Alabama Renaissance Faire: The 2003 Feast
October 18th, 2003

Gode Cookery: James Matterer, Glenda Cockrum, Tammy Crawford, Lisa Holcomb-Blair, & Darell McCormick
With special thanks to Theresa Kanka

A Feast of Illusions for the Wizard King

Recipes & Ingredients



The Furst Course

Knots – bread & butter.

Snails – beef stew.

Frogs – mock frog legs, made of chicken wings cut to resemble frog legs.

A Basket of Flowers – a decorative salad served from flower baskets.



Entremet. A Living Chess Game

Chess Pieces – chocolate chess pieces, to coincide with the living chess game.



The Second Course


Little Leaves – fried spinach, chard, & onions.

Small Worms That Are Found In Cheese – Vermicelli pasta with cheese.

Dragon – fried or roasted chicken breasts in a red cinnamon sauce.

Shells – cakes shaped like seashells.



Entremet. A Boar Hunt

Pig’s Brains – a large faux boar’s head, filled with stewed fruits. (Served only to the Wizard King.)



The Thrid Course

Fawn – beans in sauce.

Crabs – apples in honey & anise.

Hats – beef & fruit pies shaped like Robin Hood hats, garnished with a feather.

Peacock Eyes – traditional European cookie.



Recipes & Ingredients

Knots

Our knot-shaped bread is inspired by the recipe
To make Jambles from Sallets, Humbles, & Shrewsbery Cakes, where small cakes are shaped “into Letters or Knots of what fashion you please.”

Ingredients:
white bread, olive oil, butter.

Source:
Beebe, Ruth Anne. Sallets, Humbles, & Shrewsbery Cakes. A Collection of Elizabethan Recipes Adapted for the Modern Kitchen. Boston: David R. Godine, 1976.




Snails

Original recipe from Un Vivendier: Snails, on any good meat, piglet or other. The meat is cut up into chunks and cooked in good bouillon, then set to dry on a clean cloth. Get white bread crumbs tempered in verjuice, and egg yolks, everything strained, saffron, ginger, cloves, grains of paradise and long pepper, distempered with wine and vinegar. Boil everything together. Set out your meat in platters, pour the sauce on top.

Our version: small chunks of beef are simmered in bouillon & spices.

Our version of this recipe is prepared & served as a stew.

Ingredients:
beef, beef bouillon, unseasoned white bread crumbs, egg yolks, ginger, cloves, cardamom, black pepper, salt, & red wine vinegar.

Source:
Scully, Terence. The Vivendier. Devon: Prospect Books, 1997.



Frogs

Original recipe from Le Menangier de Paris: Frogs. To catch them have a line and a hook with a bait of meat or a red rag, and having caught the frogs, cut them across the body near the thighs, and take out the foulness from the hindparts, and take the two thighs, cut off the feet, and skin the thighs all raw, then take cold water, and wash them; if the thighs remain for a night in cold water, they be so much the better and tenderer. And when they be thus steeped, let them be washed in warm water, then put to a towel and dried; the aforesaid thighs, thus washed and dried, must be rolled in flour and then fried in oil, fat or some other liquid, and let them be served in a bowl with spice powder thereon.

Our version: chicken wings, cut to resemble frog legs, are floured, sautéed in olive oil, and seasoned with salt & pepper.

Our version of this recipe uses chicken wings as mock frog legs.

Ingredients: chicken wings, flour, olive oil, salt, & black pepper.

Source:
Power, Eileen. The Goodman of Paris (Le Ménagier de Paris). A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by A Citizen of Paris (c. 1395). New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928.



A Basket of Flowers

For our salad of "flowers," we are inspired by
Country Contentments, in Two Books, 1615, by Gervase Markham, which describes the preparation of salads to resemble baskets of flowers.

A decorative salad containing various lettuces with salad greens & vegetables is served from large flower baskets. The salad is dressed with red wine vinegar, oil, and a little sugar.

Ingredients:
various lettuces & salad greens, cucumbers, carrots, red wine vinegar, sugar, & olive oil.

Source:
Country Contentments, in Two Books, 1615, by Gervase Markham.



Chess Pieces

Inspired by our Living Chess Game, the chocolate chess pieces are handmade by Tammy Crawford.

Ingredients: milk chocolate.



Little Leaves

Original recipe from Libro della cucina del secolo XIV: Of little leaves. Take spinach and chard; pick them over well and boil them. Then remove them and chop them very well with a knife; then take parsley, fennel, anise[?] onions, chop them and mash them with a knife, and fry them well in oil; take other "little herbs" and fry them all together, and add a little water and bring to the boil; add pepper and spices and serve.

Our version: spinach & chard are boiled until done, then chopped into small pieces. They are then sautéed in olive oil along with chopped onions & fresh parsley.

Our version of this recipe omits the anise, as it is used elsewhere in the feast; we have also left out the fennel.

Ingredients:
spinach, chard, parsley, onions, olive oil, salt, & black pepper.

Source:
Redon, Odile and Françoise Sabban, Silvano Serventi. Edward Schneider, trans. The Medieval Kitchen. Recipes from France and Italy. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1998.




Small Worms That Are Found In Cheese

Original recipe from Un Vivendier: Sicilian Vermicelli are made of dough as fine as small worms that are found in cheese. Young country girls make them in summertime for the whole year, drying them in the sun to make them last longer. They should be well culled and washed, then set to dry as was said for the Rice, and cooked in good fat bouillon with a good lot of saffron; when dishing up, fine grated cheese sprinkled on top.

Our version: vermicelli pasta is cooked in a vegetable broth until al denté; grated cheese is sprinkled on top just before serving.

Our version of this recipe keeps the dish vegetarian-friendly by boiling the noodles in vegetable based bouillon and not one of "good fat."

Ingredients:
vermicelli pasta, vegetable bouillon, grated parmesan & romano cheese,  salt.

Source: Scully, Terence. The Vivendier. Devon: Prospect Books, 1997.




Dragon

Original recipe from Diuersa Cibaria: Dragone. Milk of almonds, flour of rice, brawn of capon, sugar & cinnamon; the color red of sanc dragoun.

Our version: an almond Bechamel sauce is made from milk and a roux; it is flavored with cinnamon & sugar and is colored red. Chicken breasts are served in this sauce.

Our version of this recipe uses whole milk flavored with almond instead of almond milk, and roux as a thickener instead of rice flour. Sanc dragoun was a herb used to dye foods red; we are using red food coloring instead.

Ingredients:
chicken breasts, almond Bechamel sauce (whole milk, almond extract, a roux of butter & flour), sugar, cinnamon, salt, & red food coloring.

Source:
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 Oxford University Press, 1985.




Shells

Our inspiration for Shells comes from
To make Shelbread, from A Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewoman, 1617, where seashells are used as the molds for small cakes. Our shell cookies are flavored with lemon & rosewater as are the cakes in the original receipt.

Ingredients:
eggs, sugar, baker's ammonia, lemon flavoring, rosewater, & flour.

Source:
A Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewoman, 1617.




Fawn

Original recipe from Utilis Coquinario: To make a fawn. Take the leaves & blossoms of beans & pound them in a mortar & temper them up with the broth of fresh beef or of capons. And do there-to minced white bread that it be thick, & salt it; & do there-to sugar & saffron, & dress it in dishes & set there-on blossoms of beans & serve it forth.

Our version: fava beans are cooked in a vegetable broth, and seasoned with saffron & sugar.

Our version of this recipe uses beans instead of just the leaves & blossoms; the beans are left whole and not mashed. In addition, the dish is kept vegetarian-friendly by eliminating the beef or chicken bouillon and cooking in a vegetable based broth instead. The thickening agent, the bread crumbs, is not necessary when using unmashed beans and has been left out.

Ingredients:
fava beans, vegetable bouillon, saffron, sugar, & salt.

Source: 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 Oxford University Press, 1985.




Crabs

Original recipe from MS Harley 5401: To make Char de Crabb. Recipe crabapples & boil them in water till they be soft, & take honey & strain the crabs there-with through a cloth. put to a 3rd part of clarified honey & a quantity of sandalwood, & color it with saffron; then put there-to a quantity of powder of pepper & 2d worth of the flour of anise & a quantity of powder of licorice. Then take grated bread & mold it up there-with, & put it in pie shells & serve it forth.

Our version: sliced apples are cooked until soft with honey & anise.

Our version of this recipe is simply apples cooked in honey  & flavored with anise, and is not the apple pie of the original receipt. The bread crumbs, needed to thicken a pie filling, have been left out.

Ingredients:
apples, honey, saffron, white pepper, & anise flavoring.




Hats

Original recipe from MS Beinecke 163: Hats. Make a pastry dough of prepared flour, kneaded with yolks of eggs; & make a stuffing of veal & pork, boiled & ground, with yolks of eggs; marrow diced, & dates minced; currants; sugar, saffron & salt & spices; & mix all together. And make your pastry on round foils of the breadth of a saucer, as thin as may be drawn. Turn it double, that the edges may come to the middle of the foil; then turn it together that the edges on the bigger side meet all about, & the smaller side turn upward without in the manner of a hat. And close well the edges that they hold well. Fill there-on your stuffing. Have a batter of yolks of eggs & wheat flour in the open side that is toward. Look there-in the stuffing be closed, & set it in hot grease upright. When the batter is fried, you may lay it down & fry it all over.

Our version: a meat pie filling is made from beef, eggs, dried fruits, & spices. The filling is stuffed into small rounds of pastry shaped to resemble hats, then baked. They are garnished with a small feather.

Our version of this recipe uses beef instead of the veal & pork mixture. The marrow has been left out, and the pies are baked and not fried.

Ingredients:
pie pastry, beef, egg yolks, dates, currants, sugar, salt, black pepper, ginger, & olive oil.

Source:
Hieatt, Constance B. An Ordinance of Pottage. An Edition of the Fifteenth Century Culinary Recipes in Yale University's MS Beinecke 163. London: Prospect Books Ltd, 1988.




Peacock Eyes

Peacock Eyes are a traditional European cookie, made of layered cookies with a red filling; the filling shows through three decorative holes, resembling the markings of a peacock.

Ingredients:
sugar cookies & strawberry jam.


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