Adam Balic

Goodness how recipes change with time! A pie shell! I think that I prefer the Careme version, the gelatin in a pie shell versions reminds me a little too much of "Angel Delight" or on of those god awful "Better then Sex" desserts. Still it may make for an interesting comparison one day.

I have never seen a recipe for Nesselrode with gelatin? It is basically a parfait-type dessert made with candied chestnuts and cream as a base. But then again I haven't got any recipes for it post 1870!

Please be aware that mistletoe is poisonous. ← So is Holly.

V&C in Edinburgh is selling white truffles for £3500 a kg, so you got a bargin!

Jack although you rule out pudding flavoured icecream, Nesselrode Pudding is a traditional frozen form of the pudding and is very Victorian and Christmassy. Other than that I guess you could do a variation of the chocolately souffle thing with molten filling. Plum pudding flavoured souffle shell with brandy butterish filling, maybe a few pieces of brandied fruit in there as well. Replace holly with mistletoe sprig.

Place on pizza slice. Fold slice. eat.

Considering how frequently he "plunge[d] into the fountain of love " it is quite surprising that he never got the [great] pox (syphilis). What he did get was "The malady with which Venus not infrequently repays those who worship at her Shrine", the Clap (gonorrhea). He tried various treatments for this, mostly trying to sleep with 'clean' women, rather then mercury or chili .

There are a few herbs and spices that scholars debate, but I don't recall which exact ones they were. A popular Roman spice, sylphium, is known to be extinct; it is thought that the last plant known was served to Nero. In later years the Romans discovered the Indian spice asafoetida (hing) which was a close substitute, and is available to this day (warning: there is a reason the name of the spice includes the word "foetid"...) ← Part of the issue is that there are so very few sources. Pliny mentions quite a bit of food related information and there is also Apicius, but other then that the references are few. It is also difficult to indentify things like spices from a description. So we may have the same spices/herbs but may not know it. It is odd that there are so few records on a people that where quite into food, one way or another. From the images (mostly on coins) sylphium is almost certainly a giant fennel of the Ferula genus (as is asafoetida). I have seen Ferula communis growing in Sicily and it looks just like the coin images (as it is toxic in makes it unlikely to be the original sylphium). Although, sylphium is often refered to as extinct, we don't actually know that, it could be locally extinct or it became difficult to obtain because of changing trade routes etc. but back to the original question. Peanut butter desserts floor me.

A serious error of judgement there - shouldn't the hand with the cayenne pepper on it be used exclusively to hold the pot (not the other way around)? ...must be all that port - got you muddled my dear boy... ← Obviously you don't go to the right sort of 18th century recreationist parties. Consider it as a poor-mans cantharide. Which on reflection would make pissing into a pot on the ground even more of a challenge....

It is legal to take a certain amount of both black and green lipped abalone from Victorian (Australia) waters. Unfortunately, there is a large amount of poaching as well. I knew somebody that studied them for their Ph.D., they developed a trick for making them tender. First catch you abalone, then turn it on its back, take a beer bottle (full), hit foot of abalone with beer bottle until it becomes floppy. Taste and texture remined me of other slightly chewy, slightly sweet shellfish like razor clams and soft-shelled clams.

Would you really like to stay in the same room as a bunch of drunken men pissing under the table into a small pot using one hand to pass the port and the other (no doubt covered in cayenne pepper from the Devils) to aim? If so, my tip would be to not wear suede shoes.

You are so right. I guess its all about context. Having said that, I'm a huge fan of outdated cookery books. Not so long ago I started collecting 18th century ones (mostly reprints). The idea was to create a Georgian meal for a number of my fellow nerdy historian friends. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't manage to squeeze a decent meal out of the first book I bought. Somehow inviting people round to eat Dry Devils (the first line of the recipe reads: 'These are usually composed of the broiled legs and gizzards of poultry, fish bones, or biscuits and sauce piquante') did not seem very hospitable of me. I've since purchased a few others with slightly more edible recipes. Bad books are written in every age unfortunately. The dry devils I have seen are ribs or chops, mixed with spice and then grilled. The problem with serving Devils and other savoury courses now is that the women have to be sent from the room. In general I have noticed that this practice does in fact piss off these women and they tend to complain a lot. Somthing to do with them being seperated from the port.

No need to go back to the '50's, Delia's first book "How to Cheat at Cooking" (1971) has a few such gems. But by and large most books have these types of recipes, things that seem good at the time, but with changing tastes look revolting or just naff. How many English cook books 1950-1980 had recipes for pigs trotters and sweetbreads? Not many I would guess, yet now these are un-surprising, if not common, ingredients. Pomegranate Gherkin Surprise could be marketed as a modern-chutney and if it were photographed on a white bistro plate next to a slab of middle-eastern influenced terrine with a few select micro-greens and a swirl of beetroot coulis it would no doubt be quite popular even now. edit: marketing deep fried brussel-sprouts is beyond me though

eunny - the pictures look great. I have seen similar egg stuffed raviolo recipes, except the egg is placed into a nest of ricotta (or similar cheese), sauce is very basic, sage and butter or butter and spices.

OK crème anglaise is milk and egg. What flavouring is authentic? At what point does the definition of the product end?

Alberto - I agree with these points, but in reference to a common definition, does there not come a point where rigid definitions are a negative? (Although clearly not in the present case, cream users should be shot). For example American expectations of a "pizza" are likely to be significantly different to that in Italy (or Naples v Siena). I guess the difficulty is balancing 'tradition' with 'innovation'. Why I value organisations like Slowfood et al., I wonder if in some ways a rigid definition of traditional is may actually be negative in some ways?

shurely shome mishtake ← Thank God I didn't mention the recipe for 'Cock ale to take away the plague'.

Thanx Jin . I should point out that the 17th century isn't Medieval (The USA wasn't colonized in the Medieval period for instance), although some of the food at that time is. Basically it was a time of transition, the food I cooked here would have been 'old fashioned' even at the time. The pie/pastry that I would have made if I could have got the ingredients was a breast of veal splinkled with mace and lemon slices, basted in butter and wrapped in a butter short crust pastry. This is much more modern, but come from the same recipe collection.

Ypocras (various spellings) is a spiced wine that is named after the Hippocrate's Sleave that is used to filter the wine. It was considered medicinal. Mulled wine is another similar spiced wine, but Ypocras isn't heated and not fortified. My I used a good cheap sweet wine from the south of France (userly would have been a dry wine which was sweeten with sugar) I added, Long Pepper, grains of paradise, cardamon, ginger and mace. This was left over night then filtered. I really liked it. Once you make the mazipan, the rest is the work of minutes. Split the batch in half colour one with cinnamon, ginger and mace, Slap together in layers, then slice. Dry out a little an that is it.

Interestingly list. Surprised to see Soyer there for instance and not some more recent chefs like Michel Guérard (or is he and the other N.C. dudes covered by the inclusion of Paul Bocuse?).

Since the Bronze turkeys are not exactly wild-type either, imagine that this makes them genetically engineered as well. Or maybe it doesn't matter is it was done 'in the time of our fore-fathers'. Bronze Turkeys I am very much in favour of the preservation (and eating) of older breeds, but mis-information is not helpful either.

Mabelline thank you. It is fun to do this stuff, but is always good to get nice comments back. The pie shell is exactly what would be called a coffin. Although, the black marker lines are not 'historical'. The fish where fun to make and it is a petty that the details don't show in the photographs. I made a salt-dough blank first, after this was dried I set it into plaster to make a mold, then I used this to mass produce gingerbread shapes.

Carolyn - thank you. Originally, I was very interested in the Medieval side of things, but as I read and cooked more have come to like this early-Modern period cooking more as non-food obsessed people tend to like it more. But it is fun to make historic food as it gives you a fresh idea of what it is like. The blamanger made from chicken meat, almond milk and sugar sounds terrible when read, but when made it tastes fine and I realised that it was very similar to some modern Turkish desserts. Ditto, when I was in Morocco I was constantly surprised how similar the food was to many early European recipes. Obviously, I shouldn't have been so surprised. re: leche lumbarde, if you call it "panna cotta" people it goes down very well!

Adam, thanks for the great pictures. I look at Odile Redon's "The Medieveal kitchen" about once a year looking for a stimulus to have a go at those interesting Historic recipes and who knows, your post might just be the shove I needed. Do you know if musk or amber can still be bought today? They pop up quite often in medieval dishes. ←

The diamonds are called "Kissing Comfits". They are made from sugar plate (basically pastilage) and would have been flavoured with musk or ambergris etc. There name tells you their function, they were mouth-fresheners. Sharkespeare mentions them in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" along with other sexually exciting things like the [candied sweet] potato. Normally they would not be that red I think and they were often stuck up-right into tarts etc to make them look more sexy. Sources for this were: Robert May, Hannah Woolley and William Rabisha.