From the desks of Vatel, La Varenne, and Company

[C_Ruark]

This thread is a branch of the thread The romans ate Lark's Tongues?, or not. where does this come from?. Mid-thread I had queried readers to respond with some antique (17th to 19th century) or ancient (16th century and earlier) recipes they've collected over the years.

Let's see what y'all got...

After my signature, I'll start the collection off with a recipe from Francois Vatel a contemporary of La Varenne. The oldest verified recipe in my collection is believed to be the recipe for one of the dishes served in 1671at the last meal Chef Vatel prepared (we know he wrote the original recipe; we don't know if this is exactly what was served).

A bit of Vatel history: He decided to off himself when a prized filet of sole dish failed to be prepared. Seems a shipment of 16,000F-worth of fireworks got in the way of the fish delivery, so the legend goes.

Requests:

1. Please only reply with recipes which are creditable to an individual.

2. List the original ingredients, weights and measures, and method (if possible).

3. The youngest submission "should" pre-date Careme's L'art de la cuisine française au dix-neuvième siècle; credited as the 1st mass-published recipe book; circa 1833-1844.

4. Try to include a date and source if you can; else, estimate to the approximate decade when possible (e.g., 1620s, 1750s, etc.).

Many thanks in advance to the contributors!!!

Regards from DC,

Chris

Duck Sauteed in Madiera Wine a la Francois Vatel (from Daniel Rogov's Web Site)

Edited August 1, 2005 by Jason Perlow (log)

[chromedome]

Well, I own a copy of Apicius...he predates Careme by, what? 1400 years or so? Haven't cooked anything from that yet, though. And for those who are interested, the Forme of Cury is available for download from Project Gutenberg, as are several other older cookbooks. Haven't found time to go back and examine them thoroughly as yet, but I plan to download them all.

Not quite on topic, but offered FWIW.

[C_Ruark]

Well, I own a copy of Apicius...he predates Careme by, what? 1400 years or so?  Haven't cooked anything from that yet, though.  And for those who are interested, the Forme of Cury is available for download from Project Gutenberg, as are several other older cookbooks.  Haven't found time to go back and examine them thoroughly as yet, but I plan to download them all.

Not quite on topic, but offered FWIW.

←

ChromeDome,

If you've got examples... by all means... put them up on this thread. That would be appreciated. Having a read of the Forme de Cury now... quite an interesting. Many thanks!

Chris

Edited July 1, 2005 by C_Ruark (log)

[Eden]

Requests:

1. Please only reply with recipes which are creditable to an individual.

By "creditable to an indiviual" do you mean (for example) to yourself as in your modern interpretation of the dish, or to Mr. Vatel the original author as opposed to anonymous historical sources?

Re apicius, some of his recipes are wonderful. Dates stuffed with pine-nuts & fried in honey

[C_Ruark]

By "creditable to an indiviual" do you mean (for example) to yourself as in your modern interpretation of the dish, or to Mr. Vatel the original author as opposed to anonymous historical sources?

Re apicius, some of his recipes are wonderful.  Dates stuffed with pine-nuts & fried

in honey 

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Good point Eden... thanks for pointing that out; the measures are, of course, modern - my oversight. Responding to your note I'd like to go with the latter category "original author as opposed to anonymous historical sources". Again, this isn't meant to be a rule, but a request.

To help illustrate my goal I should point out that aside from the Vatel recipe, my practical knowledge (recipes) of antique/ancient culinary history/traditions stops dead at Careme, but the "Lark's Tongue" thread piqued my interest in collecting more recipes to get a "hands on" perspective of culinary history.

For instance; experts on Roman Antiquity note that "Apicius" identifies three men: A Roman Republican; Marcus Gabius Apicius; and the 5th century AD author (k/a Caeilus Apicius) of De re Coquinaria. Regarding the second individual, Pliny documented his technique of force-feeding geese with figs; foie gras' ancestor recipe? [Naturalis Historia 19:137]...

... but I don't have recipes.. yet.

I thought it would be cool to collect recipes from these very interesting figures and perhaps try them out.

C

Edited July 2, 2005 by C_Ruark (log)

[Eden]

Well to start off then, here's a nice Elizabethan recipe for all the lovely summer fruits available right now:

To Make all Maner of Fruite Tartes

You must boyle your fruite, whether it be apple, cherrie, peach, damson, peare, mulberie, or codling, in faire water, and when they be

boyled inough, put them into a bowle, and burse them with a Ladle, and when they be colde, straine them, and put in red wine, or

Claret wine, and so season it with suger, sinamon and ginger.

From 'The Good Huswifes Jewell', by Thomas Dawson, 1596.

Eden's summary: boil fruit, pull it out of the water, mush it, cool it, put it through a strainer/food-mill, add wine & spices. "Then put this mixture into a tart" is implied though not written out, and of course it's up to you to decide if you then bake that tart or if you put it in a prebaked crust and serve it as is...

[C_Ruark]

Well to start off then, here's a nice Elizabethan recipe for all the lovely summer fruits available right now...

←

Thanks Eden. That's the stuff I am looking for.

Chris

[Pan]

I misinterpreted "burse," but I understood everything else except "codling." What kind of fruit is that?

[C_Ruark]

I misinterpreted "burse," but I understood everything else except "codling." What kind of fruit is that?

←

Good question... "Codling" isn't mentioned in Larousse and googling didn't help.

Chris

[Pan]

C_Ruark, there's already a body of historical recipes on the web. I Googled "Elizabethan food" and found this site:

Elizabethan Food and Cooking

I then Googled "Elizabethan recipe*"

How's this?

A basic medieval cooking bibliography (some clickable, in English translation where originally in another language)

And here are results for a Google search on "ancient recipes." Some of the ancient recipes you'll access from the first page of results have already been covered on preexisting threads on this site.

Edited July 2, 2005 by Pan (log)

[anzu]

codling /coddling/codlin definition here.

Another source also mentioned them as 'apples suitable for coddling'. I.e. gently stewed (c/o coddled eggs for example).

Also the reference to apples turns up with coddling/coddlin moths (species of apple worm).

[C_Ruark]

C_Ruark, there's already a body of historical recipes on the web. I Googled "Elizabethan food" and found this site:

Elizabethan Food and Cooking

I then Googled "Elizabethan recipe*"

How's this?

A basic medieval cooking bibliography (some clickable, in English translation where originally in another language)

And here are results for a Google search on "ancient recipes." Some of the ancient recipes you'll access from the first page of results have already been covered on preexisting threads on this site.

←

Hi Mike,

Appreciate the references you've passed, I'll have a look... at first glance, I see some reading material. Thanks!

I hope this thread isn't too whimsical/redundant, but one of the things I've noticed about googling recipes is often I don't seem to get results which include measures. And Larousse has a great deal of biographical information about the past masters but very few recipes.

My latest example of coming up short: Taillevent... it may be a function of how his recipes were recorded, but very rarely do I see measures and methods that have any sort of definition. Those that I do see are often recipes from Restaurant Taillevent/Paris (and Tokyo). I thought that perhaps I could use this thread as a "wikipedia" of sorts to collect actual recipes.

Many thanks for your help,

Chris

[Adam Balic]

codling /coddling/codlin definition here.

Another source also mentioned them as 'apples suitable for coddling'. I.e. gently stewed (c/o coddled eggs for example).

Also the reference to apples turns up with coddling/coddlin moths (species of apple worm).

←

Prospect Books has a very good glossary of 17-18th century English cooking terms.

Codlings were apples that were poached "coddled", while still hard and green. Effort was made to keep the green colour. Discriptions of the apples suggest a pear shaped fruit, but Bramley apples are often cited as a modern codling type (although they don't retain their shape when cooked, so I doubt this).

[Pan]

Chris, I indeed look forward to whatever you can come up with.

And I certainly see your point about measures. Sometimes, one has to go beyond the obvious when dealing with ancient notation. When I was in graduate school, one well-known musicologist who shall remain nameless taught a course in early plain chant notation. His claim -- and according to my schoolmates who took the course, the main basis of the course -- was that it was absolutely impossible for anyone to figure out what the duration of the notated notes was, though their pitches are clear. This might be analogous to dealing with ancient recipes that give ingredients but lack obvious written amounts. And I submit that the nameless professor's approach is a non-starter and no basis for useful scholarship or thinking at all. For the performer and the cook who desire to revive in a workable way ancient music and dishes that have come down to us in a less-than-obvious notation, while they should concede that it will never be possible to know whether their solution is in fact how someone might have executed the recipe in those days, throwing up their hands at the futility of it all is nihilistic. Don't get me wrong: That doesn't mean that anyone has the personal responsibility to undertake the challenge. But a worthy challenge it is, and there are ways to go about it. I have a better idea of how to do this with music than with cooking, but I do think the analogy has some basis, and I'm sure Adam will have comments about the challenge and pleasure of reconstructing dishes from more or less vague-seeming recipes.

Edited July 2, 2005 by Pan (log)

[mrsadm]

Chris, will you be listing them on a web site, or somehow sharing them with others?

[Adam Balic]

C_Ruark, there's already a body of historical recipes on the web. I Googled "Elizabethan food" and found this site:

Elizabethan Food and Cooking

I then Googled "Elizabethan recipe*"

How's this?

A basic medieval cooking bibliography (some clickable, in English translation where originally in another language)

And here are results for a Google search on "ancient recipes." Some of the ancient recipes you'll access from the first page of results have already been covered on preexisting threads on this site.

←

Hi Mike,

Appreciate the references you've passed, I'll have a look... at first glance, I see some reading material. Thanks!

I hope this thread isn't too whimsical/redundant, but one of the things I've noticed about googling recipes is often I don't seem to get results which include measures. And Larousse has a great deal of biographical information about the past masters but very few recipes.

My latest example of coming up short: Taillevent... it may be a function of how his recipes were recorded, but very rarely do I see measures and methods that have any sort of definition. Those that I do see are often recipes from Restaurant Taillevent/Paris (and Tokyo). I thought that perhaps I could use this thread as a "wikipedia" of sorts to collect actual recipes.

Many thanks for your help,

Chris

←

The older "recipes" are more memory aids, rather then what we would think of as a modern recipe. So modern versions are going to involve guess work.

I am interested in 16-18th century British food.

One recent recipe

Elizabeth Raffald’s Experienced English Housekeeper, published in 1769:

A Lemon Pudding

"Blanch and beat eight ounces of Jordan almonds with orange flower water. Add to them half a pound of cold butter, the yolks of ten eggs, the juice of a large lemon, half the rind grated fine, work them in a marble mortar or wooden basin until they look white and light. Lay a good puff paste pretty thin in the bottom of a china dish and pour in your pudding. It will take half an hour baking".

I think that there is an error in this recipe as there is no mention of a sweetening agent. Here recipes for similar puddings contain sugar. With out the sugar the mixture is very tart. In the 18th C., puff paste was used pretty much as we would use short crust, hence using it to line the dish. Part of its function was to keep the filling in, as the filling expanded, the outer crust kept pace with it. The function of the orange flower water is to stop the almonds oiling when beaten in a motar. This isn't an issue when using a modern blender, but the flavour is nice.

My Pudding.

225 gm of blanched almonds

125 gm usalted butter

10 egg yolks

100 gm of sugar

rind of a lemon

juice of half the lemon

orange flower water.

1. Grind almonds finely in food processor. Place almonds, egg yolks, butter and sugar in a basin. Use an electric beater to cream these ingredients.

2. Mix in lemon rind and juice. Add orange flower water to taste (userly a few drops only).

3. pour into a blind baked shortcrust tart shell of what ever recipe you use and bake for 30' at 180.C or until firm and golden brown on top. Serve at room temp.

In the tart above I added raspberries to the tart shell before adding the batter. You could use other fruit as well. Blueberries or apricot halves would be good.

[Pan]

Modern recipes also contain errors, sometimes serious ones. Experience helps cooks to figure out what is missing.

[Eden]

Modern recipes also contain errors, sometimes serious ones. Experience helps cooks to figure out what is missing.

And with historical sources we also have the problem of transcription error (trust me it happens both by accident & deliberately)

Adam that tart looks lovely!

By the way does anyone know when the term 'jordan almonds' took on the modern meaning of 'sugared almonds'? The OED doesn't say (does that mean this is an Americanism?) nor does 'The Oxford Companion to Food' or Larousse.

Chris, Taillevant and his contemporaries just don't give amounts (with 1 or 2 rare exceptions.) If you want more specific recipes you have to go post 1500, but there are some great dishes waiting if you're willing to work around the vagueness of earlier recipes.

An interesting challenge in reverse is the 16th c. Moghul 'Ain-i-akbari' which gives very exact quantities, but absolutely NO instructions on what to do with them. for example:

"Harisa: 10 s. meat: 5 s. crushed wheat; 2 s. ghi; 1/2 s. salt; 2 d. cinnamon: this gives five dishes."

(s.=ser=2 lb 2 oz, and d.=dam=.7 oz)

that's it there's no other info. You can extrapolate from modern Harissa dishes, based on the name, but you just don't know how much it might have changed over time. (Look at gingerbread & blancmange which are so different from their original versions, but still retain the names...)

Here's an excellent bibliography of historical cooking sources, though relatively few are in English.

[C_Ruark]

Chris, will you be listing them on a web site, or somehow sharing them with others?

←

Umm... doing that already . Just kidding.

I was just made aware that we should use RecipeGullet to store this information when possible.

Chris, Taillevant and his contemporaries just don't give amounts (with 1 or 2 rare exceptions.) If you want more specific recipes you have to go post 1500, but there are some great dishes waiting if you're willing to work around the vagueness of earlier recipes.

Eden, thanks for that tidbit of insight. Again, my novice understanding of culinary history just got a bit more informed. I appreciate that.

Agree with you as well, Adam's lemon tart is an eye-pleaser. Saw that one on his "High-Risk Cooking" thread. Very Nice. I've got a few friends who would enjoy this dessert.

I don't have a "gameplan" of sorts for what to do with contributions, but I do have an idea. When the right recipe comes along, I'll take it into my test kitchen and produce an essay and post it here or in another more appropriate thread. I hope that others might consider doing the same.

Just an idea.

Chris

Edited July 2, 2005 by C_Ruark (log)

[Adam Balic]

Adam that tart looks lovely!

By the way does anyone know when the term 'jordan almonds' took on the modern meaning of 'sugared almonds'?  The OED doesn't say (does that mean this is an Americanism?) nor does 'The Oxford Companion to Food' or Larousse.

As far as I can tell it is an Americanism. As you know Jordan dervives from Jardin (garden) and refers to a type of sweet almond, nothing to do with Jordan. In the UK the almond confits would be called sugared almonds, sugar plums or lambs tails (a rough textured comfit).

I imagine that the change occured through 'to sugar jordan almonds' being reduced to to 'jordan almonds'.

[Adam Balic]

The white lumps in the foreground are almond comfits from a 17th century meal I did a while ago. I will post the recipe when I remember what box it is in.

Details on comfit making

Edited July 3, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[Eden]

So here's the recipe I'm in the midst of playing with. My first draft I didn't soak the bread crumbs very long and I used regular honey. Round two will be closer to the text, and probably have a better consistency, but I can tell you after taking the draft version to a potluck tonight that the name actually derives from how people fall upon the plate and devour them like locusts!

I'll post the recipe once I've refined it a little bit more...

From an anonymous andalusian cookbook of the 13th century

Translated by Charles Perry, Webbed here.

Preparation of Juraydât , Small Locusts*

Take bread from white semolina, take it outside and put it in the sun until

it dries. Grind it and sieve it, soak it in oil and leave it a day and a

night. Throw on thickened honey, after scattering on it, and knead it with

pepper and enough spices to make it into round hazelnuts [or meatballs], God

willing.

*Evidently the little lumps of breadcrumbs, honey and spices looked like locusts to people. (CP)

edited for typo in link.

Edited July 7, 2005 by Eden (log)

[anzu]

I have a (historical) variation on this recipe somewhere or other (digging it out from the mounds of paper it is buried among would take more time than I can spare right now), that adds a tiny bit of rose water into the mix.

Are you still in the midst of playing around with the recipe? If you have have rose water at home, would you maybe be interested in trying a little with that variation and reporting back?

BTW, I couldn't get your link to work.

[Adam Balic]

If you look in the image above you will see a vaguely goldfish shaped golden brown lump. This is gingerbread and is essentially the same as you Al-andalus recipe (Apart from the inclusion of wine). Basically, bread crumbs will spice, honey and wine.

[Eden]

If you look in the image above you will see a vaguely goldfish shaped golden brown lump. This is gingerbread and is essentially the same as you Al-andalus recipe (Apart from the inclusion of wine). Basically, bread crumbs will spice, honey and wine.

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I don't know about the 17th c. version, but the medieval gingerbread which runs along the same lines is actually cooked after everything is mixed together. The "Locusts" are not. Otherwise yes they're very similar.

I also made (though they were not as successful) little braided semolina breads drizzled with spiced honey. The interesting thing in that recipe is that lavendar was one of the spices in the honey mix. (lavendar is called for in several Al-Andalus recipes including sausage ) but once it was ground up & mixed in with the various other spices you really couldn't pick out the lavendar taste, there was just this underlying headiness in the flavor.

Dafâir/Braids

They were sprinkled with pearl sugar, and, as you can see from the little yellow flecks, contain a TON of saffron in the bread itself.

the saffron was just a bit too intense IMO, and while lovely when fresh from the oven they took on a rubbery texture when they cooled. The original text deep fried them and I was trying a baked variation to see if they could be served cold...