Читать книгу A History of Food in 100 Recipes - William Sitwell - Страница 25
Оглавление1440
AUTHOR: Unknown, FROM: Boke of Kokery
Take and pike faire musculis, And cast hem in a potte; and caste hem to, myced oynons, And a good quantite of peper and wyne, And a lite vynegre; And assone as thei bigynnet to gape, take hem from þe fire, and serue hit forthe with the same brot in a diss al hote.
The year 1440. Work begins on the Pazzi Chapel in Florence designed by the Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi. German craftsman Johann Gutenberg of Mainz develops a method of printing using movable metal type. Itzcoatl, Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan, dies and is succeeded by Montezuma I. In England, Eton College is founded by Henry VI and a Boke of Kokery is published with a recipe for custard.
Actually there are two recipes for custard in this boke, and yes, whoever wrote it – and the author is not known – was into a kind of free-spelling vibe. After all, this was a time when spelling had yet to be standardised and as long as one was consistent – give or take the odd word within an actual document – that was OK. Owning a book was impressive enough, so any strange spelling was small beer.
Most chefs still cooked from memory and that cookery books were so rare indicates that recipes must have been a jealously guarded secret. This particular Boke of Kokery includes 182 of them. They’re all handwritten of course – the first printed book in English didn’t appear until 1473 – and the script takes quite a bit of getting used to. When you look at it, the language seems pretty obscure. In addition to the freestyle spelling of otherwise familiar English words, there are colloquial forms of French: the word ‘let’ is used in place of lait for ‘milk’, for instance, and ‘fryit’ for froid, meaning ‘cold’. But when read out loud, the sentences start to make sense. You can almost hear the strange accent they must have been uttered in. A recipe for green sauce – ‘sauce verte’ – instructs you to take some herbs and ‘grinde hem smale; And take faire brede, and stepe it in vinegre, and draw it thoug a stregnour’. Recite the words in an affected, effete voice and you can almost picture the fellow wafting a handkerchief and demanding that you draw the mixture through a strainer.
(MS 4016 f.5 verso)
Cookery books were rare in 1440 as most chefs cooked from memory but the Boke of Kokery contains 182 handwritten recipes, including one for custard.
This doesn’t, however, prepare you for the shock of what the author of the book regarded as custard. If you’re imagining something thick, warm, yellow and sweet to pour over your apple crumble, think again. Custard in 1440 was a different beast. Far from being a sauce, it was an open pie filled with pieces of meat or fruit. But it was covered with something we might recognise as custard – a sweet and spicy mixture made with egg and milk. As the piece of bread, known as ‘sop’, gave its name to the pottage it went into, so custard gave its name to the sauce that covered it.
One recipe for custard begins: ‘Take Vele and smyte hit in litull peces, and wass it clene.’ The rinsed and chopped-up veal is then boiled with herbs, including parsley and sage, and wine is added. The mixture is then left to cool and strained egg whites and yolks are added to thicken the broth. The mixture is then poured into a pastry case (that’s right, a coffin) along with chopped dates and prunes and powdered ginger scattered on top.
A recipe for ‘custard lumbarde’ (Lombardy custard), meanwhile, more resembles a fruity custard tart, again baked in a large pie. It’s made with cream, egg yolk, herbs and dates. Almond cream and sugar are then poured on top before serving. This type of dish was also known as ‘crustarde’, which, given that it refers to pastry, might suggest where the word ‘crust’ comes from.
If these custard recipes do little for you, then one for another concoction is no less offputting, beginning as it does: ‘Take some garbage …’ This was not an instruction to the servants to put the bins out, however, but a reference to giblets or offal. No doubt the word ‘garbage’ then developed as a response to those who felt these parts of the animal should be discarded.
Critics of the Boke on Kokery have said that it works more as a reference book for servants, indicating which ingredients they should have ready for the kitchen and how to chop particular kinds of meat. There is also a section advising kitchen staff on storing food properly, although this is less to do with preserving it and more with putting it somewhere where it wouldn’t be stolen. After all, meat, herbs and spices were still the domain of the rich.
But since most servants would not have had the benefit of an education, it seems unlikely that they would have been able to read such instructions. Furthermore, given the luxury that possession of this book would have involved, the tome was probably a cherished volume kept well away from the splashes and mess of a kitchen. But wherever it was stored, and there were no oily stains or flour marks on the copy I saw, what the book does have is an excellent recipe for mussels, hence their being championed here.
What a pleasure it is to see them cooked unadulterated, without lashings of cream, but prepared simply and quickly. Aside from the addition of vinegar and the lack of garlic, you can’t go wrong. The author should also be congratulated for the last line of the recipe. After all, how many times have you eaten in a restaurant and felt irritated because you were not given ‘a diss al hote’. Serving hot food on hot dishes is vital and for that reason alone, the Boke of Kokery deserves its place in history.
