Christmas pie for diabetics

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner
Eating his Christmas pie,
He put in his thumb and pulled out a cranberry
And said “What a good boy am I!”

Wanting to try other pies for my family and use splenda because my hubby is diabetic, I give you my latest work, the Cranberry Buttermilk Pie. I was going to make Chess pie, but with most recipes, corn syrup was called for and that is a no-no for diabetics. However, I didn’t want to make just a plain buttermilk pie, so I decided to add something very much associated with Christmas, the cranberry. The tartness of the cranberries blends well with the sweetness of the buttermilk filling.

My recipe:

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup Splenda [if you wish to use regular sugar, use 1 1/3 cups sugar]
3 eggs, separated
3 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp grated lemon peel
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch of salt

If you wish just to make a plain buttermilk pie, stop here and use 1 9 inch pie shell.

If you with to make the Cranberry pie, use two 12 oz bags of fresh cranberries and two 9 inch pie shells.

Cream the butter and sugar; add the egg yolks, beating after each addition. Beat in flour and buttermilk; add the lemon juice, lemon peel, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt. Beat egg whites until stiff; fold into the filling.

For the cranberry pie, place one bag of cranberries into each pie crust. Pour half the filling into each pie shell, gently folding the filling around the cranberries; bake in center of a preheated 325º over, until the custard is set and slightly brown, about 1 hour.

Daz buoch von guoter spise

For the person that wants to cook historically, it’s certainly a real challenge.  There are a number of types of enthusiasts out there with varying levels of involvement, i.e. “how much time and money do I want to put into cooking historically?”  Some people love going to the library (yes, Virginia, those things are still around) and research old texts, while others would prefer finding recipes online.

With the internet, there has been a great insurgence of information, which is both good and bad.  Sometimes you have to wade through the bad stuff to get to the good.  Things that you would think would be online, just aren’t on, and well… I think most people that have been online for research, get this.

Daz buoch von guoter spise, is a German manuscript dated between 1345 and 1354, which the original being in the university library at Munich.  The translation is over here if you are looking for some Historical German recipes to have some fun with.  These aren’t redacted, but at least they give you some ideas of what to use.

Drunken Pears

By Mercy Asakura

“Now, Sire,” quod she, “for aught that may bityde,
I moste haue of the peres that I see,
Or I moote dye, so soore longeth me
To eten of the smalle peres grene.”
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
(l. 14,669), The Merchant’s Tale

Homer considered the Pear God’s gift to humanity. In the 17^th Century, the pear was the fruit of the nobility and European courts and in the 18^th Century was the hayday of development of the fruit in France and Belgium.

Following along with my “romance” theme and since Pears are in season, I came across this recipe in “Dinning with William Shakespeare” that would make a terrific dessert to a romantic meal.

And when you mix wine with a pear, how can you lose?

TO STEW WARDENS OR PEARS

Pare them, put them into a Pipkin, with so much Red or Claret Wine and water… as will near reach to the top of the Pears.  Stew or boil gently, till they grow tender, which may be in two hours.  After a while, put in some sticks of Cinnamon bruised and a few cloves.  When they are almost done, put in Sugar enough to season them well and their Syrup, which you pour out upon them in a deep plate.

Sir Kenelme Digbie, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Senelme Digbie, Kt., Opened

From “Dinning with William Shakespeare” page 372

Poaching Pears in red wine is not a new technique in history, nor to this English period, per Madge Lorwin.  She states that there was at least one other recipe dating back to the middle of the 15^th century with the same sort of technique.

The Redaction:

2 Cups Red Wine or Claret
2 Cups Water
1 Pound of Pears, peeled & thinly sliced
1 three-inch cinnamon stick, bruise before using
10 Cloves
1 cup sugar

Find a Pipkin (a clay cooking pot) or a casserole dish and place the pears within.  Put in bruised cinnamon stick and cloves.  Pour in the wine and water.  Place in oven at 350 degrees, covered for 4 hours.  Dump in sugar. Mix, remove from heat and serve.

Options:

We left ours in for four hours and as you can see by the recipe, we put the cinnamon and cloves in with the wine and the water to stew and poach.  I thought this gave a really great flavor.  You can always do as the original recipe says and put the cinnamon and cloves in last.

I would think not covering would speed up the cooking/poaching process.  Since we had a pipkin, we thought we would slow cook it and really get it going in the best way possible.

It’s great by itself, but I can see this wonderful with ice cream (since there is a syrup that is created by the poaching liquid) or with Angel food cake.  Neither are historically correct ways of eating it, but it would be VERY yummy.

Peeling the pears in slow motion…

HOW TO FRY A DISH OF CHEESE

By Mercy Asakura

With February slowly approaching, thoughts of romance abound.  Shakespeare was quite the man with the golden tongue and had a way with words.

The book “Dining with William Shakespeare” by Madge Lorwin has 13 complete Shakespearean feast menus, essays, many recipes and comments about Elizabethan England.  I decided to look through this book and pick something from it that was sort of a mixture of Shakespeare’s romance and something that could be a “romantical” food.

Cheese is one of those foods, at least in my mind, that pairs well with romance.  Wine and cheese.  It could be a textile food, eaten with the hands.  And well, most people love cheese.  So, well, that’s at least my logic when I can across this simple, yet delicious recipe.

HOW TO FRY A DISH OF CHEESE

Take a quarter of a pound of a good Cheese, or Parmysant, and grate it and put to it a little grated bread, a few Caraway seeds beaten, the yokes of as many eggs as will make it into a stiff batter, so it will not run, fry it brown in Butter, and pour on drawn Butter with claret wine when they are dished.

William Rabisha, The whole Body of Cookery Dissected

Page 330 of Dining with William Shakespeare

The Redaction:

¼ Pound of Grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup Bread Crumbs
9 egg yokes
Pinch of Caraway seeds (slightly crushed)
2 tablespoons Ghee or Clarified Butter

Take Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and caraway seeds and put them into a bowl, mixing them together.  Once ingredients are combined, add egg yokes until total mixture is moist.

Take frying pan and use ghee as the fat.  Form little pancakes and brown each side of your cheese-bread cake.  Take off flame and drain on paper towels.

We didn’t make the “sauce” mentioned, as the cheesy goodness called to us, but we did try using cheddar cheese, which worked fine as well.

Lamb Samosas

Lamb Samosas

From the Sultan's Book of Delights (late fifteenth century).

Another kind of Ghiyath Shahi's samosas: take finely minced deer meat and flavour ghee with fenugreek and, having mixed the mince with saffron, put it in the ghee.  Roast salt and cumin together.  Having added cumin, cloves, coriander and a quarter of a ratti of musk to the mince, cook it well.  Put half of the minced onion and a quarter of the minced dry ginger into the meat.  When it has become well-cooked, put in rosewater.  Take it off and stuff the samosas.  Make a hole in the samosa with a stick and fry it in sweet-smelling ghee and serve it (when) tender.  By the same method of any kind of meat that is desired, can be made.

Ingredients:

Filling:

1 lbs ground lamb
1 tbsp ghee or clarified butter
1 tsp ground fenugreek
1/4 tsp saffron
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp coriander
1 large sweet onion, minced [1 cup approx.]
1/4 cup minced fresh ginger
1 tbsp rose water

Put ghee in a large frying pan and add fenugreek and saffron, stirring for a few minutes.  Add lamb and start to brown. Add salt, cumin, cloves, coriander onion and ginger, stirring until the meat is brown and fragrant.  Add rose water and remove from heat.

Pastry:

Ingredients:

2 cups unbleached flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp ghee or clarified butter
1/2 to 3/4 cup water

Sift flour and salt together. Make a well in the center of the mixture and quickly pour in ghee and water. Stir briskly until combined, gradually adding more water if necessary. You should aim for a slightly moist dough that sticks together. On a lightly floured surface, knead dough for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic, cover with damp towel.

Assembly:

To assemble samosa, break off pieces of dough (leaving what's left under the towel) and shape into balls. Roll each ball into a circle about 1/10 of an inch thick and 5 inches across. Cut the circle in half. In one side put filling, fold half of the half circle over to make a triangle. Seal by brushing a bit of water along the edges and pinching it together with your finger.  Heat 2 inches ghee in a skillet or pan to 375 degrees. Put in samosas and let it fry to a golden brown on each side. Then drain on cloth or paper towel and eat.

Note:  I didn't experiment with the roasting cumin and salt together.  But I added both to the filling.  I didn't have any musk to add and couldn't think of an adequate substitute, so I left it out.  I followed a modern Indian recipe for the pastry since the original was so vague

Leche Lumbard

By: Mercy Asakura

Here is my first recipe post which I think is fitting for the first of the year.  I did this one many years ago and it’s the first recipe/redaction I have actually found.  Unfortunately my stash of recipes are lost.  Hopefully I will uncover them soon.

Here is the basics:

http://www.godecookery.com/incrd/incrd.htm#007

Leche Lumbard – from Forme of Cury:

66. Leche Lumbard. Take rawe pork and pulle of the skyn, and pyke out esynewes, and bray the pork in a morter with ayron rawe. Do erto sugur, salt, raysouns coraunce, dates mynced, and powdour of peper, powdour gylofre; & do it in a bladder, and lat it see til it be ynowhgh. And whan it is ynowh, kerf it; leshe it in liknesse of a peskodde; and take grete raysouns and grynde hem in a morter. Drawe hem vp wi rede wyne. Do erto mylke of almaundes. Colour it with saundres & safroun, and do erto powdour of peper & of gilofre and boile it. And whan it is boiled, take powdour canel and gynger and temper it vp with wyne, and do alle ise thynges togyder, and loke at it be rennyng; and lat it not see after at it is cast togyder, & serue it forth.

Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). London: For the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

Gode Cookery translation: Take raw pork and pull off the skin, and pick out the sinews, and pound the pork in a morter with raw eggs. Do there to sugar, salt, currants, minced dates, and powder of pepper, powder cloves; & do it in a bladder, and let it boil til it be done. And when it is done, carve it; slice it in the likeness of a peaspod; and take great raisins and grind them in a morter. Blend it with red wine. Do there to milk of almonds. Color it with sandlewood & saffron, and do there to powder of pepper & of cloves and boil it. And when it is boiled, take cinnamon powder and ginger and mix it up with wine, and do all these things together, and look that it be rennet (coagulated); and let it not boil after that it is cast together, & serve it forth.

My Redaction:

Meatloaf –

1 Lbs Ground Pork

1 Egg

4 Tbs currants

1/2 little box raisins

6 Large dates, pitted and minced

1/4 tsp Sugar

1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped

1/8 tsp black Pepper

1/8 tsp salt

Sauce –

2 cups Almond Milk

1/2 cup Red Wine

1/2 little box of raisins

3 strands of saffron

1/8 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped

1/8 tsp ginger

For meatloaf:

1.  Take all of the ingredients and mix them up in a bowl together.  Try to get a consistent mixture so that all the fruit and spices are distributed

evenly.

2.  Cover a baking sheet with tin foil and form meat mixtures into a shape (if you want to see the original directions for peaspod, please go to the website stated above).  Mine was a sun.  I tried to keep it no taller/thicker than an inch and a half so everything cooked evenly.

3.  Put in oven at 350 degrees for roughly 35 minutes.  I originally made a 2-pound batch, which I left in for 40 minutes, which was a little too long for my tastes (turned a little dry).  It should be a light golden brown.

Sauce:

1.  Place in saucepan everything but the ginger and rosemary.  Bring to a boil, and then bring temperature down to a simmer.  Allow to boil down for at least 20 to 30 minutes.

2.  Near the end of the simmering, add ginger and rosemary.  Because mine didn’t thicken, I added about 1 tablespoon arrowroot, but when I did it the second time, it thickened.  So go figure.

Plating the Meal:

1.  Clean the excess fat off of the meatloaf and then put in the center of a large plate.

2.  Pour sauce around the loaf (not over).

3.  Serve it forth.

When I cook I do fudge the measurements depending on the taste as I cook it. I realize that the first time I added a lot more pepper than noted above because I like pepper.  Also, I don’t like wine sauces, so I added more almond milk to balance off the wine flavor.  You can change things where you see fit.

Several Elizabethan recipes that I have redacted

From John Murrell, “A Booke of Cookerie”, 1621

How to butter a colleflowre.

Take a ripe Colle-flowre and cut off the buddes, boyle then in milke with a little Mace while they be very tender, then poure them into a Cullender, and let the Milke runne cleane from them, then take a ladle full of Creame, being boyled with a little whole Mace, putting to it a Ladlefull of thicke butter, mingle them together with a little Sugar, dish up your flowres upon sippets, poure your butter and cream hot upon it strowing with a little slicst Nutmeg and salt, and serve it to the Table hot.

My redaction:

1 cauliflower, at least 5 inches in diameter

3 cups of whole milk

1 large piece of whole mace

1 cup cream

1 stick unsalted butter [if using salted butter, eliminate the salt]

1 large piece of whole mace [different from above]

1 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1/8 tsp nutmeg

4 slices hot buttered toast, cut into triangles.

Cut cauliflower into small florets and remove any green leaves and the thick base. Heat the milk with mace to just below the boiling point and add the florets. Lower the heat to simmer and cook until tender but still crisp, about 12 to 15 min.

While that is cooking, take the cream, butter, another piece of whole mace and sugar and bring to just below boiling.

Arrange the toast on a heated serving dish. Remove the cauliflower from the milk and arrange them on the toast. Pour the sauce over them and sprinkle them with salt and nutmeg and serve hot.

To make a tarte of Spinnage    [From The good huswifes Jewell. 1596]

Take three handfull of Spinnage, boile it in faire water, when it is boyled, put away the water from it and put the spinnage in a stone morter, grind it smal with two dishes of butter melted, and four rawe egges, then straine it and season it with sugar, Sinamon and ginger, and lay it in your Coffin [pie crust], when it [the crust] is hardened in the oven, then bake it and when it is enough, serve it upon a faire dish, and cast upon it Sugar and Biskets.

My redaction:

Pie Crust
1 package 12 oz fresh baby spinach
9 eggs
8 oz melted butter
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger

Line a 9″ pie pan with pie crust.  Blind bake it for 15 min in a preheated 450 degree oven.
Take spinach and boil in a saucepan with a cup of water for 10 to 15 min. until tender.  Drain and grind in a morter until smooth.  Mix eggs, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and ginger together. [I used a mixer on high.]  Add spinach and mix until eggs are somewhat fluffy.  Pour mixture into prepared pie crust and bake 30 to 40 min. in a 350 degree oven.  Sugar may be strewn on top just before serving.  [I didn't.]

To boile onions [From The good huswifes Jewell. 1596]

Take a good many onions and cut them in four quarters, set them on the fire in as much water as you think will boile them tender, and when they be clean skimmed, put in a good many raisons, halfe a grose pepper, a good peece of sugar, and a little salte, and when the onions be through boiled, beat the yolke of an Egge with Vergious, and put into your pot and so serve it upon soppes.  If you will, poch Egges and lay upon them.

My redaction:

3 large sweet onions, pealed and quartered.
8 oz. raisins
1 tsp. pepper
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
16 oz water
Toasted bread for sops
3 hard boiled eggs, sliced

Throw first six ingredients into a crock pot and boil on high for 7 hours.  Serve with the sops and decorate with sliced eggs.

This was the last item that I made.  I almost decided not to make this as it was late and I was very tired.  I didn’t relish standing over a hot stove watching this boil.  Just as I was about to go to bed, the thought occured to me that I could make this in a crock pot and still get some sleep.  I decided to hard boil the eggs as I thought it would be prettier to decorate with them than with a poached egg.  I also didn’t thicken this dish, because the onions remained so large.  If they had mushed up, I would have added the thickener.  The next time I make this, I will chop the onions finer.  While this dish tasted very good, the large pieces of onion were somewhat hard to keep on the sops.  But that is just a personal choice for me.

To make red deere [From The good huswifes Jewell. 1596]

Take a legge of beef, and cut out all the sinews clean, and take a roling pin and all to beate it, then perboile it, and when you have so doon lard it very thick and lay it in wine or vinegar for two or three howers, or a whole nigh, then take it out & season it with peper, salt, cloves and maice, then put it into your past, & so bake it.

My redaction:

4 small steaks tenderized by the butcher
1/4 bottle of claret
4 or 5 strips of bacon
Pie Crust
1 tsp each salt, pepper, ground cloves and ground mace.

Put steaks in a dish or pan and marinate them with the claret for two or three hours.  Take an 8.5×11″ pan and line the bottom with pie crust.  Place your steaks into the crust, sprinkle with spices and then lay bacon on top of steaks.  Place another crust on top of the meat and seal the top and bottom together.  Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 min., then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for a further 60 min.  May be served either hot or cold.

My Lord of Carlisle’s Sack-Posset

Written by: Mistress Huette

Take a pottle of Cream, and boil in it a little whole Cinnamon, and three or four flakes of Mace. To this proportion of Cream put in eighteen yolks of eggs, and eight of the whites; a pint of Sack; beat your eggs very well, and then mingle them with your Sack. Put in three quarters of a pound of Sugar into the Wine and Eggs, with a Nutmeg grated, and a little beaten Cinnamon; set the Bason on the fire with the Wine and Eggs, and let it be hot. Then put in the Cream boiling from the fire, pour it on high, but stir it not; cover it with a dish, and when it is settlede, strew on the top a little fine Sugar mingled with three grains of Ambergreece, and one grain of Musk, and serve it up. From Sir Kenelm Digby The Closet (London: 1671)

1 pint cream
18 egg yolks
8 egg whites
1 cup + 1 tsp granulated sugar
1 whole mace
1 stick cinnamon
2 tsp nutmeg, grated
1 tsp cinnamon, grated
1 pint cream sherry

Scald the cream in a pan with the whole mace and stick cinnamon. Beat egg whites until frothy. Beat egg yolks until lemon colored. Fold in together and then fold in one cup sugar and grated spices. Remove mace and cinnamon from cream. Temper eggs with a bit of cream, then mix the cream and egg mixture together continually beating all the time. Place over a medium-low heat and cook until mixture coats the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat and add the sherry. Pour into posset pots and let cool somewhat, allowing it to settle/separate. Sprinkle one tsp sugar on top of all and serve. I have deliberately left off the ambergris and the musk, as I don’t like the taste, they are hard to find, and are expensive. This posset tastes just fine without them.

A well made posset was said to have three different layers. The uppermost, known as ‘the grace’ was a snowy foam or aerated crust. In the middle was a smooth spicy custard and at the bottom a pungent alcoholic liquid. The grace and the custard were enthusiastically consumed as ‘spoonmeat’ and the sack-rich liquid below drunk through the ‘pipe’ or spout of the posset pot. At weddings a wedding ring was sometimes thrown into the posset. It was thought that the person who fished it out would be the next to go to the altar.

The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, defines posset as a drink composed of hot milk curdled with ale, wine, or other liquor, often with sugar, spices, or other ingredients; formerly much used as a delicacy, or as a remedy for colds or other affections. Its use predates Digby by a couple hundred years; it was referenced in the mid-1400s by J. Baker’s Boke of Nurture. It said, Milke, crayme, and cruddes, and eke the Ioncate, they close a mannes stomake and so doth the possate. (Translation: Milk, cream, and curds, and also the junket, they close a man’s stomach, and so does the posset.)

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat

Happy times to everybody!  I have some really retro recipes to make your dinners merry and bright.  Caution:  you might receive compliments like “this is how my grandmother made it!”

MINCE MEAT FOR PIES
Curtis & Lee Family Recipe, c. 1760, from Chester, Virginia
[Collected in THE WILLIAMSBURG ART OF COOKERY, Copyright 1938]

Simmer two Pounds of Beef slowly until tender; cool and chop fine. Mix with it two Pounds of stoned Raisins; two Pounds of seedless Raisins, two Pounds of cleaned Currants; one Pound of finely cut Citron; one and a half Pounds of finely cut candied Lemon-peel; four Pounds of Apples which have been peeled, cored and cut fine; two Pounds of finely chopped Beef-suet; two Pounds of light brown Sugar; one Tablespoon each of Cloves and Mace; two Tablespoons of Cinnamon; two grated Nutmegs and one Teaspoon of Salt. Mix all together well, add one Pint of Brandy. Store in a covered stone Jar in a cool Place.

A POUND PLUM-PUDDING
Mrs. Beeton’s, 1859; Recipe No. 1329

Ingredients.– 1 lb. of suet, 1 lb. of currants, 1 lb. of stoned raisins, 8 eggs, 1/2 grated nutmeg, 2 oz. of sliced candied peel, 1 teaspoonful of ground ginger, 1/2 lb. of bread crumbs, 1/2 lb. of flour, 1/2 pint of milk.

Mode.– Chop the suet finely; mix it with the dry ingredients; stir these well together, and add the well-beaten eggs and milk to moisten with. Beat up the mixture well, and should the above proportion of milk not be found to make it of the proper consistency, a little more should be added. Press the pudding into a mould or tie it in a floured cloth, and boil for 5 hours, or rather longer, and serve with brandy-sauce.

Note.– The above pudding may be baked instead of boiled; it should be put into a buttered mould or tin, and baked for about 2 hours; a smaller one would take 1-1/4 hour.

RICH BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING

Modern Cookery for Private Families, Eliza Acton, 1845 facsimile reprint with an introduction by Elizabeth Ray [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1993 (p. 359)

Give a good flavour of lemon-rind and bitter almonds, or of cinnamon, is preferred to a pint of new milk, and when it has simmered a sufficient time for this [10-20 min.], strain and mix it with a quarter of a pint of rich cream; sweeten it with four ounces of sugar in lumps, and stir it while still hot to five well-beaten eggs;
throw in a few grains of salt, and move the mixture briskly with a spoon as a glass of brandy is added to it.  Have ready a thickly-buttered dish three layers of think bread and butter cut from a half-quartern loaf, with four ounces of currants, and one and a half of finely shred candied peel, strewed between and over them; pour the eggs and milk on them by degrees, letting the bread absorb one portion before another is added; it should soak for a couple of hours before the pudding is taken to the oven, which should be a moderate one. Half an hour will bake it.
It is very good when made with new milk only; and some persons use no more than a pint of liquid in all, but part of the whites of the eggs my then be omitted. Cream my be substituted for the entire quantity of milk at pleasure.

INGREDIENTS

New milk, 1 pint;
rind of small lemon and 6 bitter almonds bruised (or 1/2 drachm of cinnamon
- call it a heaping quarter-teaspoon, although I like more)
Cream, 1/4 pint;
sugar, 4 oz.;
eggs, 6;
brandy, 1 wineglassful.
Bread and butter, 3 layers;
currants, 4 oz.;
candied orange or lemon-rind, 1-1/2 oz.

Welcome to Feast of the Centuries!

And we are just putting this super food blog together as I type this, so excuse the “dust” (which could be powdered sugar knowing us).  For those of you who don’t know us, we three (well, three so far, there might be others in the future) are foodies on a Historical Mission to share food goodness whereever possible.  Whether that is in the form of recipes, interviews, reviews, how-to’s or what-have-yous… we will be there serving up the information and the good flavors.

The official introductions should be up on the main page in a few days (knock on wood) and more links will be added that I have, but we will always be open to hearing what our readers have to say.  If you have any interesting links, redactions to any period recipes, reviews of books related to cooking, or anything that would fit into the food ideal we are trying to relate to, please contact us privately!  Always appreciate that sort of thing.

More later!  Thank you for your peeks and interest.

–Mercy

Chief troublemaker and headcheese smeller