Bacon & Cheese snack

Lacking time to replenish the stores I looked into dishes that could be made with what I had in the larder. This forced me to yet again look into some of the simpler dishes. In the 15^th century cookbook “Ein buch von guter spiese” a dish called a good pastry seem to indicate a dish that very well could have been served even at a common tavern. However, the line that stats that it should be served immediately suggests that it was rather something that was done at feasts with kitchen personell.

 

“Ein buch von guter spiese, 1354”

 

Ein gut gebackenz ( A good pastry)

Rib kese. menge den mit eyern und scharbe gesoten spec dar zu. mache ein schoenen derben teyc . und fülle den kese und die eyer dor in. und mache krepfelin. und backe sie in butern oder in smaltze. noch der zit. und gib sie warm hin.
Grate cheese. Mix it with eggs and boiled small pieces of fatty bacon thereto. Make a fine dough and fill therein with the cheese and the eggs. And make small cakes and bake them in butter or in fat, near to the time (they are to be served), and give them out warm.

(http://cs-people.bu.edu/akatlas/Buch/recipes.html)

 

Though seemingly simple there are some points that require some extra thought in this dish. First is the mixture of eggs, bacon and cheese mixed into the dough or is it folded in. Secondly, what exactly is meant with a fine dough?

 

While the suggestion to bake the dough into a cake would suggest that it should be all mixed up and shaped like a cake, another possible suggestion would be to bake it more or less like a dumpling. Several Dutch recipes from the early 16^th century suggests that one should fold the dough over a filling, very much like a modern small filled pastry. As I today had the fortune to have some assistance from two of the visitors I was able to experiment with three different ways of cooking this dish.

 

In order to try out how the dish appeared in the different guises we made three batches, one in which the bacon & cheese mixture was mixed out with a dough of wheat flour and water in order to make a small rounded cake.

 

In the second batch we just made some small dumplings in a water and wheat dough. Here I let the interpretation of a fine dough just refer to the use wheat flour.

 

A third way to interpret the dish was to make the dough fine and elastic with the use of some fat.

 

For the filling I used the cheese I had available, a traditional Swedish cheese, and a cold-smoked bacon that I gotten from my local deli. Though the bacon presumably could reflect what I could expect to find in the period, I am not entirely sure about the cheese. It is possible that I should have used a drier somewhat sharper cheese. Anyway, the mixture was made the same for all three varieties. The bacon was boiled and then chopped up in small pieces, and mixed up with an egg and a handful of cheese. [The repeated instructions to pre-boil the bacon, could indicate that it was a fair bit saltier than the ones we use today, that said a traditional bacon that is left to hang for a while will get dry and hard to cut up, why the pre-boiling could just be a way of making it easier to work with]

 

The three batches where then fried in butter, starting with the cakelike batch. This allowed for most of the milkproteins to be absorbed in the cakes, making the next few batches easier to deepfry.

 

While all three produced nice little pastries they turned out somewhat differently.

 

The cakebatch, appeared saltier and a bit heavier than the rest, giving it a feel of being more or less a beersnack. The first dumpling batch was far more balanced to the palate, if a bit undercooked and heavy in the dough. In the final batch we were able to make the dough somewhat thinner, which made the filling more cooked and the overall balance between dough and filling the most pleasant.

 

 

My assistants mentioned this cooking experience in the blog belonging to one of them

 

The pictures taken during that day by Caroline Ekberg will be put up on this entry once I reach my home computer.

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Pancakes

Following the theme of the previous post I am now moving on to pancakes. Though pancakes today is considered a very simple dish that most people knows how to do, it would not be a common dsh until the metal pan is spread to a larger extent. The origin of pancakes can probably be traced back to ancient greece or even earlier of one were to include varieties of flat bread. However in a medieval/renaissance context the first appearance of pancakes seem to date back to about the early 15^th century.

For this part of my experiments I have again chosen to use two recipes, a French recipe from “Le ménagier de Paris” (1390) and a newer dutch recipe. Though am a bit cautious about enhancing modern images and food traditions when doing renaissance dishes – as things may change in 500 years – the Dutch cookbooks, and some of the baroque painters seem to give a pancakes an important role already during the 16^th century.

I started of with the French recipe;

Lé menagier de Paris (1390)

CREPES. Take flour and mix with eggs both yolks and whites, but throw out the germ, and moisten with water, and add salt and wine, and beat together for a long time: then put some oil on the fire in a small iron skillet, or half oil and half fresh butter, and make it sizzle; and then have a bowl pierced with a hole about the size of your little finger, and then put some of the batter in the bowl beginning in the middle, and let it run out all around the pan; then put on a plate, and sprinkle powdered sugar on it. And let the iron or brass skillet hold three chopines, and the sides be half a finger tall, and let it be as broad at the bottom as at the top, neither more nor less; and for a reason.

This recipe is more or less what we would recognise as a pancake today, though it is rather deepfried than fried. Again the lack of a proper wine frustrated me as it would influence the taste. My lack of bowls that could pierce made me try to drip out the bater in a spiral shape using the rim of the bowl and a spoon, with a mediocre result. The batter was made quite liquid through the addition of both eggs, wine and water. The batter fried alright though it spread a bit to wide to make a nice spiral shape. Though the addition of some sugar in the end, made it a quite nice snack I realised that I might have used a bit to much egg in the mixture.

In the second trial I instead used a dough based on a Dutch recipe from 1510

Om panckoecken te maken inde vastenen

Square deepfried pancakes, 16th century Netherlands

To make lenten pancakes

[13] Om panckoecken te maken inde vastenen Neemt [14] fijn bloeme die suldi beslaen met gheste Dan maeckt [15] daer af deech Dan salmen van dien seluen deeghe ne[16]men een cleyn clontken ende maken dat viercantych [17] seer dunne emmers soe dunne alst moghelyck es om [18] maken tot dat cleyn gaetkens worpt: Dan bacxse wel in [19] raeptsmout Sommyghe dye willen backen der inne [20] rosinen ende dye steken si hyer en daer eene ende oock [21] cleyn stucxkens van appelen.

[13] To make lenten pancakes. Take [14] fine flour which you shall beat up with yeast. Then make [15] dough from it. Then, from the same dough, one shall [16] take a small lump and make it square [17] [and] very thin, in any case as thin as it is possible to [18] make, until small holes appear. Then fry them well in [19] rape oil. Some, who wish to, fry raisins therein [20] and they stick them one here and there and also [21] small pieces of apple.

Although certainly called pancakes there are several parts in it that we would not recognise in a pancake today. The first problem in understanding the recipe came when reading that four should be whisked with yeast in order to make a dough. At this occasion I dissolved some of the yeast into water and whisked it up with the flour making a rather firm dough. Though the whisking may suggest that should have made a batter, it also states that I should form small square cakes, which requires a nice firm dough. The flour used in both this dish and the former was of course ordinary wheat flour. After I made the dough, describing the ingredients to ne of the visitors, I did get a small revelation about the content of the dough. At the time a liquid yeast, would most likely have been the remains of making beer. If I had added some beer to the yeast I woud probaby have had a dough with a bit of a taste in it self. This ought to be remembered for future use.

I shaped the dough into small square bits on which I planted pieces of raisins and apples. As the recipe suggest that I should fry the raisins and as I at first thought I needed to turn the cakes n order to get them evenly fried.

This was not necessary, and in fact completely wrong as it turned the raisins into hard burt inedible stones. Though I appreciated the risk of that happening it came about far quicker than I had anticipated. After the first cake made this way I soon abandoned that method and instead just let the fry on one side, whilst scooping up some hot fat with a spoon and poured over the cakes. That was however not really necessary either. In the recipe one are told to make the cakes so thin that holes appear, and through these holes the fat would pour up and deep fry the surface as well, without burning the raisins.

The cakes were fried in rapeseed oil as suggested by the recipe. It is quite interesting as it is one f the first recipes suggesting the use of this oil. Finds from a settlement in Sweden dating back to the Iron Age, suggests that the plant (brassica rapa) was cultivated already at this time, it is however unclear if it was turnips or the oilrich plant that was grown.

Though the cakes lacked what we would consider the classical medieval tastes of cinnamon, ginger etc. it had a ice taste and would serve well as a small snack. It is possible that in the Netherlands – being close to the wine growing areas of Germany, raisins would not have been a to expensive commodity.