Throughout the culinary literature there are references to cooks both eating and drinking too much. In his Ars magirica (Art of Cooking), Swiss author Iodoco Willich insisted that above all, to serve his master well, a cook must not be gluttonous, indulging his appetite whenever it strikes. Rather he should be “artful, experienced, laborious, ambitious, clean, and must excel in taste, but never gluttonous or voracious.”8 He
also described all the various equipment a cook must have: tripods, pots, pans, grates, plates, and even a bain marie, which is a kind of water bath or double boiler used by pharmacists that by the sixteenth century was working its way into kitchens.9
105. TO MAKE A TART OF PRUNES
England, 1540s or 50s (A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye, 68)
Take prunes and set them upon a chafer with a little red wyne, and putte therto a manchet, and let them boyle together, then drawe them throwe a streyner with the yolkes of foure egges and season it up with suger and so bake it.
It appears that the final texture of this tart should be smooth, and so cut- ting up the prunes before boiling with the manchet—a small white bread— will later make it easier to pass through a strainer. Although the recipe does not call for a crust, a few pages earlier in the book there is a recipe for “short paest for tarte” that is made with water, butter, a little saffron, and two egg yolks. It is rolled out very thin. A tart, made without a top crust, can be sliced and served, unlike many pies of this period.
Sweets
106. TO MAKE MOSTACCIOLI OF SUGAR
Italy, 1549 (Messisbugo, 40v)
Take 3 pounds of candied citron peel cut up minutely, 5 pounds of strained honey, five eighths of pepper, a scruple of saffron, three quarters of an ounce of
Then make your mostaccioli large or small as you please. But to cook them like pan pepato make each between 4 and 6 ounces each, not bigger.
The precise measurements for these cookies are terms used by apothe- caries. A pound actually contained 12 ounces. There are 8 drams in an ounce, 3 scruples per dram, and 20 grains per scruple. Few people today own a scale with such weights, and this recipe makes an enormous batch, so the follow- ing measurements have been reduced to one-fourth in quantity. Use 9 ounces of candied citron, 15 ounces of honey (about 1¼ cup), 1¾ ounces of pepper, a tiny pinch of saffron and a big pinch of cinnamon. If you can find musk, the proportion would be infinitesimal. Bake the mixture in any shape, in a mod- erate over about 300 degrees until crispy or in small round cakes. Pan pepato is a flat round cake of dried fruits and spices, a close relative of pan forte of Siena. These cookies are also used frequently in other recipes, ground up as a thickener, stuffing, and flavoring. The name mostaccioli comes from the word
must, meaning grape juice, with which they were probably originally made.
107. TO MAKE 10 PUFF-PASTRY PIZZAS
Italy, 1549 (Messisbugo, 43v)
Pull the soft interior out of four white breads and soak it in tepid water. Take 3 pounds of the finest wheat flour, ten egg yolks and a pound of fresh butter, three ounces of rose water and seven ounces of sugar. Mix everything together with the bread, making a dough. Roll it out into a sheet as you would a lasagna dough, and make it as light as you can. Then take a pound and a half of fresh butter, heated, and pour it over the sheet. Let it cool. Then roll a spiral pastry cutter the length of the sheet and cut it into ten pieces. Next make your puff pizzas. Have a pan ready with 4 pounds of fresh butter, and fry your puff pizzas in it. When they are fried, sprinkle a half pound of sugar over them.
The word “pizza” is used, though clearly it had a very different meaning in the past and in northern Italy. In fact, any little cake or pastry might be called a pizza. What is surprising is that both in boiled pasta and fried pastry, bread is used along with flour. This may have originated as a way to use up bread that had begun to go stale, though in wealthier households they would probably have used fresh bread as is indicated here by the fact that it is still soft. In either case, stale bread was a ubiquitous ingredient in the past.
108. COUNTERFEIT SNOW
France, 1555 (Livre fort excellent de cuisine, xlvii)
Take a quart of good fat milk. And it is necessary that it comes from a cow that has calved in the past year. Place within the said milk six egg whites and one or two ounces of rice flour, a quarter pound of powdered sugar beaten all together like butter. Skim what forms above. It is snow, place it in a plate.
This was a popular dish everywhere in Europe in the mid- sixteenth century. In English cookbooks it is placed on a sprig of rosemary stuck in an apple to create a little winter scene. Recipes differ from place to place, though. The starch in this one helps a foam form on top when it is beaten. (Else- where the dish is to be made with cream and egg whites, though to beat egg whites and cream together proves nearly impossible. Either authors miscopied instructions, or it was assumed that the two would be beaten separately and then folded together afterward.)
109. FOR TO MAKE WARDENS IN CONSERVE
England, 1540s or 50s (A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye, 78)
Fyrste make the syrope in this wyse, take a good quarte of good Romney, and putte a pynte of claryfyed honey, a pounde or a halfe of suger, and myngle all those together over the fyre, tyll tyme they seeth, and then set it to cole. And thys is a good sirope for many thinges, and will be kepte a year or two. Then take thy warden and scrape cleane awaye the barke, but pare them not, and seeth them in good redde wine so that they be wel soked and tender, that the wyne be nere hande soaked into them, then take and strayne them throughe a cloth or through a strainer into a vessel, then put to them of this syrope aforesayde tyll it be almost fylled, and then caste in the pouders, as fine canel, synamon, pouder of ginger, and such other, & put it in a boxes, and kepe it yf thou wylt, and make they Syrope as thou wylt worke in quantyte, as yf thou wylt worke twenty wardens, or lesse, as by experience.
Wardens are a variety of pear—any hard variety such as Bosc or Anjou should work well. Romney or Rumney was a sweet golden Greek wine, probably stored in vessels coated with resin, which was imported to England through the Middle Ages. The resin taste would meld very nicely with the sweetness of the honey, so Retsina, still made in Greece, should be a good approximation. The syrup is brought just to the boil (to seethe) and cooled. The bark of the pear here means the peel; the seeds and core can also be removed by cutting a cone out of the base of each pear. Other- wise, they should be left whole, with stems attached. The author distin- guishes between cinnamon and canella (“canel”)—which probably refers here to cassia, though it is often difficult to be sure about which spice early authors were using. As long as the pears are covered in the syrup in a well-sealed glass jar, they can be kept at room temperature. The part of the recipe referring to boxes appears to be garbled. Only candied fruit or fruit paste could be kept in boxes.
Dish of apples and “trees” with snow.
Drink
110. VERMILLION WINE
Switzerland, 1565 (Grataroli, 191–2)
To make vermillion or red wine: for four sarcinis of wine take thirty wild parsnips, which are called carrots, that are red, cook them under coals, as you do for a salad, then clean off the exterior peel, when this is done, then grate finely until you find white and place the gratings into a little cloth bag, and from the bottom of a vessel of wine to be colored draw off a big pot of wine, and into the pot put the bag, and soak it well, then squeeze it, and put the wine into the top of the vessel. You always draw off wine from the bottom and put it in above, or else the bag will not emit enough color. It will be good, beautiful and red wine.
This was a common trick, how to turn white wine red. Although it is not specifically stated here, the bag of grated carrots goes into the larger vessel with the smaller pot of wine. What sarcinis are is unknown. A barrel per se is not mentioned, but all wine containers would have had a spout to draw off wine and a “mouth” to add more. Carrots are not typically red today, so beets can be used. Grataroli also has many recipes for spiced and medicinal wines. One includes galangal, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, cinnamon, spikenard, citrus peel and honey. In others he includes long pepper, grains of paradise, and mace. Because so many combinations were possible, this seems to have been a matter of personal taste. He even has a recipe for instant wine, useful for sailors and travelers. It is basically fermented wine must cooked down, dried in the sun, and then pulverized. It is added to hot water and stirred and then ready to drink