Holiday Faire 2023 Dayboard – Lord Heinrich von Holstein

(Barony of Stierbach, Kingdom of Atlantia)

By Heinrich von Holstein

Concept

The event theme was a roughly 14th century German holiday festival. However, during my research and choosing recipes that were suitable for the time and budget available, the menu ended up being more of a mash-up of very classic dishes found all throughout 14th century Europe.

The first few items are simple hospitality basics that would be comfortable for the less adventurous eaters: bread, butter, cheese, cold-cuts, vegetable platters, and fruit. While not necessarily in period documentable forms, this is a populace dayboard first and foremost, not a personal A&S project.

Then we get into the classics, but with some accommodations. I prepared a Blancmange but left the chicken on the side, with an alternative of broiled mushrooms, so that the dish may be experienced by vegan guests who may otherwise not get the opportunity to try this traditionally chicken-based porridge. Compost, a relish of fruit and vegetables, is likewise vegan-friendly with the simple omission of honey. Finally, the Tender Chickpeas is another offering that has been well liked by vegans and non-vegans.

Along with the chicken and mushrooms, I offered some beef meatballs, store-bought for time and budget, as an additional sauce vehicle. For those I provided a home-made mustard, a honey-mustard sauce, and a “green sauce” of parsley and vinegar. The compost should also go well as a sauce/topping for any of these items.

Lastly, a sort of bread pudding directly from a German source, and marzipan candies which I had made before and were very popular.

Recipes

Blancmange

This is a very common 14th-15th century rice and chicken porridge. There are many recipes. The similarities are rice, sugar, chicken, sugar, and either cow’s milk or almond milk. I have followed a recipe by [1] Daniel Myers from MedievalCookery.com. However, I made a major departure from tradition, by making this a vegan blancmange. I am serving the chicken on the side and also some cooked mushrooms as a vegan alternative.

Rice
Almond milk
Sugar
Salt
Ginger
White pepper

Cook the rice per package directions. Add almond milk until porridge-like consistency (this may take several rounds of adding milk). Season to taste.

Compost

Compost is a fruit and vegetable dish that is also commonly written in medieval European cookbooks. Depending on the recipe or your particular desires, it can be a stew, a salad, or a relish. They all tend towards sweetness with the high fruit content and added sugar. I have chosen to start from a recipe by [2] Jennifer Marshall-Craig from MedievalCookery.com. My departures are the omission of parsley root/parsnips and figs due to availability and no honey to keep the dish vegan-friendly.

Carrots (“baby carrots”)
Cabbage (shredded)
Pears (canned)
Dates
Dried cherries
Mustard
Vinegar
Sugar
Cinnamon
Ginger
Cloves
Saffron
Fennel
Anise

Boil the carrots until tender. Retain some of the water and add the dried fruits, juice from the canned pears, sugar, mustard, vinegar and spices. Reduce until the sauce thickens a bit. Then add the cabbage and mix until well coated. When the cabbage is just a little soft,remove from heat and add the pears (canned pears are already cooked/soft).

Pickled Eggs

While the practice of pickling eggs was possibly much more widespread, the only direct recipe I have found from the 14th century is in an Egyption cookbook [3].

Baid Mukhallal – Take boiled eggs and peel and sprinkle with a little ground salt and Chinese cinnamon [cassia] and dry coriander. Then arrange them in a glass jar and pour wine vinegar on them, and put it up.

I followed this recipe with two exceptions. First, I added sugar because my vinegar was on the dry side. Then I added beets and beet juice because it dyes the eggs a festive pink/purple color.

Boiled eggs
Vinegar
Sugar
Cinnamon stick
Coriander seeds
Beets, sliced
Beet juice

Layer the eggs and beets in a jar. Boil the vinegar and spices a little bit to dissolve the sugar and impart flavor from the spices. Pour over the eggs while still hot (but not boiling). Refrigerate for 2-3 days and then serve sliced in half.

Tender Chickpeas

From the Andalusian text, [4] The Book of Sent Sovi:

If you want to prepare tender chickpeas, wash them well. Take almond milk. and cook them with the milk and oil and salt; and put in one or two onions scalded with boiling water. When they should be cooked, put in parsley, basil, marjoram and other good herbs, and a little ground ginger and a little sour grape juice. This is the way to cook them when they are tender, but not among the first 1

If you want to prepare the most tender ones, boil the almond milk with oil, salt, and new onions and the herbs listed above and ginger and sour grape juice. Put in the chickpeas, washed with hot water, and they’d be done right away.

In this way you can also prepare young broad beans; you can put in green coriander with some good spices, pepper, ginger, cinnamon

At the time of this feast, herb availability was pretty much limited to parsley. Sour grape juice (verjuice) is also hard to find and substituted with vinegar. I do follow the “most tender” double boiling method, but only water for the first boiling. I also reserve the onions and herbs until later in the cooking to keep them brighter.

Ingredients:

Chickpeas
Onions
Parsley
Olive oil
Salt
Ginger
Vinegar

Boil the chickpeas with a few quartered onions (leave the roots on for easy removal later), until the chickpeas are soft.. For the second boil, use almond milk, ginger, olive oil, and salt. Boil about an hour more, then add onions and vinegar to taste, then boil a bit longer. Garnish with parsley.

Mustard

Mustard is one of the most wide-spread and ancient condiments and there are countless recipes. Some of the most basic recipes are laid out in [5] La Menagier de Paris

If you wish to provide for keeping mustard a long time do it at wine-harvest in sweet must. And some say that the must should be boiled. Item, if you want to make mustard hastily in a village, grind some mustard-seed in a mortar and soak in vinegar, and strain; and if you want to make it ready the sooner, put it in a pot in front of the fire. Item, and if you wish to make it properly and at leisure, put the mustard-seed to soak overnight in good vinegar, then have it ground fine in a mill, and then little by little moisten it with good vinegar: and if you have some spices left over from making jelly, broth, hippocras or sauces, they may be ground up with it, and then leave it until it is ready.

The mustard served at this event is a blend of yellow seeds and black seeds. I have found that the vinegar used is very important for the quality of the mustard. While you need not use the most expensive variety you can find, it should be something with more flavor than distilled white vinegar.

Yellow mustard seeds
Black mustard seeds
White wine vinegar

Pour mustard seeds in a jar and cover with vinegar. Soak overnight. Seeds will expand some so you may need to add more vinegar. Then blend the ingredients until desired consistency. If the mustard is to be served alone, perhaps add more vinegar to make it looser. If it is to be used for another sauce, I would leave it as a thicker paste. For best result, leave in a refrigerator for 3 days before using.

I also included a honey-mustard sauce, consisting of the mustard above mixed with honey and the typical cinnamon-ginger-cloves found in “powder deuce” spice mix.

Green Sauce (Parsley Sauce)

[6] Sauce Percely

Take percely, and grynde hit with vynegre & a little brede and salt, and strayne is through a straynour, and serve it forthe.

A simple sauce of parsley, vinegar, and bread. Grinding and straining is a little time consuming, so I just use a blender.

Parsley
Vinegar
Bread

Combine and blend until smooth.

Bread Pudding

Wiltu machen gut kuchenn vonn eyerrn.

So nym eyer, wie vil du wilt, vnd zu slach die wol vnd schneid semel funf lot dar vnter vnd thue dar ein weinperr vnd schmalcz in ein pfannen, des genug sej, vnd geuﬂ die eyer dar ein vnd laﬂ es packenn ynnenn vnd aussenn. Do mit slach es auff ein panck vnd hack dar vnter gut wurcz vnd schneid es zu scheubenn vnd richt es an.

If you want to make a good cake out of eggs.

Take eggs, as many as you want, beat them well and cut into it five /lot/ [a unit of weight differing widely by region] of fine white bread. Put raisins into the batter. Heat lard in a pan, so that it is enough, and pour the egg into that and let it bake inside and out. With that lay it on a board and chop some spices onto it, cut it into slices and serve it. [7]

This recipe seems to describe an eggy bread pudding. While it does not specify if this is a sweet or savory dish, the author leaves spices up to the chef, and I feel like making it a sweet cake with sugar falls within that leeway.

My redaction:

Eggs
Bread (cubed)
Butter (in place of lard)
Sugar
Cinnamon
Ginger
Cloves

Butter a pan. Add the eggs, sugar, and spices. (The recipe says to add spices last, but this seems easier.) Cube the bread and mix it in. Bake until cooked.

Marzipan Candies

Marzipan is a very common confectionary in medieval times. While I did not make the marzipan myself, I have included a [8] recipe for completeness.

How to make a good Marchpaine.

First take a pound of long smal almonds and blanch them in cold water, and dry them as drye as you can, then grinde them small, and put no licour to them but as you must needs to keepe them from oyling, and that licour that you put in must be rosewater, in manner as you shall think good, but wet your Pestel therin, when ye have beaten them fine, take halfe a pound of Sugar and more, and see that it be beaten small in pouder, it must be fine sugar, then put it to your Almonds and beate them altogither, when they be beaten, take your wafers and cut them compasse round, and of the bignes you will have your Marchpaine, and then as soone as you can after the tempering of your stuffe, let it be put in your paste, and strike it abroad with a flat stick as even as you can, and pinch the very stuffe as it were an edge set upon, and then put a paper underit, and set it upon a faire boord, and lay lattin Basin over it the bottome upwarde, and then lay burning coles upon the bottom of the basin. To see how it baketh, if it happen to bren too fast in some place, folde papers as broad as the place is & lay it upon that place, and thus with attending ye shal bake it a little more then a quarter of an houre, and when it is wel baked, put on your gold and biskets, and stick in Comfits, and so you shall make a good Marchpaine. Or ever that you bake it you must cast on it fine Sugar and Rosewater that will make it look like Ice.

The term “comfits” was used to reference small pieces of fruits or whole spices coated in sugar. While I am not making my own comfits for this instance, I bought some candied fennel seeds often given out in Indian restaurants. The sugar coating is undoubtedly more modern looking, especially with food coloring, but the overall flavor and texture should be close enough to replicate the medieval experience of this candy.

Marzipan
Candied fennel
Rose water

Knead the candied fennel and rose water into the marzipan. Divide and roll into small balls. These candies can stick together, so I suggest partitioning them into paper candy cups.

Sources

[1] Blancmanger – Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

http://www.medievalcookery.com/recipes/blancmanger.html

[2] Vegetable Stew – Recipe by Jennifer Marshall-Craig, MedievalCookery.com

https://medievalcookery.com/recipes/display.html?vege1001

[3] Perry, Charles. “Kitab Wasf Al-At’ima Al-Mu’tada [The Description of Familiar Foods].” In Medieval Arab Cookery, by Maxime Rodinson, A.J Arberry, and Charles Perry, 373–450. Totnes, U.K.: Prospect Books, 2001.

[4] The Book of Sent Sovi Medieval Recipes from Catalonia

Edited by Joan Santanach

Translated by Robin M. Vogelzang

BARCINO, TAMESIS, 2008 Barcelona/Woodbridge

[5] Le Menagier de Paris, 1395, tr. Janet

Hinson (Lady Mairoli Bhan);

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/miscellany.html

[6] A Fifteenth Century Cookry Boke

Translation Anderson, John L. New York: Scribner,1962

[7] Das Kochbuch des Meisters Eberhard (15. Jh.) translated by Giano Balestriere.

Stefan’s Florilegium: https://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MANUSCRIPTS/Eberhard-art.html

[8] [A Book of Cookrye, by A. W., London, 1591. Originally published 1584. STC 24897 — Early English Text

microfilms reel 1613:9. Transcribed by Mark and Jane Waks.]

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