Wedding of

Lunch Menu

13^th Century Turkish

Medjool Dates & Turkish Figs

Almonds & Pistachios

Fresh Grapes

Dolmas (rice-stuffed grape leaves)

Freshly Baked Flatbread

Hummous & Baba Ganoush

Spiced Meat Patties

Chicken Rolls

Fried Cheese Pies

Baklava

Sikanjabin (Persian mint drink)

Turkish Lemonade

(plus milk & chocolate milk, beer, and hard cider)

Dinner Menu

17^th Century English

Grape Juice, Mead, Wine, Fresh Cider

Shrewsbury Cakes & White Gingerbread

Olives, Fresh Fruit

Manchets of Bread with butter, honey butter, & fresh jam

Compound Sallet

Whole Roast Pig with mustard, garlic sauce, & applesauce

Chicken Grete Pye (chicken-fruit “pot pie”)

Onion Pottage (onion soup)

Boyled Peascods (seasoned peas)

Layered Sweet Potatoes & Potatoes of Virginia

Candied Lemon & Orange Peels

Wedding Cake (spice cake with butterscotch frosting)

Coffee, Tea

Lunch Recipes

Unless noted, all lunch recipes adapted from redactions from Duke Sir Cariadoc’s A Miscelleny

Syrup of Lemon (Lemonade)

An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13^th Century

Take lemon, after peeling its outer skin, press it and take a ratl of juice, and add as much of sugar. Cook it until it takes the form of a syrup. Its advantages are for the heat of bile; it cuts the thirst and binds the bowels.

Syrup of Simple Sikanjabîn (Mint Drink)

Andalusian

Take a ratl of strong vinegar and mix it with two ratls of sugar, and cook all this until it takes the form of a syrup. Drink an ûqiya of this with three of hot water when fasting: it is beneficial for fevers of jaundice, and calms jaundice and cuts the thirst, since sikanjabîn syrup is beneficial in phlegmatic fevers: make it with six ûqiyas of sour vinegar for a ratl of honey and it is admirable.

Dissolve 4 cups sugar in 2½ cups of water; when it comes to a boil add 1 cup wine vinegar. Simmer ½ hour. Add a handful of mint, remove from fire, let cool. Dilute the resulting syrup to taste with ice water (5 to 10 parts water to 1 part syrup). The syrup stores without refrigeration.

Bread

Ain i Akbari, 12^th Century

There is a large kind, baked in an oven, made of 10 s. flour; 5 s. milk; 1 1/2 s. ghi; 1/4 s. salt. They make also smaller ones. The thin kind is baked on an iron plate. One ser will give fifteen, or even +more. There are various ways of making it; one kind is called chapati, which is sometimes made of khushka; it tastes very well when served hot.

3½ C. flour

1 C. milk

½ C. ghee or butter

½ Tb. salt

Melt the ghee, stir it into the flour with a fork until there are only very small lumps. Stir in the milk until thoroughly mixed, knead briefly. Put the ball of dough in a bowl covered by a damp cloth and leave for at least an hour.

Knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic, adding a little extra flour if necessary. Either:

Take a ball of dough about 2" in diameter, roll it out to about a 5" diameter circle. Cook it in a hot frying pan without grease. After about 2 minutes it should start to puff up a little in places. Turn it. Cook another 2 minutes. Turn it. Cook another 2 minutes. It should be done. The recipe should make about 11 of these.

Take a ball of dough about 3" in diameter. Roll it down to a circle about 7" in diameter and ¼" thick. Heat a baking sheet in a 450 degrees. oven. Put the circle of dough on it in the oven. Bake about 6 minutes; it should be puffing up. Turn it over. Bake about 4 minutes more. Take it out. The recipe should make about five of these.

Maqluba (Spiced Meat Patties)

al-Baghdadi (A Baghdad Cookery Book), 13^th Century

Take and slice red meat, then chop with a large knife. Put into the mortar, and pound as small as possible. Take fresh sumach, boil in water, wring out, and strain. Into this place the minced meat, and boil until cooked, so that it has absorbed all the sumach-water, though covered to twice its depth: then remove from the saucepan and spray with a little lemon-juice. Lay out to dry. Then sprinkle with fine-ground seasonings, dry coriander, cumin, pepper and cinnamon, and rub over it a few sprigs of dry mint. Take walnuts, grind coarse, and add: break eggs and throw in, mixing well. Make into cakes, and fry in fresh sesame-oil, in a fine iron or copper frying-pan. When one side is cooked, turn over on to the other side: then remove.

10 oz red meat

½ C. water

1 Tb. lemon juice

½ tsp. ground coriander

½ tsp. cumin

½ tsp. (white) pepper

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. dry mint

1¼ C. walnuts

5 eggs

2 Tb. sesame oil

Take meat, chop it with a knife, then pound in a mortar. Both ways work but give different textures. Simmer about 15 minutes. Drain the meat, sprinkle it with lemon juice, let dry about one hour. Mix meat with spices. Grind walnuts coarsely (something between chopped fine and ground coarse). Add walnuts and eggs, fry as patties on a medium griddle. Best eaten hot with a little salt. This produces about 20 patties roughly 3 inches in diameter.

Recipe for the Barmakiyya (Chicken Rolls)

Andalusian

It is made with hens, pigeons, ring doves, small birds, or lamb. Take what you have of it, then clean it and cut it and put it in a pot with salt and onion, pepper, coriander and lavender or cinnamon, some murri naqi, and oil. Put it over a gentle fire until it is nearly done and the sauce is dried. Take it out and fry it with mild oil without overdoing it, and leave it aside. Then take fine flour and semolina, make a well-made dough with yeast, and if it has some oil it will be more flavorful. Then stretch this out into a thin loaf and inside this put the fried and cooked meat of these birds, cover it with another thin loaf, press the ends together and place it in the oven, and when the bread is done, take it out. It is very good for journeying; make it with fish and that can be used for journeying too.

1 Tb. yeast

1 C. water, plus ¼ C. for yeast

1½ C. white flour

1½ C. semolina

3 Tb. olive oil for dough

1 lb boned chicken

10 oz chopped onion

½ tsp. pepper

1 tsp. salt in dough

1½ tsp. (lavender or) cinnamon

3 Tb. olive oil

3 Tb. more olive oil for frying

1 Tb. Byzantine murri

1 tsp. coriander

Mix yeast with ¼ C. lukewarm water. Stir together flour, semolina, 1 tsp. salt. When the yeast is foaming, add it, 1 C. water, and 3 Tb. oil to the flour and semolina, stirring it in, then kneading it smooth. If necessary add a little extra flour or water to get a reasonable texture. Cover with a damp towel, leave in a warm place about 1½ hours.

Cut the meat fairly fine (approximately ¼” slices, then cut them up), combine in a 3-quart pot with chopped onion, 1 tsp. salt, spices, murri, and 3 Tb. oil. Cook over a medium low to medium heat about an hour. I covered it at the beginning so it would all get hot, at which point the onion and meat released its juices and I removed the cover and cooked until the liquid was gone. Then heat 3 Tb. oil in a large frying pan on a medium high burner, add the contents of the pot, fry over medium high heat about five minutes.

Finally, take the risen dough, divide in four equal parts. Take two parts, turn them out on a floured board, squeeze and stretch each until it is about 12" by 5". Put half the filling on one, put the other on top, squeeze the edges together to seal. Repeat with the other two parts of the dough and the rest of the filling. Bake on a cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Asidah (Stuffed grape leaves, known often as dolmas or dolmades)

Andalusian

Water is taken and rice is put in until it swells. Then flour is sprinkled on it and it is stirred until done. Then it is taken off and fat and dibs are put with it. And if it is sprinkled with nuts, it is better.

Modern redaction adapted from “The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines,” by Jeff Smith.

16 oz jar Grape leaves (50-75 leaves, depending on size)

Filling:

1 cup raw long-grain rice

½ cup olive oil

1 cup chopped yellow onions

¼ cup chopped Italian parsley

¾ tsp dried dillweed

Juice of 1 lemon

2 15-oz cans chickpeas, coarsely or chopped (reserve canning liquid)

1 tsp allspice

2 cloves garlic, crushed

salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste

Broth:

Reserved chickpea liquid plus enough water to make 2 cups

Juice of 1 lemon

Mix all of the ingredients for the filling.

Pick out the smallest leaves in the jar and set aside. Use some of these leaves to place a single layer on the bottom of the pot.

Cut the stems off the grape leaves. Spread a leaf on the counter, bottom side up, stem side toward you. Place 1 teaspoon of the filling in the center of the leaf. Fold the stem end over the filling, then fold the sides over to secure the filling, then roll from you toward the tip of the leaf, forming a small cigar or cylinder. The size should be approximately 2 1/2 inches long and 3/4 inches wide long and 3/4 inches wide. Do not wrap these too tightly as the rice needs room for expansion when it cooks.

Using a 2-quart heavy-lidded kettle, place the rolled leaves on top of the single layer in the bottom. Place the rolls up against each other rather tightly so that they will not come undone while cooking. Cover them with a layer of unrolled leaves and then add another layer of rolled leaves. Continue until all rolled leaves are in the pot. Top with the remaining unrolled leaves.

Place a medium plate over the top of the leaves, as a weight. Mix the canning liquid from the chickpeas and lemon juice for the broth and pour over the leaves in the pot. Cover and bring to a light simmer. I use a heat diffuser for this. Cook 1 hour. Remove the pan from the heat and allow it to cool for 1 more hour. Do not remove the lid or the leaves will darken.

Counterfeit Isfî riyâ of Garbanzos (Hummous)

Andalusian

Pound some garbanzos, take out the skins and grind them into flour. And take some of the flour and put into a bowl… and beat with spices until it's all mixed…make a sauce for them.

2 cans chickpeas (reserve the liquid)

1 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. coriander

1 tsp. cumin

¼ C. Cilantro, chopped

10 cloves garlic

¼ C olive oil

¼ C lemon juice

Chop the garlic, saute lightly in olive oil. Conbine with juice and oil and beat together. Add the chickpeas and spices (and some of the reserved water from the chickpea cans) and beat to a unform batter.

Badhinjan Bi-Laban (Baba Ganoush)

al-Baghdadi

Take medium-sized eggplants, cut off the leaves and half the stalks, and half boil in salt and water; then remove and dry well. Throw into milk and garlic. Refine fresh sesame oil, add a little cumin and coriander, and into this place the eggplant.

¾ lb eggplant

1 C. walnuts

2 Tb. vinegar (for nut dough)

½ tsp. salt (for nut dough)

½ tsp. each pepper and salt

1 tsp. caraway seed

1½ Tb. vinegar (at the end)

¼ C. chopped raw onion

Simmer the eggplant 20 to 30 minutes in salted water (½ tsp. salt in a pint of water). Let it cool. Peel it. Slice it and let the slices sit on a colander or a cloth for an hour or so, to let out the bitter juice.

Grind the walnuts, add vinegar and salt to make a dough. Make patties about ½" thick and put them on a frying pan at medium to medium high heat, without oil. In about half a minute, when the bottom side has browned a little, turn the patty over and use your pancake turner to squash it down to about ¼" (the cooked side is less likely to stick to your implement than the uncooked side). Continue cooking, turning whenever the patty seems about to scorch. When you are done, the surface of the patty will be crisp, brown to black-and since it is thin, the patty is mostly surface. If the patties start giving up lots of walnut oil (it is obvious-they will quickly be swimming in the stuff) the pan is too hot; throw them out, turn down the heat and make some more.

Chop up the eggplant, mix in the nut patties (they will break up in the process), add pepper, salt, caraway (ground in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle), and vinegar. Top with onion. Eat by itself or on bread.

Khushkananaj (period baklava)

al-Baghdadi

Take fine white flour, and with every ratl mix three uqiya of sesame-oil, kneading into a firm paste. Leave to rise; then make into long loaves. Put into the middle of each loaf a suitable quantity of ground almonds and scented sugar mixed with rose water, using half as much almonds as sugar. Press together as usual, bake in the oven, remove.

2 C. white flour

1 C. whole wheat flour

½ C. untoasted sesame oil

6 oz almonds

additional flour for rolling out dough

1½ C. sugar

1 Tb. rose water

½ C. water and ½ C. sourdough

Mix the flour, stir in the oil. Mix the water and the sour dough starter together. Add gradually to the flour/oil mixture, and knead briefly together. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise about 8 hours in a warm place, then knead a little more.

Divide in four parts. Roll each one out to about 8"x16" on a floured board. Grind almonds, combine with sugar and rose water. Spread the mixture over the rolled out dough and roll up like a jelly roll, sealing the ends and edges (use a wet finger if necessary). You may want to roll out the dough in one place and roll it up in another, so as not to have bits of nuts on the board you are trying to roll it out on. You can vary how thin you roll the dough and how much filling you use over a considerable range, to your own taste. Bake at 350 deg. about 45-50 minutes.

Recipe for Mujabbana (Fried Cheese Pies)

Andalusian

Know that mujabbana isn't prepared with only one cheese, but of two; that is, of cow's and sheep's milk cheese. Because if you make it with only sheep cheese, it falls apart and the cheese

leaves it and it runs. And if you make it with cow's cheese, it binds, and lets the water run and becomd sole mass and the parts don't separate. The principle in making it is that the two cheeses bind together. Use one-fourth part cow's milk and three-quarters of sheep's. Knead all until some binds with its parts another [Huici Miranda observes that this passage is faintly written and only a few letters can be made out] and becomes equal and holds together and doesn't run in the frying pan, but without hardening or congealing. If you need to soften it, soften it with fresh milk, recently milked from the cow. And let the cheese not be very fresh, but strong without...[words missing]...that the moisture has gone out of. Thus do the people of our land make it in the west of al-Andalus, as in Cordoba and Seville and Jerez, and elsewhere in the the land of the West.

Manner of Making it. Knead wheat or semolina flour with some yeast into a well-made dough and moisten it with water little by little until it loosens. If you moisten it with fresh milk instead of water it is better, and easy, inasmuch as you make it with your palm. Roll it out and let it not have the consistency of mushahhada, but firmer than that, and lighter than musammana dough. When the leaven begins to enter it, put the frying pan on the fire with a lot of oil, so that it is drenched with what you fry it with. Then wet your hand in water and cut off a piece of the dough. Bury inside it the same amount of rubbed cheese. Squeeze it with your hand, and whatever leaves and drains from the hand, gather it up carefully. Put it in the frying pan while the oil boils. When it has browned, remove it with an iron hook prepared for it and put it in a dipper ["iron hand"] similar to a sieve held above the frying pan, until its oil drips out. Then put it on a big platter and dust it with a lot of sugar and ground cinnamon. There are those who eat it with honey or rose syrup and it is the best you can eat.

3 oz ricotta

½ C. milk for the dough

4 oz feta

2 C. olive oil for frying (about ½" deep)

1 Tb. sugar

1½ C. flour 1 tsp. cinnamon

¼ C. sourdough

honey and butter for topping

Mix flour, sourdough, and milk and knead for a few minutes into a smooth dough. Roll out to about a 12" circle, making sure the board (or marble slab) is well floured so it will not stick when you later take it off. Let rise about 3 hours in a warm place. Mash together the cheeses and knead them to a smooth consistency. Cut a piece of the dough, put cheese filling on top, fold dough up on all sides around it and over the cheese; squeeze to a circular, flattened patty, using a wet hand so that the dough will seal. The cheese is entirely surrouded by dough. Pour the oil in a 8½" frying pan or dutch oven (about ½" deep), heat to about 340 degrees. Put patties into the oil, cook until the bottom is brown (about 40-60 seconds), turn over, cook until that side is brown (about another 40 seconds), remove, drain. Top with melted butter and honey.

Dinner Recipes

To Make Manchet (Bread)

Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, 1649

Your best and principal bread is Manchet, which you shall bake in this manner: First your meal being ground upon the black stones, if be possible, which makes the whitest flower, and boulted through the finest boulting cloth, you shall put it into a clean Kimnel, and opening the flower hollow in the midst, put into it of the best ale-barm, the quantity of three pints to a bushell of meale and some salt to season it with; then put in your liquor reasonable warme, and kneade it very well together, with both your hands, and through the brake, or for want thereof, fould it in a cloth, and with your feete treade it a good space together, then letting it lie an houre or thereabouts to swel, take it foorth and mould it into Manchets, round, and flat, scorcht them about the wast to give it leave to rise, and prick it with your knife in the top, and so put into the oven, and bake with gentle heat.

11 C King Arthur unbleached flour

3 C water

1 Tb. yeast/ 1 tsp sugar

½ C honey

2 C nonfat dry milk

5 tsp salt

10 Tb. butter

4 large or extra large eggs

Proof yeast in water with sugar. Alternately add flours, honey, nonfat dry milk, salt, and butter. Knead until elastic. Let rise for an hour. Shape into a large braid, and let rise at room temp for 1 1/2 hours. Bake at 375 for 35-40 mins. Makes 2 3-lb. loaves.

...Most Dainte Butter (Honey Butter)

Hugh Plat, Delites for Ladies, 1609

This is done by mixing a few dropps of the extracted oyle of sage, cinamon, nutmegs, mace, etc. in the making vp of your butter: for oyle and butter will incorporate and agree verie kindely and naturally together.

1 stick butter, softened

1 Tb. cinnamon

2 Tb. honey, warmed

Cream all ingredients together.

To make an Apple Moye (Applesauce)

The English Hus-wife

Take Apples, and cut them in two of foure peeces, boyle them till they be soft, and bruise them in a mortar, and put thereto the yolks of two Eggs, and a little sweet butter, set them on a chafingdish of coales, and boyle them a little, and put thereto a little Sugar, synamon, and Ginger, and so serve them in.

Compound Sallet (Salad)

The English Hus-wife

To compound an excellent Sallet, and which indeed is usuall at great Feasts, and upon Princes Tables, take a good quantity of blancht Almonds, and with your shredding knife cut them grossely. Then take as many Raisins of the Sun clean washt, and the stones pickt out, as many Figs shred like the Almonds, as many Capers, twice so many Olives, and as many Currants as of all the rest, clean washt, a good handfull of the small tender leaves of red Sage and Spinage: mixe all these well together with good store of Sugar, and lay them in the bottome of a great dish. Then put unto them Vineger and Oyl, and scrape more Suger over all: then take Oranges and Lemmons, and paring away the outward pilles cut them into thinne slices. Then with those slices cover the Sallet all over: which done, take the fine thinne leaves of the red Coleflowre, and with them cover the Oranges and Lemmons all over. Then over those Red leaves lay another course of old Olives, and the slices of well pickled Cucumbers, together with the very inward heart of Cabbage lettice cut into slices. Then adorn the sides of the dish and the top of the Sallet with more slices of Lemons an Oranges, and so serve it up.

Bibb lettuce, Romaine

red cabbage, spinach

½ C olive oil

¼ C vinegar

salt & pepper

lots of fresh herbs

sliced toasted almonds

Raisins, sliced lemons

Capers, olives

Wash the greens thoroughly and shake clean. Toss with seasonings.

To sowce a Pigge (Roasted whole pig)

A New Booke of Cookerie, 1615

Scald a large Pigge, cut off his head and slit him in the middle, and take out his bones, and wash him in two or three warme waters. Then collar him up like Brawne, and sowe the collars in a fayre cloth. Then boyle them very tender in faire water, then take them up and throw them in fayre water and Salt untill they be colde, for that will make the skinne white. Then take a pottle of the same water, that the Pigge was boyled in, and a pottle of white Wine, a race of Ginger sliced, a couple of Nutmegs quartered, a spoonefull of whole Pepper, five or sixe Bayleaves: seeth all this together, when it is colde put your Pigge into the sowce-drincke, so you may keepe it halfe a yeere, but spend the head.

1 whole dressed pig

Ginger and spices

Large rotisserie grill

Ulric

Put all together and see what happens...

(Seriously, Ulric made homemade pork stock and basted the pig for 10 to 12 hours while it slowly roasted over an open rotisserie. J )

Lumbard Mustard (Mustard)

Forme of Cury, 14^th Century

Take mustard seed and waisshe it, & drye it in an ovene. Grynde it drye; sarse it thurgh a sarse. Clarifie hony with wyne & vyneger & stere it wel togedre and make it thikke ynowgh; & whan thou wilt spende therof make it thynne with wyne.

1 C brown mustard

½ C honey

¼ C wine vinegar

In a bowl, stir together mustard and honey. Stir in vinegar until sauce reaches a desirable consistency. Yields one and three-quarters cups of sauce.

2 lb. peas

2/3 C water

butter

salt

ground mace

½ C wine

Parboil the peas in water and a little wine and vinegar. Add butter and seasonings.

How to Stew Potatoes (Sweet & White Potatoes – the groom insisted!!)

Joseph Cooper, The Art of Cookery Refin'd and Augmented, 1654

Boyle or roast your Potatoes very tender, and blanch them; cut them into thin slices, put them into a dish or stewing pan, put to them three or foure Pippins sliced thin, a good quantity of beaten Ginger and Cynamon, Verjuice, Sugar and Butter; stew these together an hour very softly; dish them being stewed enough, putting to them Butter and Verjuice beat together, and stick it full of green Sucket or Orrengado, or some such liquid sweet-meat; sippit it and scrape Sugar on it, and serve it up hot to the table.

1 lb. unpeeled sweet and white potatoes

½ lb. unpeeled apples, pref. Granny Smiths

4 Tb. sugar

½ tsp ground ginger

½ C unsweetened grape juice

2 Tb. butter

Bake the potatoes, let cool, and slice into rounds. Core and slice the apples. Mix the sugar with the ginger. Layer the apples and potatoes with most of the spices, dot with butter, and pour the juice over the top. Use a 9x13 pan. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes covered, then uncover, sprinkle with a little more ginger and sugar, and continue baking for 10-15 minutes.

Shrewsbury Cakes (Shortbread)

John Murrell, A Delightfull Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewomen, 1621

Take a quart of very fine flower, eight ounces of fine sugar beaten and sersed, twelve ounces of sweete butter, a Nutmegge grated, two or three spoonefuls of damaske rose-water, worke all these together with your hands as hard as you can for the space of halfe an houre, then roule it in little round Cakes, about the thicknesse of three shillings one upon another, then take a silver Cup or glasse some foure or three inches over, and cut the cakes in them, then strowe some flower upon white papers & lay them upon them, and bake them in an Oven as hot as for Manchet, set up your lid till you may tell a hundreth, then you shall see them white, if any of them rise up clap them downe with some cleane thing, and if your Oven be not too hot set up your lid again, and in a quarter of an houre they will be baked enough, but in any case take heede your Oven be not too hot, for they must not looke browne but white, and so draw them foorth & lay them one upon another till they be could, and you may keep them halfe a yeare, the new baked are best.

¼ C sugar

½ C butter

1 C flour

1½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp vanilla

Sift flour with sugar and nutmeg, then cut in the butter and sprinkle the rosewater over the resulting dough. Knead, then roll out ¼-inch thick and cut out three-inch circles. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Sauce for Peiouns (Garlic Sauce)

Ashmole MS 1429, 14^th Century

Take percely, oynouns, garleke, and salt, and mynce smal the perceley and the oynouns, and grynde the garleke, and temper it with vynegre y-now: and mynce the rostid peiouns and cast the sauce ther-on a-boute, and serue it forth.

1 C parsley

1 small onion

5 cloves of garlic or to taste

¼ C wine vinegar

Salt to taste

Chop the parsley and onion small, and crush the garlic. Combine all of these with the salt in a blender or food processor, and purée them. Add the vinegar, and continue to purée until the sauce is smooth. Serve over roasted fowl, cut into small pieces. Yields one cup of sauce.

To bake a Chickin Pie (Grete Pyes)

The English Hus-wife

After you have trust your Chickins, broken their legges and breast bones, and raised your crust of the best past, you shall lay them in the coffin close together with their bodies full of butter: Then lay upon them and underneath them currants, great raysons, prunes, cinamon, suger, whole mace and salt: then cover all with great store of butter and so bake it. After powre into it the same liquor you did in your marrow bone Pie with the yelkes of 2 or 3 egges beaten amongst it: And so serve it forth.

An unbaked 9-in pie pastry shell

½ C. dry white wine

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp mace

¼ C. currants

¼ C. raisins

½ C. pitted prunes

2½ lb chicken, cut into 12-15 pieces

½ tsp salt

1 Tb butter, cut into small pieces

1 Tb brown sugar

Line bottom of 2 quart casserole with pie pastry and bake at 425 F for 10 minutes. Let cool. Mix together wine and spices. Add dried fruits, stir, and let stand about 15 minutes. Toss the chicken pieces with the wine and fruit mixture, sprinkling in the salt as you mix. Place in the pastry and dot with butter. Cover and bake at 350 F for 45 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle with brown sugar, and bake uncovered for an additional 15 minutes.

Onion Pottage (Onion soup)

Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook, 1678

Fry a good store of slic't onions, then have a pipkin of boiling liquor over the fire, when the liquor boils put in the fryed onions, butter and all, with pepper and salt: being well stewed together, serve in on sops of French bread.

3 Tb. butter

6-7 onions

2 qt. homemade beef broth

1 tsp salt

½ tsp grains of paradise

½ C flour

Mince onions and sauté in the butter, adding flour as they brown. Bring the broth to a boil, then add to the onions. Season and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.

To Boyle… Peascods (Peas)

John Murrell, A Book of Cookerie, 1617

Take greene sugar Pease when the pods bee but young, and pull out the string of the backe of the podde, and picke the huske of the stalkes ends, and as many as you can take up in your hand at three several times, put them into the pipkin, with halfe a pound of sweete Butter, a quarter of a pint of faire water, a little grosse Pepper, Salt, and Oyle of Mace, and let them stue very softly until they bee very tender, then put in the yolkes of two or three rawe egges strained with six spoonefuls of Sacke, and as much Vinegar, put it into your Peascods and brew them with a ladle, then dish them up.

White Gingerbread

A Delightfull Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewomen

Take halfe a pound of marchpaine past, a quarter of a pound of white Ginger beaten and cerst, halfe a pound of the powder of refined sugar, beate this to a very fine past with dragagant steept in rose-water, then roule it in round cakes and print it with your moulds: dry them in an oven when the breade is drawne footh, upon white papers, & when they be very dry, box them, and keepe them all the yeare.

½ lb. almond paste

1½ Tb. water

½ Tb. rosewater

1 tsp gum tragacanth

½ C sugar

1 Tb. ground ginger

Combine the water and gum, then mix with the almond paste and sugar. Roll out into small balls, flatten into molds, remove, and place on parchment paper. Bake at 200 for 20 minutes, then turn off the oven and let sit for 15 minutes more.

To Preserve Orenges (Candied orange peel)

Thomas Dawson, The Good Huswifes Jewell, 1596

You must cut your Orenges in halfe and pare them a little round about, and let them lye in water foure or five dayes, and you must chaunge the water once or twice a day, and when you preserve them, you must have a quarte of faire water to put in your Sugar, and a little Rosewater, and set it on the fire, and scum it verye clene, and put in a little Sinamon, and put in your Orenges, and let them boyle a little while, and then take them out againe, and doe so five or sixe times, and when they be enough, put in your Orenges, and let your Sirrop stande till it bee colde, and then put your Sirrop into your Orenges.

3 lemons and oranges

2 C sugar

1 Tb. rosewater

Rinse the fruit and peel. Put the peels in a saucepan with 1 pint of cold water and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes, drain off the water, and add a pint of fresh water. Repeat this process two more times. Drain, add a quart of water, and cook until easily pierced. Drain all but 2 cups of water, and add the sugar and rosewater. Cook over medium heat to make a syrup, then lower the heat and cook until the peel is translucent. When cool, roll in sugar.

The Countess of Rutlands Receipt for making the rare Banbury Cake, which was so much praised at her Daughters (the Right Honorable the lady Chaworths) Wedding (Spice Cake)

1655 (from Wedding Cakes and Cultural History, Simon R. Charsley)

Take a peck of fine flower, and half an ounce of large Mace, half an ounce of Nutmegs, and half an ounce of Cinnamon. Your Cinnamon and Nutmegs must be sifted through a searce, two pounds of Butter, half a score of Egges, put out four of the whites of them, something above a pint of good Ale-yeast. Beat your Eggs very well and strain them with your Yeast, and a little warm water into your Flower, and stir them together, then put your Butter cold in little Lumps. The water you knead withall must be scalding hot, if you will make it a good Paste, the which having done, lay the Paste to rise in a warm Cloth, a quarter of an hour or there upon; then put in two pounds of Currans, a little Musk and Ambergreece dissolved in Rosewater, your Currans must be made very dry, or else they will make your Cake heavy, strew as much Sugar finely beaten amongst the Currans as you shall think the water hath taken away the sweetness from them; break your Paste into little pieces, in a Kimne; or such like thing and lay a layer of Paste broken into little pieces, and a layer of Currans, until your Currans are all put in, mingle the Currans and the Paste very well, but take heed of breaking the Currans, you must take out a piece of Paste after it hath risen in a warm cloth and roul it thin to cover the top and prick the top and sides with a small long pin; when your Cake is ready to go into the Oven, cut it in the midst of the side round about with a Knife an inch deep, if your Cake is to be of a peck of meal, it must stand two hours in the Oven, your Oven must be as hot as for Manchet.

[Recipe redacted by Energizer Jean (Jean Adler), the bride’s mother]

4 cups King Arthur flour, sifted before measuring
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp mace
scant 1/2 tsp cloves
3/4 cup butter, at room temp
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 extra large eggs, at room temp
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups buttermilk, at room temp
3/4 cup currents

Sprinkle small amount of sifted flour over currents and mix well.
Sift first eight ingredients at least four times to thoroughly mix the spices.
Beat butter, than add sugar gradually, beating very well.
Beat in eggs, one at a time and then beat well to make fluffy.
With mixer at low speed, add about half of the flour mixture and mix gently.
Add one-third of the buttermilk and blend gently.
Alternate rest of flour mixture and buttermilk, mixing very gently after each addition.
Scrape down sides of bowl along the way until blended.
Remove mixer bowl and gently fold in floured currents with rubber scraper.
Scrape into two greased, parchment-lined, greased and floured pans.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes, until middle just barely presses solid; don't over bake.
Allow pan to cool for 5 minutes on cooling rack and then remove.

Butterscotch frosting

(from milady Stefani Isfaxi)

1 C brown sugar

¼ C water

2 Tb. butter

¼ C cream

Combine sugar and water in top of double boiler. Place over direct heat and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Boil vigorously for 1 minute. Place over boiling water. Add butter. Gradually add cream, stirring constantly. Stir 2½ C sifted powdered sugar into cooled mixture.

The art of comfet-making, teaching how to cover all kinds of seeds, fruits or spices with sugar (candied seeds)

Delights for Ladies

...Take a half a pound of anise, a quatrain and a half of fennel, a quatrain and a half of coriander, a quatrain and a half of caraway seed, which is a seed eaten in dragees…

1 cup fine sugar, ½ C hot water

½ C seeds—coriander, anise, caraway, fennel

Cook a sugar syrup to the soft ball stage. Spoon some over dry seeds and stir them around with a fork. Keep adding syrup and stirring the seeds to build up layers of candying. Let cool between layers.