montreal and Paris, Hieatt, Constance B., and Terry Nutter, with Johnna H. Holloway. Concordance of English Recipes: Thirteenth Through Fifteenth Centuries. Tempe, Arizona, Ogilvie-Thomson, S.J. The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist viii. A Handlist of MSS Containing M.E. Prose in Oxford College Libraries. Cambridge, Wilson, C. Anne. Food & Drink in Britain from the Stone Age to the Present. London, Woolgar, C. M., D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron, eds. Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

22 COOKERY BOOKS Ahmed, Anne, ed. A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye: Margaret Parker s Cookery Book (facs. of the ed.). Cambridge, Austin, Thomas, ed. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books. London, EETS (o.s.91), 1888; repr. Oxford A Booke of Cookrye. London, 1581; facs., Amsterdam & Norwood, NJ, Boström, Ingemar, ed. Due Libri di Cucina. Stockholm, Dawson, Thomas. The Good Housewife s Jewell (London, 1596, 1597); ed. A.B. London, Frati, L., ed. Libro di Cucina del Secolo XIV. Leghorn, 1899; facs Hess, Karen, ed. Martha Washington s Booke of Cookery. New York, Hieatt, Constance B., ed. A Gathering of Medieval English Recipes. Turnhout, Belgium, 2008., ed. The Middle English Culinary Recipes in MS Harley 5401, an Edition and Commentary, Medium Ævum LXV (1996), , ed. An Ordinance of Pottage: an Edition of the Fifteenth Century Culinary Recipes in Yale University s MS Beinecke 163. London, 1988., and Sharon Butler, eds. Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (Including the Forme of Cury). London, EETS (ss. 8), Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife (London, 1615), ed. Michael R. Best. Kingston and Montreal, Morris, R., ed. Liber Cure Cocorum (BL MS Sloane 1986). London, Mulon, Marianne, ed. Liber de Coquina, in Deux traités inédits d art culinaire médiéval, Bulletin Philologique et Historique, 1971 for Napier, Mrs. Alexander (Robina), ed. A Noble Boke off Cookry ffor a Prynce Houssolde or eny other estately Houssolde. London, Noble boke of festes ryalle and Cokery, printed by Pynson in 1500; facs. forthcoming, Longleat, Warminster, Wiltshire. Scully, Terence, ed. Du fait de cuisine par Maistre Chiquart, 1420, in Vallesia (1985), ; trans., Chiquart s On Cookery : A Fifteenth- Century Savoyard Culinary Treatise. New York, 1986., ed. The Viandier of Taillevent. Ottawa, Warner, Richard, ed. Antiquitates Culinariae: Tracts on Culinary Affairs of the Old English (including BL MS Arundel 334, incorrectly labelled 344). London, 1791; facs. London,

23 Cocatrice and Lampray Hay (Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS F 291) Text, Translation and Commentary

24

25 [3 r ] 1. Cocatrice [Cocatryce]. COCATRICE AND LAMPRAY HAY Scalde a pyge clene. Tak of þe hed; quarter hym on fowre. Tak a cok; scalde hym, draw hym, quarter hym on foure. an sauwe þe forme quarter of ʒe pyge with þat hynder quarter of þe cok be þe skynne; þan sette þe forme quarter of the cok before and þe hynder quarter of þe pyg behynde. an tak þe ruffe 1 of þe cok 2 and make it clene & souwe it evene rownde, and not flate it to þe hynde quarters as it were a tayl. an fle þe pygges hed; kep þe skyn hole, with þe eris. Mak farsene of to colouris, as þou may se before in þe making 3 of þe cun-[3 v ]nyges. Fyll þe roffe behynde wyth oon colour & þe hed with anoþer colour, þanne turne þe backe side donwarde & ley a feerse as mykyl as a mannys þom be fro þe hed to þe tayl, & sowe þe skynnes togeder above. Perbule þis in seþinge water a furlong way awyle. Tak & ley it on a bord. an put it on a spete, þorw at þe tayl and out at þe hed, & drye hym aʒen þe fere. Mak batour; tak sum of þis batour & make it grene, & sum red, & sum ʒelow. Colour þes quarters eche on diverse. Ley on þis tayl sylver foyle and on þe hed gold foyle, and sette it forth. Scald a pig clean. Take off the head; quarter it into four pieces. Take a cock; scald it, draw it, quarter it into four pieces. Then sew the forward quarter of the pig to the hind quarter of the cock by the skin; set the forward quarter of the cock before and the hind quarter of the pig behind. Then take the ruff of the cock and make it clean, and sew it evenly around, and not flat to the hindquarters as if it were a tail. Then flay the pig s head; keep the skin whole, with the ears. Make stuffing of two colours, as you have seen before in the making of the rabbits. Fill the ruff behind with one colour and the head with another colour, then turn the backside downwards and lay stuffing as deep as a man s thumb from the head to the tail, and sew the skins together above. Parboil this in boiling water for the time it takes to walk a furlong. 1. MS ruffpyn if I have read it correctly. 2. MS calf, apparently. 3. makynges. 27

26 Take [it out] and lay it on a board. Then put it on a spit, through at the tail and out at the head, and dry it against the fire. Make batter; take some of this batter and make it green, and some red, and some yellow. Colour these quarters, each one a different colour. Lay on the tail silver foil and on the head gold foil, and set it forth. Commentary : The cockatrice, perhaps better known today as a basilisk, was said to be a fabulous serpent hatched from a cock s egg with the power to kill by a glance. This one is to be made of five separate sections: the pig s head, the forequarter of the pig, the hindquarter of the cock, the forequarter of the cock, and the hindquarter of the pig, in that order, so that the pig s head comes first and the pig s tail last. Why the cock s body in the middle is to be added in reverse order, and what the ruff of the foremost part is, are not clear, although they might become clear to the cook if anyone wants to actually attempt this complex recipe. The reference to the stuffing used in a previous rabbit recipe must come from the collection s source, whatever that may have been. There is no immediately preceding rabbit recipe in the four other collections containing cockatrice recipes identified in the Concordance. Anyone who really wants to make this can use whatever medieval stuffing recipe (farsure) he or she can find and a suitable uncoloured sauce, to be coloured in the hues suggested. The Forme of Cury has an all-purpose farsure (said to be for pomme dorre, meatballs) and a white sauce for chicken calling for ground almonds mixed with verjuice (for which white wine could be substituted) and ground ginger. An approximation of silver and gold foil can be found in the wrappings of chocolate bars. But anyone so inclined should also take note that two of the other four recipes for this subtlety say to remove the cock s legs, which would seem to be necessary for the monster to look at all convincing. And, since you may not easily find an old cock for cooking at your supermarket or neighbourhood butcher, note that some call for capon instead. 28

27 [4 r ] 2. Chawdroun [Chaudon] for Swan. Sle a swan. Scalde hym, draw hym; mak clene þe mawe, galle þe lyvere, pyk of þe suwet of þe guttes & ritte hem, skour hem with salt & water. Tak þe feete & þe wyngges; cast al into a pot & seyth al togeder tendir. Tak þan & hewe þe gutts & þe mawe & þe livere. Pyk out þe smale bones of þe feet. Mynce oynʒons & cast þerto. Draw blood & bred soket þorw a streynour. Cast þat þou hast hewyn into a posnet with þe same broth it was soden in. Cast pouder of peper þerto & of canel; boyle it. Stere it. Cast þerto þe livere till it be somdel chargeant; ʒif it salt. Seþ it & set it fro þe fyr, þan scharpe it with [4 v ] vyneger. an set a foot in a dysche, or a wynge; cast above þe chaudron & ʒive it forth. Slay a swan. Scald it, draw it; make the stomach clean, remove the gall from the liver, pick off the suet from the guts and slit them, scour them with salt and water. Take the feet and the wings; cast all into a pot and boil all together until tender. Then take and chop the guts and the stomach and the liver. Pick out the small bones of the feet. Mince onions and add to this. Draw blood and soaked bread through a strainer. Throw all that you have chopped into a pot with the same broth it was boiled in. Add to it ground pepper and cinnamon; boil it. Stir it. Add the liver to it until it is somewhat thickened; give it salt. Boil it and set it away from the fire, then sharpen it with vinegar. Then set a foot or a wing in a dish; pour the chauden over and give it forth. Commentary : This amounts to a sort of giblet gravy for a roast swan, only with various oddments of the bird included which we would be likely to discard today. Since swans are not legal game in most parts of the Englishspeaking world nowadays, it does not seem necessary to give this recipe further attention. 29

28 3. Lette Lardes [Lete lards]. COCATRICE AND LAMPRAY HAY Brake eyren in a wessel. Mak grenyng of malwes, percele, and wortes; temper it up with mylk & draw it þorw a streynour. Tak þe ʒelk and kepe, þan bete þe qwyht and draw hem þorw a streynor. Tak lard of pork soden betwyxe þe flesch & þe skyn; mynce it smal. Tak melk and caste it in a pot; cast a quarter of þis lard þerto. Caste þerto also þis grene; cast also a quarter of þe qwyhtes & salt [5 r ] and hony. Tak mylk & put it in anoþer pot, as mikyl milk and as many qwyhtes & as mikyl lard, & saffron & salt & hony. Pot into another as many qwyhtes & as mikil mylk & as mikil lard; colour it with sawndris. Cast salt & hony þerto. Set þese pottes to þe feer & stere hem wele, & as long as þey stonde on þe feer. Qwan þei seþ & begynne to gadere, cast in eche on a cuppe ful ale & set awey fro þe feer; þan cast al þis into a panne & ster it al togedre. Cast al þis into a canwas. Lap þe cloþ togedre & ley it on a bord & ley a bord above, & ley a ston [5 v ] above to wrynge out þe qwhey. an cut it on lengþe in leches, and cowche þese leches in a vessel. Cowche betwixe þe leches poudir of gynger & suger. Break eggs into a container. Make green colouring of mallows, parsley, and [other] herbs; mix it with milk and draw it through a strainer. Take the yolks and put aside, then beat the whites and draw them through a strainer. Take lard of boiled pork from between the meat and the skin; mince it small. 4 Take milk and put it in a pot; add a quarter of the lard to it, and also add the green colouring and a quarter of the whites and salt and honey. Take milk and put it in another pot with as much milk and as many whites and as much lard, and saffron and salt and honey. Put into another as many whites and as much milk and as much lard; colour it with sanders and add salt and honey. 4. When the fifteenth-century recipe says to mince or, more often, hew something small, it is tempting to translate this as fine or finely, in keeping with modern culinary usage; but this may be misleading, since the modern usage contrasts fine with coarse or coarsely, and in medieval usage there is only small. So it seemed best to retain small. 30

29 Set these pots on the fire and stir them well, and as long as they stand on the fire. When they boil and begin to thicken, pour into each one a cupful of ale and set away from the fire. Then put all this into a pan and stir it all together. Pour all this onto a canvas; lap the cloth together and lay it on a board, and lay a board above, and lay a stone on top to wring out the whey. Then cut it lengthwise into slices, and arrange these slices in a container. Set between the slices ground pepper and sugar. Commentary : No other recipe for Lete Lardes in various colours suggests separating the eggs, although one would think that the Forme of Cury s alternative of white would require leaving out the yolks, and this recipe does not suggest what we are supposed to do with those yolks. Adding them to the saffron-yellow quarter might be a possibility, but may seem an over-enrichment of a small portion of the dish. Then there s the question of what to do with the fourth quarter : perhaps that s to be white, but the other recipes for a three-colour effect say to divide the ingredients into three parts, not three quarters. And the only one which suggests a white portion is the Forme of Cury recipe, which gives directions for a possible six colours. A further problem is why the colours, after being kept carefully apart in the cooking, are to be stirred together. The only other recipe which suggests anything of the sort is one in BL MS Harley 279, 5 which says to stir the colours together with your hand to create a motley effect. Most recipes advocating a tricolour effect (or whatever number) say to pile the colours on a cloth, one over another, before pressing. One would think that the only colours which would show up at all well by this method would be those on the top and the bottom as in that same recipe in Harl. 279, which, when first describing a two-colour version, says the top would be one colour and the bottom another. Anyone who wishes to try this recipe in three colours which doesn t improve the taste may find it preferable to press and slice each colour separately. For quantities, I suggest 4 eggs (double that if you are not going to use the yolks) to about 2 cups (16 fl oz, scant ½ litre) milk, and about 4 slices of blanched bacon for the lard. Ale can be omitted: the point of 5. Austin, LV viii, pp