Menu
First Course
Pottage -
Bread
Parsnip fritters
Boiled Ham
Salad
Mushrooms
Quince tarts
Second Course
Raviolies
Chicken in onion sauce
Apple Fritters
Figey
Braised cabbage
This menu was a combination of expediency and appropriateness for an Agincourt event. The kitchen available to use is very basic, with 1 domestic electric cooker, with 4 small burners and small oven. Additionally knowing this was a meal for a cold and wet October, hot food was must, which cut down the options on cold food.
Lunch
Sausages, Cheese and pottage
Lunch Pottage recipe
Lunch pottage, was a standard pottage based on a mixture of general pottage recipes, and using seasonal vegetables.
Add chopped onions to the pan with the fat and sweat until soft.Add the carrots, parsnips, lentils, stock and enough water to cook the ingredients (depending on the pan, this could be around 1 or 2 pints). Cook slowly, until the lentils are dissolved and the pottage is thick.If you think you need more water during during cooking, add as appropriate. Add the herbs, and salt and pepper to tastes
Feast
Feast Pottage recipe -
Parsnips Fritters -
Form of Cury - Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take pasternakes (Parsnips), make a batour of flour, and ayren and cast hereto ale & yeast safroun and salt. Wete hem in the batour and frye hem in oil or in grece; do hereto almaund mylk and serve it forth
The full recipe says you can do this with apples as well. I removed the ale and the saffron to the batter recipe - the ale to work around allergies and used milk, and the safron as this would only add colour to batter. However, both would work well. We used a deep fat fryer however you could shallow fry.
Make up the batter, until all combined and not too thick. Leave the batter in a warm corner so the yeast is activated, at least an hour. When ready to fry, peel and slice your parsnips in to disks. Get your fat very hot. If you are using a fat fryer, up to 200C. Dredge your parsnips in the batter, and fry in batches until golden and crispy. Drain on kitchen paper to take up excess fat and serve.
Boiled Ham
There is no, exact period recipe for boiled ham, as it so simple. However, there are many recipes for boiled meat. There are references in pie recipes from a century later about boiling ham before adding to a pastry case for storage and preservation. Hams laid down in the autumn for salting and preservation would have had to have been boiled in order to remove salt and make them edible.
Peter Brears in his Cooking and Dinning in Medieval England (2008) discusses the existence of specific houses/rooms in the manor houses for boiling appearing in houses from the late 15th Century.The stock the ham would have cooked in would have been used for pottage to add flavour and stretch the meat
Recipe
Ham joint
Place your boiling joint in a large pan with enough water to cover it! Bring to the boil and the simmer, the general rule of thumb is about 20 minutes per 1lb (450g) + an extra 20 minutes.
Mushrooms
We fried them in butter and served simply
Grand Sallad
This is taken from several grand salad recipes from the form of cury and later 15th manuscripts. More specific recipes & references to follow)
Lettuce (open head lettuce, not iceberg)
Young spinach leaves
Parsley roughly chopped
capers
Olives
flaked almonds
currents
oranges/lemons
Rose petals
Wash and clean the greens and arrange as bed on a platter, scatter the capers, olives, flaked almonds and currants on the greens. Slice the fruit and arrange carefully and attractively on the platter.Finally scatter the rose petal and serve
Quince Tart
This recipe come from later in the 15th century from a manuscript house in Corpus Christi Collage Oxford.Published in Cocatrice and Lampray Hay, edited and translated by Constance Hiett, 2012.
Peris and Qunys Baken
Pare peris al raw & quyns; tak away the cores the kernelis.Sep hem in a pot wint hony and good ale tender.Then ley hem drye in a plater. Take almoundes and als many fygges; grynd hem togidier in a morter.Draw hem up with same suroip were sodyn in. Caste hereto powder of gynder and canel and sum pepper.Salt it, colour it with saffroun and stere it togider.
Make goode hey 3 cofyns the heyte of a pere.Take then the perys and the quyns wete hem well in the surip.sette hem upryt in the cofyns so that the cofyns be fylled, than put of this surrip above the perys in the cofyns.Lydde them & bake hem.If the perys be grete you mayst cuttyn hem
I make some changes to this recipe, 1 - I only used quinces and no pears, as quinces where in season and available to use.2 - I removed the lid of the pie as we are not cooking in a wood fire stove so there is less need to project the fruit from either soot or over burning.3 - I laid the fruit flat rather than standing up.
1 Tart
Line your pie tin with the pastry. Peel, and core and quarter your quinces. Put your ale and honey or sugar in a pan. Add the quinces and cook gently until the quinces are just soft. Do not over cook the quinces or they will fall apart. Whilst the quinces are cooking make up the fig paste. Chop the dried figs and add them in a bowl with the ground almonds, currents and mash to make a paste. Add the spices (add more or less depending on preference) and a grind of pepper and stir in. When the quinces are cook remove them from the liquor. Pour a small amount of the liquor in to the fig paste, just enough to make the paste loser, but no to wet. Spread the paste on the bottom of the pie dish. Arrange the quince in the pie dish and add a little more the liquor. Bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is cooked at 180oC
Ravieles
This recipe come for an early 14th manuscript in the British library.Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take fine flour and sugar and make pasta dough; take good chese and butter and cream them together; then take parsley, sage, and shallots, chop them finely and put them in the fillings.Put the boiled ravieles on the bed of grate cheese and cover them with more grated cheese and the reheat them
- Pasta Flour 600g
- Eggs - 6
- salt
- cream cheese - 1 tub
- parmasan cheese 50g
- strong cheddar 50g
- sage - chopped finely
- butter and extra cheese for serving
Salt & Pepper
Make up the pasta dough, mix the salt and flour together, and put the flour on the surface, make a well in the middle and the egg in the middle and make in to a dough.Knead to form a good dough.
Make up the mixture, take the cream cheese, grated cheddar and parmesan and sage and form into a stiff mixture.If you need to add more of the hard cheeses.
Roll out the dough as thin as possible into 2 sheets and place a small amount in sections on the dough and cover with the second sheet and cut out into rounds.Place in boiling salted water and cook (should only take a couple of minutes). Remove from the water and melt butter and more cheese on them, add salt & pepper to taste and serve.
Chicken in Onion sauce
A Noble of boke of cookry, published 1501, Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take cony, henne or maard and rost them til they be almost enoughe or els chope them and fry them in freche greece; and fry onyon mynced and put them in a pot and cast the to freche brothe and half wyne. clowes, maces, pouder of guinger and pepper and draw it with venygar and when it is boiled cast thereto thy licour and pouder of guingere and venygar and sesson it and serve it.
- Chicken pieces ( I used thighs)
- 3 onions chopped
- cooking oil
- stale bread - 2 slices and make up to crumbs
- chicken stock - 1/2 pint
- white wine 1/2 pint
- ginger and pepper
- white wine vinegar- a good slug!
Cook the chicken pieces separately, when done strip the chicken from the bone and put to one side.Add the onions to a pan with the oil and soften.Add the breadcrumbs, and add the wine and chicken stock and add the spices. Cook until the sauce has thicken up. Add the chicken back in and add the wine vinegar, cook on a gentle heat until the flavours have infused.
Apple Fritters
Harleian Manuscript 279, 1st half 14th century, Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take whete floure, ale yeast, safroun & salt and bete alle togederys as like as thou schuldyst and over bature in fleyssche tyme and than take fayre applys and kut hem in maner of fretourys and wet hem in the bature and up on downne and frye hem in fayre oyle, caste hem in a dyssche and caste sugre thereon and serve forth.
As with the previous parsnip recipe, this batter has ale in them.However, as before I removed it due to allergies.
Make up the batter, until all combined and not too thick.Leave the batter in a warm corner so the yeast is activated, at least an hour.Heat your oil up, either in a deep fat fryer or shallow fry.Dredge the apples in the batter and fry until golden. Remove from the fat and drain the excess fat on kitchen paper. Scatter with sugar and cinnamon and serve.
Figey
Form of Cury, Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take almaundes blaunched; gryne hem and drawe hem up with water and wyne, quarter fyges hole raisouns. Cast hereto powdour gynder and hony clarfied; seep it wel and salt it and serve forth
- Ground almonds - 100g
- White wine - 150ml
- dried figs roughly chopped- 200g
- currants/raisins - 100g
- honey (or sugar) - 100g
- ginger - 1 teaspoon
Add the ground almonds, wine in to a pan and slowly heat. Add the dried fruit, honey (or sugar) and spice.Allow to thicken and cook slowly.
Braised Cabbages
Chopped Cabbages cooked with butter
First Course
Pottage -
Bread
Parsnip fritters
Boiled Ham
Salad
Mushrooms
Quince tarts
Second Course
Raviolies
Chicken in onion sauce
Apple Fritters
Figey
Braised cabbage
This menu was a combination of expediency and appropriateness for an Agincourt event. The kitchen available to use is very basic, with 1 domestic electric cooker, with 4 small burners and small oven. Additionally knowing this was a meal for a cold and wet October, hot food was must, which cut down the options on cold food.
Lunch
Sausages, Cheese and pottage
Lunch Pottage recipe
- Lentils - 300g
- Onions - 2 roughly chopped
- Carrots - 2 chopped
- Parsnips 1 sliced
- Good veg stock - 2 cubes dissolved in water
- Water
- Herbs - dried french herbs, fresh parsley & thyme - or whatever herbs you have & like!
- Salt & pepper
- Oil or butter
Lunch pottage, was a standard pottage based on a mixture of general pottage recipes, and using seasonal vegetables.
Add chopped onions to the pan with the fat and sweat until soft.Add the carrots, parsnips, lentils, stock and enough water to cook the ingredients (depending on the pan, this could be around 1 or 2 pints). Cook slowly, until the lentils are dissolved and the pottage is thick.If you think you need more water during during cooking, add as appropriate. Add the herbs, and salt and pepper to tastes
Feast
Feast Pottage recipe -
- Split Peas - 300g
- Onions - 2 roughly chopped
- Carrots - 2 chopped
- Parsnips 1 sliced
- Leeks - 2 sliced
- Good veg stock - 2 cubes dissolved in water
- Water
- Herbs - dried french herbs, fresh parsley & thyme
- Salt & pepper
- Oil or butter
Parsnips Fritters -
Form of Cury - Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take pasternakes (Parsnips), make a batour of flour, and ayren and cast hereto ale & yeast safroun and salt. Wete hem in the batour and frye hem in oil or in grece; do hereto almaund mylk and serve it forth
The full recipe says you can do this with apples as well. I removed the ale and the saffron to the batter recipe - the ale to work around allergies and used milk, and the safron as this would only add colour to batter. However, both would work well. We used a deep fat fryer however you could shallow fry.
- Parsnips - 4
- Milk - 1 pint
- Flour - 100g
- Eggs - 3
- Yeast - 1/2 teaspoon
- Oil for frying
Make up the batter, until all combined and not too thick. Leave the batter in a warm corner so the yeast is activated, at least an hour. When ready to fry, peel and slice your parsnips in to disks. Get your fat very hot. If you are using a fat fryer, up to 200C. Dredge your parsnips in the batter, and fry in batches until golden and crispy. Drain on kitchen paper to take up excess fat and serve.
Boiled Ham
There is no, exact period recipe for boiled ham, as it so simple. However, there are many recipes for boiled meat. There are references in pie recipes from a century later about boiling ham before adding to a pastry case for storage and preservation. Hams laid down in the autumn for salting and preservation would have had to have been boiled in order to remove salt and make them edible.
Peter Brears in his Cooking and Dinning in Medieval England (2008) discusses the existence of specific houses/rooms in the manor houses for boiling appearing in houses from the late 15th Century.The stock the ham would have cooked in would have been used for pottage to add flavour and stretch the meat
Recipe
Ham joint
Place your boiling joint in a large pan with enough water to cover it! Bring to the boil and the simmer, the general rule of thumb is about 20 minutes per 1lb (450g) + an extra 20 minutes.
Mushrooms
We fried them in butter and served simply
Grand Sallad
This is taken from several grand salad recipes from the form of cury and later 15th manuscripts. More specific recipes & references to follow)
Lettuce (open head lettuce, not iceberg)
Young spinach leaves
Parsley roughly chopped
capers
Olives
flaked almonds
currents
oranges/lemons
Rose petals
Wash and clean the greens and arrange as bed on a platter, scatter the capers, olives, flaked almonds and currants on the greens. Slice the fruit and arrange carefully and attractively on the platter.Finally scatter the rose petal and serve
Quince Tart
This recipe come from later in the 15th century from a manuscript house in Corpus Christi Collage Oxford.Published in Cocatrice and Lampray Hay, edited and translated by Constance Hiett, 2012.
Peris and Qunys Baken
Pare peris al raw & quyns; tak away the cores the kernelis.Sep hem in a pot wint hony and good ale tender.Then ley hem drye in a plater. Take almoundes and als many fygges; grynd hem togidier in a morter.Draw hem up with same suroip were sodyn in. Caste hereto powder of gynder and canel and sum pepper.Salt it, colour it with saffroun and stere it togider.
Make goode hey 3 cofyns the heyte of a pere.Take then the perys and the quyns wete hem well in the surip.sette hem upryt in the cofyns so that the cofyns be fylled, than put of this surrip above the perys in the cofyns.Lydde them & bake hem.If the perys be grete you mayst cuttyn hem
I make some changes to this recipe, 1 - I only used quinces and no pears, as quinces where in season and available to use.2 - I removed the lid of the pie as we are not cooking in a wood fire stove so there is less need to project the fruit from either soot or over burning.3 - I laid the fruit flat rather than standing up.
1 Tart
- Quince - 1 or 2 depending on size
- short crust pastry
- dried figs - 4
- Currants - 50g
- ground almonds 50g
- honey 100g or sugar
- real ale - not too heavy I used an IPA, enough to cover the quinces and cook them in
- Ginger -1 teaspoons
- Cinnamon 1 teaspoon
- pepper
Line your pie tin with the pastry. Peel, and core and quarter your quinces. Put your ale and honey or sugar in a pan. Add the quinces and cook gently until the quinces are just soft. Do not over cook the quinces or they will fall apart. Whilst the quinces are cooking make up the fig paste. Chop the dried figs and add them in a bowl with the ground almonds, currents and mash to make a paste. Add the spices (add more or less depending on preference) and a grind of pepper and stir in. When the quinces are cook remove them from the liquor. Pour a small amount of the liquor in to the fig paste, just enough to make the paste loser, but no to wet. Spread the paste on the bottom of the pie dish. Arrange the quince in the pie dish and add a little more the liquor. Bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is cooked at 180oC
Ravieles
This recipe come for an early 14th manuscript in the British library.Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take fine flour and sugar and make pasta dough; take good chese and butter and cream them together; then take parsley, sage, and shallots, chop them finely and put them in the fillings.Put the boiled ravieles on the bed of grate cheese and cover them with more grated cheese and the reheat them
- Pasta Flour 600g
- Eggs - 6
- salt
- cream cheese - 1 tub
- parmasan cheese 50g
- strong cheddar 50g
- sage - chopped finely
- butter and extra cheese for serving
Salt & Pepper
Make up the pasta dough, mix the salt and flour together, and put the flour on the surface, make a well in the middle and the egg in the middle and make in to a dough.Knead to form a good dough.
Make up the mixture, take the cream cheese, grated cheddar and parmesan and sage and form into a stiff mixture.If you need to add more of the hard cheeses.
Roll out the dough as thin as possible into 2 sheets and place a small amount in sections on the dough and cover with the second sheet and cut out into rounds.Place in boiling salted water and cook (should only take a couple of minutes). Remove from the water and melt butter and more cheese on them, add salt & pepper to taste and serve.
Chicken in Onion sauce
A Noble of boke of cookry, published 1501, Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take cony, henne or maard and rost them til they be almost enoughe or els chope them and fry them in freche greece; and fry onyon mynced and put them in a pot and cast the to freche brothe and half wyne. clowes, maces, pouder of guinger and pepper and draw it with venygar and when it is boiled cast thereto thy licour and pouder of guingere and venygar and sesson it and serve it.
- Chicken pieces ( I used thighs)
- 3 onions chopped
- cooking oil
- stale bread - 2 slices and make up to crumbs
- chicken stock - 1/2 pint
- white wine 1/2 pint
- ginger and pepper
- white wine vinegar- a good slug!
Cook the chicken pieces separately, when done strip the chicken from the bone and put to one side.Add the onions to a pan with the oil and soften.Add the breadcrumbs, and add the wine and chicken stock and add the spices. Cook until the sauce has thicken up. Add the chicken back in and add the wine vinegar, cook on a gentle heat until the flavours have infused.
Apple Fritters
Harleian Manuscript 279, 1st half 14th century, Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take whete floure, ale yeast, safroun & salt and bete alle togederys as like as thou schuldyst and over bature in fleyssche tyme and than take fayre applys and kut hem in maner of fretourys and wet hem in the bature and up on downne and frye hem in fayre oyle, caste hem in a dyssche and caste sugre thereon and serve forth.
As with the previous parsnip recipe, this batter has ale in them.However, as before I removed it due to allergies.
- 2 apples, peel, cored and sliced
- Milk - 1 pint
- Flour - 100g
- Eggs - 3
- Yeast - 1/2 teaspoon
- Oil for frying
- sugar and cinnamon
Make up the batter, until all combined and not too thick.Leave the batter in a warm corner so the yeast is activated, at least an hour.Heat your oil up, either in a deep fat fryer or shallow fry.Dredge the apples in the batter and fry until golden. Remove from the fat and drain the excess fat on kitchen paper. Scatter with sugar and cinnamon and serve.
Figey
Form of Cury, Published in Pleyne Delit, 1996, by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington & Sharon Butler
Take almaundes blaunched; gryne hem and drawe hem up with water and wyne, quarter fyges hole raisouns. Cast hereto powdour gynder and hony clarfied; seep it wel and salt it and serve forth
- Ground almonds - 100g
- White wine - 150ml
- dried figs roughly chopped- 200g
- currants/raisins - 100g
- honey (or sugar) - 100g
- ginger - 1 teaspoon
Add the ground almonds, wine in to a pan and slowly heat. Add the dried fruit, honey (or sugar) and spice.Allow to thicken and cook slowly.
Braised Cabbages
Chopped Cabbages cooked with butter