EDIEVAL FOODS

BOOK OF COOKRYE (again)

This time I'm going to do side dish recipes from the Book of Cookrye. Last time I did sweets. There are a lot of meat recipes, too, but the impression that the early cultures spent their time gnawing lamb shanks and slashing wild pork ribs is in error. In fact, the poor peasant was lucky to see meat on his table once a year. Their menus were as varied as ours, and some of the things they did with vegetables was far more interesting than our buttered and cheesed everything.

How to make a Pudding in a Turnep Root.

Take your Turnep root, and wash it fair in warm water, and scrape it faire and make it hollow as you doo a Carret roote, and make your stuffe of grated bread, and Apples chopt fine, then take Corance, and
hard Egs, and season it with Sugar Sinamon, and Ginger, and yolks of hard egs and so temper your stuffe, and put it into the Turnep, then take faire water, and set it on the fire, and let it boyle or ever you put in your Turneps, then put in a good peece of sweet Butter, and Claret Wine, and a little Vinagre, and Rosemarye, and whole Mace, Sugar, and Corance, and Dates quartered, and when they are boyled inough, then willl they be tender, then serve it in.

A Pudding in Egges.
Take and boyle your Egges hard, and blanch them, and cut off the Crowne of them, and take then of the yolks and chop them, Beetes boyled, and yolkes of hard egges, grated Bread, and Corance, Salte Sugar, Sinamon, and Ginger, and then put the yolkes of rawe Egges, and mingle them altogither, then put in your Egges, then for your broth take a little Mutton broth, Corance, Dates, Sugar, a little salt and butter, thicken it with yolks of Egges, vergious and a little sugar, so serve it in.

A Boyled Sallet.
Take Spinage and boyle it and chop it, and when it is chopt, poure it in a little Pipkin, with Corance, sweete Butter, Vinagre, and Sugar, boyle them altogither, and when they are boyled put it in a dishe, and lay sippets round about, and strew suger upon them and serve them out.

Eisands with Otemeale grotes.
Take a pinte of Creame and seethe it, and when it is hot, put therto a pinte of Otemeale grotes, and let them soke in it all night, and put therto viii. yolks of egs, and a little Pepper, Cloves, mace, and saffron, and a good deale of Suet of beefe, and small Raisins and Dates, and a little Sugar.

How to make Tartes of Spinage.
Boyle your Spinage very tender, and three or foure apples with it, and when it is very tender, straine it through a faire cloth, and then season it with the yolk of an egge, Sugar, Sinamon, and Ginger.
Tartes of Borage after the same fashion.

A FEW THOUGHTS FROM THE EDITOR (me, Ruth)

Remember the article on rose hips in last month's issue of Kildonan Times? I was walking in a residential section of Soldotna, Alaska, and could see a fellow up ahead of me picking something off the bushes. I assumed it was berries, as many berries are in season in late July. But when I got up to him, he was picking rose hips and dumping them in a plastic bag. There was jelly or lemonade coming up, I'll bet.

I'm still in the Far North as I write this issue, and my best commentary again is an excerpt from my journal of the trip.

On a boat trip into Kenai Fjords National Park:

Most of Kenai Fjords National Park is accessible only by water. There are hiking/backpacking trails, but the trailheads must also be reached by water. Ninety percent of this mountainous fjord-cut park is ice, the Harding Ice Field. Only around the coastal edges are there forested mountains and some open beaches, and even on those mountains there are many glaciers visible from the waters. True to fjord geology, most of the mountainsides plunge into the sea. Steep rocky islands and sea stacks are common. It’s a frozen world of Icelandic myth - particularly today, when it was misty off in the distance and gray clouds raced across the sky. A lady I was talking to and I could almost see trolls on the ledges and Thor’s fire flash on jagged mountains tops...

On a bus trip into Denali National Park (the only way you can access the park except on foot)

Gray skies hung above the mountains and cold winds blew over the tundra today for our eleven-hour bus trip up and back on the only road into Denali. As we climbed out of the valley and taiga forest where the visitor center stands, scattered scrawny black spruce stood like lone sentinels spread across the hills and lower slopes. The cold wind was the edge of loneliness and solitude, the magic of the North.

At higher altitudes, where we spent most of the day, the sentinel trees were gone. Tundra flowed up the slopes and fell off ridges as brown scree. We stopped to view a grizzly on a far slope to our left. On the right, two brave and dusty yellow potentilla plants growing out of the blasted rock just a few feet from my bus window swayed in the winds. Up there, the sturdy fireweed is nearly gone for the summer. Only a few pink blossoms cling to the tops of their long pink flower stems.

We traveled a road that wound through valleys and clung to the edges of cliffs. At the rest stops there were trails I could hike to get out into the clear air, to be at one with the mountains and tundra. The stops were brief, my hikes were only fifteen or twenty minutes, but the spell of the wild that enveloped me will last for a lifetime.

And, as always, tell your aunts, uncles, cousins and friends about the novels of Clovenstone Chronicles. Give them an adventure!

Good Fate Be Yours —
Ruth

All art work and text © copyrighted by Ruth McIntyre-Williams.