A Meal in 13th Century Dublin.
by Slaine ni Chiarain
mka Mary M. Haselbauer
mary_m_haselbauer@yahoo.com
Saturday, Late July, 1253 AD. Dublin, Ireland. Last year, it was very hot and windy but this year:
This was the best year that had ever come for nuts,
and the produce of the earth, and of cattle, and of trees and herbs.
                               Annals of Loch Cé, entry for summer 1253
It is references like this and environmental archaeological remains found in Dublin that lead me to think about what my persona would have eaten. Archaeologists have found the remains of many kinds of flora and fauna: hazelnut, walnut, strawberry, apple, cherry, plum, sloe, blackberry, elderberry, hazelnuts, grapes, various mustards, pea, wild celery, fennel, radish, cattle, sheep/goat, pig, red deer, various fowl, cod, ling, cockles, mussels and eel. Cereal grains such as rye, wheat, and oat do not survive well but are attested to by the remains of many mills and corn drying kilns. (Rynne, 1997)
This is what I should be eating (in its proper season) but how was it prepared? By the 13th century, the Anglo Nomans had complete control of Dublin and the surrounding areas and indeed, there was little to distinguish it from many other coastal medieval villages. Two small Anglo-Norman cookbooks survive from this period but I also used recipes from nearby countries and centuries such as the Forme of Cury from 14th century England. A lesser-known cookbook called Libellus de Arte Coquinaria has also proved useful. "This small collection of about 35 recipes can be dated as not later than the end of the thirteenth century, and clearly goes back to an 'original' which may have been written down as early as the twelfth century." (Grewe, 1) These cookbooks are written in Danish, Low German, and Icelandic, the last of which has resided in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin since at least  the 15th century.
Another consideration for what to eat is based on the Roman Catholic custom of fasting on various days throughout the year. Animal products were forbidden on not just in Lent or on Fridays but Wednesdays and sometimes Saturdays as well. Throughout our period, the adherence to fasting varied considerably. I haven't been able to find out how devoted 13th century Dublin was to fasting. However, I love fish so I decided to try it anyway.
After shuffling though many books and cooking websites I decided to make salmon pasty, a salad of greens, frumenty, and fruit pudding.
Salmon Pasty
You might have noticed that salmon is not one of the fish remains found in Dublin. The archaeologists admit their surveys were hardly exhaustive and there are other references salmon. The Grant of Tolls in Dublin from 1233 lists: "From every centenum of salmon coming here for sale, 1 Denarius." There are also many mentions of salmon in Irish Literature such as "Three deaths that are better than life: the death of a salmon, the death of a fat pig and the death of a robber." (Triads of Ireland, 9th century)
30. Chicken Pasty (K24, Q26, D 21, W66)
Cut a young hen in two and cover it with whole sage leaves, diced bacon, and salt, Wrap the chicken in dough and bake it in an oven like bread. In the same way, you can make pasties of fish, poultry and other kinds of meat.
From Libellus de arte Coquinaria
Forme of Cury has a recipe called Tart de brymlent that specifically mentions salmon in a crust. It also calls for apples, pears, sugar, wine, prunes and dates.
Sage wasn't among the flora in Dublin but parsley is. Parsley is mentioned in a similar recipe for chicken in Libellus de arte Coquinaria #23, Chickens in Bruet, and Recipe # 15, Another Green Sauce, includes both sage and parsley.
The dough should be a basic pie dough. The Q manuscript of Libellus de arte Coquinaria specifically mentions wheat flour. Since it is a fast day, I can'T use lard or butter to make the dough flexible. A 13th century Anglo Norman recipe for Kuskenole or pastries with fruit filling suggests "In Lent, make your pastry with almond [butter or cream]"
"Bake it in an oven like bread." suggest to me that it should be a hot oven since bread was baked first after the fire had heated the stones and the ashes had been swept out. (Paston-Williams, 53) A survey of other salmon recipes online show a temperature of 350° for plain baked salmon but for salmon in any kind of crust they recommend 400°.
I have to leave out the bacon or pork meat since it is a fast day!
My Pasty Recipe
I used a traditional pie dough recipe but substituted a combination of bread flour and spelt with almond oil for shortening. It won't be as flaky as my mother-in-law's pie crust but all it has to do is hold the moisture in the fish.
2 cups bread flour
2 cup spelt
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup almond oil
about 1/3 cup cold water
Mix flour and salt in large bowl. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut shortening into flour until the mixture has a texture like coarse meal. Sprinkle water, 1 tablespoon at a time, over the mixture, tossing with a fork until the particles stick together. Don't add too much water so the pie crust dough is sticky - that makes the pastry tough. If you don't add enough water, the dough will be crumbly and hard to work with. Just keep going until it looks like pie dough and forms a smooth, malleable ball
My Salmon Recipe
1 cup Parsley
salt
1 lb salmon filet
Put parsley and salt on the salmon. Wrap salmon in dough and place on stoneware baking sheet. Bake at 400° for about 20 minutes. (If you want to be cute make the dough look like a fish or some other animal.)
Salad of Greens
The number of seeds from edible greens found in the excavation suggest a salad. It is the middle of summer after all, but medieval salad recipes are rare. The Libellus de arte Coquinaria hardly mentions vegetables and the two 13th century Anglo-Norman books only mention fruit. Again, I turn to Forme of Cury:
78. Salat. Take persel, sawge, grene garlec, chibolles, letys, leek, spinoches, borage, myntes, prymos, violettes, porrettes, fenel, and toun cressis, rew, rosemarye, purslarye; laue and waishe hem clene. Pike hem. Pluk hem small wiþ þyn honde, and myng hem wel with rawe oile; lay on vyneger and salt, and serue it forth.(Hieatt, 1985)
GODE COOKERY TRANSLATION:
Salad. Take parsley, sage, green garlic, scallions, lettuce, leek, spinach, borage, mints, primroses, violets, 'porrettes' (green onions, scallions, &; young leeks), fennel, and garden cress, rue, rosemary, purslane; rinse and wash them clean. Peel them. (Remove stems, etc.) Tear them into small pieces with your hands, and mix them well with raw oil; lay on vinegar and salt, and serve.
We have lots of Dublin greens to play with.
The archaeologists found                                    Status
several kinds of parley                                easy to find     I think the flat leaf looks less like garnish     
Lamb's quarters                                           related to chard     
Peas                                                                not fond of them
wild Celery                                                     less sharp than modern celery
Fool's watercress                                         at Schnucks
BRASSICEAE- turnip, rape, cabbage       normal stuff easy to find
wild carrot                                                      would have to be white not found
Fennel (anise)                                              at Whole Foods and Schnucks
wild radish                                                     pale       There is an Asian white radish that looks right
mustard greens                                             easy to find and cheap
While there are no findings of leeks or onions in the Dublin archaeological record, there is a passing reference to onions in the Grant of Tolls in Dublin from 1233 "From every pisa of onions, or butter, or fat, 1 obole." Olive oil would have had to be imported. I could use almond oil too. There are recipes for it in Libellus de arte Coquinaria.
My Salad Recipe
1 leaf  Green Chard
1 leaf  Mustard Greens
1/2 cup  Fennel chopped
1 cup Parsley
1 /2 cup Leek chopped
Dressing
2 tablespoon  Almond Oil
4 tablespoon; Red wine vinegar
salt to taste
Tear up the Chard and mustard greens into small pieces with fingers. Chop the fennel, parsley, and leek into bowl. Drizzle Almond oil and red wine vinegar over the salad and toss.
These are all just guessitmates on the amounts and very dependant on what I could find in local grocery stores. The mustard greens especially had a very strong taste and I was surprised at how much the vinegar mellowed them. Don't skimp on the vinegar!
Hazelnut Frumenty
Frumenty is another one of those ubiquitous medieval dishes. Many of the recipes call for almond milk but this one calls for hazelnut!
For to make formenty on a fichssday, tak the mylk of the hasel notis. Boyl the wite wyth the aftermelk til it be dryyd,  coloure yt with safroun; &; the ferst mylk cast therto &; boyle wel, & serue yt forth.
(Hazelnut Frumenty Diversa Servicia 89.Curye on Inglysch Book II p. 79.)
For to make frumenty on a fish day, take the milk of the hazelnut. Boil the wheat with the second running of the hazelnut milk until all liquid is absorbed., color it with saffron, add the first running of the hazelnut milk, boil well, and serve.
Translation from The Floriligium
My Hazelnut Frumenty
2 cups ground hazelnuts
5 cups hot water
1 cup bulgar wheat
a pinch of saffron
I poured the hot water over the hazelnuts and let it simmer for while. After it had thickened slightly I separated the milk from the bulk of the nuts. I put the mushy nuts back in the pan and added 1 more cup of hot water. I put in one cup bulgar wheat and let this simmer. The liquid was quickly gone so I added two cups of the nut milk I had strained out. Over the next hour I added in 2 or 3 more cups of nut milk as the wheat absorbed it . I added the pinch of ground saffron and a pinch of salt.
Fruit Pottage
I wanted to find a use for all the hazelnuts. For a fast day an obvious recipe is Almond Milk. However, no almonds were found in Dublin. They would have had to be imported from the Mediterranean area. While I'm sure some were shipped along with other luxuries like wine or olive oil, hazelnuts also makes very satisfactory milk. The Menagier de Paris has a recipe for a 'cold drink of milk of hazel nuts' (no. 301). (I'm also fond of hazel nuts because my mundane last name "Haselbauer" means "Hazel farmer" in German.)
Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections
17. Strawberry pottage. Here is another dish, which is called strawberry pottage. Gather strawberries cleanly and grind them; then take almond or cow's milk and mix thoroughly; then add a little wastel bread and some eggs, and thicken the mixture well; color it with saffron, and put whole strawberries on top.
18. Instructions for managing without strawberries. Gather them [blackberries] cleanly and grind them finely in a mortar; then mix with almond or cow's milk, put in a little wastel (bread), and thicken well with eggs; put fresh blackberries on top.
        (Hieatt, 1986, 875-76)
I will have to leave the eggs out because of the fast day.
I want to use strawberries, blackberries and possibly sloes if I can find them. (WARNING - the following is not for the easily grossed out!) One of the excavations in Dublin was of a latrine pit and they found "One faecal mass was rich in fruit debris. There were numerous stones of Prunus spinosa (sloe), and packed in among these were munerous achenes of Rubus fruiticosa (blackberry) and Fragaria vesca (strawberry)." (Mitchell, 29)
My Fruit Pottage
2 cups strawberries
1 cup black berries
1 cup raspberries
1 cup or more of dry bread
Mash the fruit until it is a pulpy mess. I used the blender. I added some of the hazelnut oil and some plain hazelnut milk. It is such a bright purple color I didn't see where adding any extra saffron would help.
Conclusions
This turned out to be a very good meal if I do say so myself. When I made it for Kingdom A&S I didn't have any trouble getting rid of the leftovers when the judging was over. I have made versions of the salad several times and both mundane family and co-workers seem to like it. I hope to someday to make an entire feast.
Bibliography
Cooking History and Cookbooks
Bayard, Tanya. A Medieval Home Companion: Housekeeping in the Fourteenth Century.New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991. A shorter version of Menagier de Paris.
Giacosa, Ilaria Gozzini. A Taste of Ancient Rome.trans Anna Herklotz. U of Chicago, 1992.
Grewe, Rudolf and C.B. Hieatt. Libellus de arte coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book. ArizonaState, 2001.The basic source for the salmon pasty.
Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler.Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury).New York: for The Early English Text Society by the OxfordUniversity Press, 1985.
Hieatt, Constance B. and Robin F. Jones. 'Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii." Speculum vol. 61, issue 4 (Oct. 1986): 859-882.
Matterer, James L. Ed. and Owner.Gode Cookery. http://www.godecookery.com/ referenced 7/18/03. What an awesome site. Very useful. They are excellent about citing sources.
Paston-Williams, Sara. The Art of Dining: A History of Cooking & Eating. Abrams, 1993. This book was useful for the process of cooking. It has lots of illustrations of surviving kitchens and equipment.
Renfrow, Cindy. Take a Thousand Eggs or More: A collection of 15th Century Recipes vol. 1.; Self published, 1991.
Ireland
Arkenberg, Jerome S. ?Henry III, Lord of Ireland: Grant of Tolls in Dublin, 1233 and 1253? Medieval Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1233Dublin1.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1250Dublin2.html last accessed 7-25-03
'Annals of Loch Cé'.trans. William M. Hennessy. CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts. referenced7/18/03. "CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts, brings the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to the Internet, for the use and benefit of everyone worldwide. It has a searchable online database consisting of contemporary and historical texts from many areas, including literature and the other arts."   CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
Barry, Terry. Archaeology of Medieval Ireland. Routledge, 2002.
Dunn, Charles and E.T. Byrnes.Eds. Middle English Literature.Garland, 1990.The Land of Cokayne.
Gerald of Wales.The History and Topography of Ireland.Trans and Intro. John F. O'Meara. Penguin Books, 1982.
Mitchell, G.F. Archaeology & Environment in Early Dublin. Medieval Dublin Excavation 1962-81 Ser. C. vol.1., National Museum of Ireland, 1987. It was the plant remains section of this book that germinated this project.
Walsh, Clare. Archaeological Excavations at Patrick, Nicholas & Winetavern Streets Dublin.Brandon, 1997.The source for many of the plant and animal remains.Highly recommended.
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