One of the Stormhold annual feasts is William Marshall, in honour of William the Marshall (circa 1170 - 1209) and it is one feast that I have inevitably been the head cook or helped at for the last 10 years. One of the reasons I've been working so much with Forme of Cury (1390) and Taillevent (1330 - 1395), and Menagier, is, apart from the fact that it is fantastic food, that it's the closest we have written cooking texts for the 13th century. The recipes are similar
to the Anglo Norman Culinary Collections, Constance B Hieatt, Robin Jones (it's on the web, but I have a PDF of it from Speculum, vol 61, Issue 4, Oct. 1986). Recipes are presumed to date back to 1272, and I note that some are included in the later texts, such as cress, rose pudding, sage sauce. So I feel quite comfortable using Taillevant for an early Anglo-Norman feast.In general, becuase the feast has been for larger numbers (ie 100 pax, give or take), with a wide range of culinary sensitivities to be considered (ie food allergies, gluten free, vegetarians, fighters), I like to plan the feast so that there will be some period 'crowd pleasers' and some more challenging dishes. I do feel that, to the extent possible, I will cater to notified food issues. It's no hassle to make a gluten free pastry base, for example. Though at the 08 William marshall, I had the beef and barley stew in vegetarian form, non-allium but with meat, and a gluten free version all bubbling simultaneously. Anyway, back to the recipes. These two pies are noteworthy, as the Pie of Herbs, cheese and egg has the addition of a whole egg yolk after the pie is baking - an unusual, but delightful touch. The other, Custard Lombard, a sweet custard pie, has the addition of beef marrow - which gives it a delightful delicacy. Custard Lombard is also unusual in that parsley acts as a 'whisk' - I've done it both over parsley and with a whisk, and the parsley gives it as smooth and nice a texture. But let the recipes themselves do the talking:
| Pie of Herbs, cheese and eggs no 175 from Viandier of Taillevent | ||||||||||
| Take parsley, mint, chard, spinach, lettuce, marjoram, basil and wild thyme, and grind everythign together in a mortar, moisten with pure water and squeeze outgt he juice, break a large number of eggs into the joice and add posdered giner, cinnamon and long papper, a good quality cheese, grated, and salt; beat everthing tgether. Then make a very thin pastry to put in yourdish, of the size of your dish, then line your dish with it; coats the inside of the dish with portk fat, then put in your pastry, put your dish on the coals and again coat the inside if the pastry with pork fat; when it has melted, bput your filling in your pastry and cover it with the other dish and put the fire on top as well as underneath and let your pie dry out a litt;e uncover the top of the dish and put five egg yolks and fine spice powder carefully ove your pie; then replace the dish as it was before and let it gradually cook in low coal fire; check often to see that it is not over-cooking. Put sugar on top when serving. | ||||||||||
| Per table (10 to a table | ||||||||||
| No. | Quantity | Qantity | Item | Per 50 | Per 100 | |||||
| parsley | * | |||||||||
| mint | * | |||||||||
| chard | * | |||||||||
| 500 | grams | spinach | * | kilos | 2.5 | kilos | ||||
| marjoram | * | |||||||||
| basil | * | |||||||||
| thyme | * | 1 | litre | |||||||
| 3 | whole | eggs | 15 | egs | 30 | eggs | ||||
| 0.5 | tsp | ginger (galingale) | ||||||||
| 0.25 | tsp | cinnamon | 1.25 | 2.5 | ||||||
| 0.24 | tsp | long pepper* | 1.25 | 2.5 | ||||||
| *pepper and cardamon | ||||||||||
| 1 | cup | grated tasty cheese | 5 | cups | 10 | cups | ||||
| 4 | yolks only | eggs | 20 | yolks | 40 | yolks | ||||
| 0.25 | tsp | cinnamon | 1.25 | tsp | 2.5 | tsp | ||||
| 0.25 | tsp | nutmeg | 1.25 | tsp | 2.5 | tsp | ||||
| 0.25 | tsp | ginger (galingale) | 1.25 | tsp | 2.5 | tsp | ||||
| Method | ||||||||||
| Coat the pie pan with non stickspray; line with pastry. Melt dab of butter in the pastry; put in oven until it melts and the crust begins to harden a bit. In the interim, chop the parsley, mint, (cook the spinach and squeeze out the juice from it); marjoram, basil and thyme. Put it in a mortar and pound it a bit. Pour warm water on it; squeeze dry. Reserve the liquid - there should be approximately 1 litre of green juice. As for balance of flavour, add more basil/thyme, then parsley, the spinach then just a hint of mint. Mix the liquid, whole eggs and cheese, and add the spices. Put it in the pastry and bake at about 200 degrees C for approximately 15 minutes. Add the whole, uncooked egg yolks to the top of the pie. The pie should be cooked enough so that they SLIGHTLY sink into the pie - they shouldn't sit 'proud', but should gently sink a bit. Add a gentle sprinkle of fine spice powder (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg). Put the pie back into the overn for about another 30 minutes until well cooked. Sprinkle with sugar just before serving. The whole egg yolks 'hard boil' and sink into the pie - looks great for presentation - our pie pans only fit 4 egg yolks on comfortably. | ||||||||||
| Custard Lombard - Renfrow, page 285 | ||||||||||||||
| Take good cream, leaves of parsley and eggs, the yolks and the whites, and break them thereto and strain through a strainer, til it is so stiff that it will bear himself, then take fair marrow, and dates, cut in 2 or 3 prunes and put the dates and the prunes and marrow in a fair coffin, made of fair paste and put the coffin in the oven till itis a little hard; then draw them out of the oven; take the liquor and put therefon and fill it up and cast sugar enough on and salt; then let bake ogether till it is enough; and if it is in Lent, leave the eggs and the marrow out and serve it forth. | ||||||||||||||
| No. | Quantity | Item | 3 pies | For 70 | For 90 | |||||||||
| 1 | cup | cups | cream | 2.5 | cup | cream | 3.333 | cup | cream | |||||
| 1 | sprig | sprig | parsley | 2.5 | sprig | parsley | 3.333 | sprig | parsley | |||||
| 6 | eggs | whole | eggs | 15 | eggs | eggs | 20.000 | eggs | eggs | |||||
| 0.005 | grams | pinch | marrow | 0.0125 | pinch | marrow | 0.017 | pinch | marrow | |||||
| 12 | whole | whole | dates | 30 | whole | dates | 40.000 | whole | dates | |||||
| 3 | whole | whole | prunes | 7.5 | whole | prunes | 10.000 | whole | prunes | |||||
| 2 | tsp | tsp | sugar | 5 | tsp | sugar | 6.667 | tsp | sugar | |||||
| 1 | pastry shell | |||||||||||||
| Method | ||||||||||||||
| Blind bake the pastry shell for about 5 minutes. For the marrow, get your butcher to cut a marrow bone in half. Chop the dates and prunes. Add the dates and prunes to the pie shell, and scrape out about half of the marrow bone (if it's a beef shank). Dot the marrow in amongst the chopped dates and prunes. Bake this in the oven for about 7 minutes (pour yourself and some friends a glass of wine, have a chat and when you just begin to smell the pie, have a loook and if the marrow is melted, take the pie out of the oven). Now for the interesting part of the recipe. Put the parsely in a colander. Break the eggs over the colander and 'mash' the eggs through the colander. The parsley helps to froth the eggs, ie, whisking without a whisk. Pour the egg (add the cream too) mixture through the sieve a few times until the mix is frothy and thickened. Add the cream mixture on top of the dates in the pie shell, and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 200 celcuis for approximately 45 minutes until the pie has set like a custard. This is a delicately flavoured, superb custard, don't be put off by the beef marrow - it's a subtle enrichment to the pie. | ||||||||||||||
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