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15

Erbolate

(Baked eggs with herbs)

1390

AUTHOR: Master cook of King Richard II, FROM: The Forme of Cury

Take parsel, myntes, sauerey, & sauge, tansey, veruayn, clarry, rewe, ditayn, fenel, southrenwode, hewe hem & grinde hem smale, medle hem up with Ayrenn. do butter in a trape. & do þe fars þerto. & bake it & messe it forth. [Take parsley, mint, savory, sage, tansy, vervain, clary, rue, dittany, fennel, southernwood. Chop them and grind them small. Mix them with eggs. Put butter in a baking dish and put the mixture in it. Bake and serve it in portions.]

Just eleven years after Taillevent published his seminal tome for Charles V of France, English cooks got in on the act. Encouraged by their mentor, Richard II, the master cooks of the royal household brought forth their own volume. No individual takes the glory in this instance; the work is a collaboration of the king’s finest culinary artists.

In the form of a vellum scroll, a copy of it lives in the British Library. Its graceful prose, daintily written in soft red ink, details 196 recipes. The recipe for erbolate – in which eggs are combined with an elaborate combination of herbs, from the unusual to the unheard of – encapsulates the spirit of the book, which was written with the approval and encouragement of the court’s medical gurus and philosophers. As we saw in Recipe 13 (here), the culinary arts and medicine were inextricably linked at the time. The herbs in this recipe are there primarily for medicinal purposes, reflecting the belief expressed by a contemporary physician, one Dr Boorde, that ‘a good cook is half a physician’.

Before you leap to the conclusion that this was a book filled with recipes for curry, I should point out the cury is in fact the Middle English word for ‘cookery’. And while the book came from chefs of the royal household, their intention was to assist cooks across the land – or at least those of them who could read. This book, the oldest of European instructive cookery manuscripts in existence – and certainly the most famous – was aimed at helping people, as it sets out in the introduction: ‘commune potages and commune meetis [meats] for howshold as they shold be made craftly and holsomly’.

At last here was a cookbook for cooks, not published as some kind of religious tract or philosophical treatise disguised as a collection of dinner-party ramblings. The king believed that the dishes he enjoyed at court should be made available to his people too. But it’s not all humble fare. Richard II entertained on a big scale – he would feed thousands at one setting and he didn’t just churn out baked eggs with herbs. After the preamble about ‘common’ dishes, the authors then promise ‘curious potages and meetes and sotiltees for alle maner of States bothe hye and lowe’. So you could expect unusually spiced dishes presented in spectacular fashion.

The word sotiltees is Middle English for ‘subtleties’. But there was little subtlety in the elaborate sculptures that would be served up at grand feasts. Models of ships, castles and birds – the grander the better; think great big eagles rather than tiny songbirds – made of jelly or sugar would arrive to gasps of approval and applause. Such dishes would often be brought to the table as ‘warners’, notifying guests that dinner was about to be served and giving a clue as to the level of culinary sophistication they should expect. These days chefs present a dainty amuse-bouche or a scented thimble of soup to tantalise the taste buds at the beginning of a meal. When Richard II was entertaining, by contrast, he made his chefs send out edible monuments of the age. Imagine how impressed you’d be if you went round to dine with the king and instead of some delicate titbit the starter that was sent out was a replica of your castle.

Richard II liked his food and had around 300 chefs in his kitchens. He needed a brigade this size, however, judging by the numbers of people he was in the habit of asking over. The provisions are recorded for a feast given by the king and the Duke of Lancaster on 12 September 1387. One hell of a shopping list, it includes: ‘14 oxen lying in salt … 120 carcas of shepe fresh … 140 pigges … 210 gees … 400 conyngges [large rabbits] … 12 cranes … 11 thousand eggs …’ On and on it goes. It must have been one hell of a catering operation too. Today we can’t know the meaning of grandiose.

The variety of produce at the disposal of the grand chefs of the time was impressive. Hens, partridge, quail, lark, bitton and woodcock hung in the kitchens alongside a vast array of salted meats and fish. Spices, meanwhile, were locked safely in cupboards. They included ginger, black pepper (prized for its supposed digestive qualities) and exotics such as galangal root. These were brought into the country either by Venetian merchants or by knights returning from the various Crusades.

The kitchens themselves were hothouses. A huge fireplace, capable of holding a whole oxen on a spit, would be at one end, while an open hearth in the middle of the room would have been used as a large grill. Enormous pestles would be pounded in vast mortars by staff whose sole job would be to crush spices, while long tables would be used as chopping blocks and assembly areas. Utensils from the time indicate how hot the fires would have been – they have very long handles. There are deep pans for frying – a lot of food was fried in ale batter. Meat, meanwhile, would be first washed of salt – used to preserve meat in the days before refrigeration – before being boiled to tenderise it and then roasted.

Among the elaborate ways of preparing food in The Forme of Cury is a description of how to colour slices of lard – each in a slightly different shade – as well as how to dye food dishes in saffron to make them look golden. The cooks were artists, but the king also wanted a decent supper. Which is where the baked eggs come in. While I prefer mine cracked into a ramekin, with some chopped bacon, salt and pepper, the king liked his stuffed with herbs. Perhaps he saw it as a light dinner before bedtime, so the herbs could work their medicinal magic during the night.

From the recipe one can assume the herbs are fresh, taken straight from the garden, and what a herb garden it must have been. Baked and sliced into portions, the resultant dish is more omelette than soufflé. And what might the king have drunk with it? In those days, before glass bottles came on the scene, wine would soon have turned to vinegar, so would have been drunk shortly after fermentation. Instead ale was the drink of the day – consumed by all, as water was still pretty dodgy; not ideal with a light supper of baked eggs. Perhaps the king then called for a spot of jesting to entertain him as he ate, in view of the lack of telly.

The British Library: © The British Library Board (Add. 5016, back of roll, 3rd membrane)

The recipe for erbolate is depicted here third from bottom on the scroll of Forme of Cury.