Hand Pies, by any name, win the game!

Norse pies, pastys, tourtlets in fryture, Bridies… any and all are perfect for serving a lot of people with very little fuss, low cost and few ingredients. The secret is all in the crust.  The best (and most period) ones are made with a hot water crust (often called ‘standing crust’), which creates a sturdier, less tender and flakey, crust that holds up while being handled.  The earliest hot water crusts were meant to be nothing more than to serve as a container to bake, fry, hold or transport the delicious filling inside.

My recipe for Hot Water Crust is based on a later period one that makes an edible crust, but still is easily transported.  Instead of cutting the fat into the flour quickly and adding cold water, which makes a tender, flakey crust, a hot water crust is made by boiling the water and the fat to)gether and combining the mixture with flour and salt (if using).  The resulting dough is reminiscent of Playdough, and very easy to work with.

The filling for the Chicken and Leek Pies was based on a recipe I have used for several feasts, from Le Viandier de Taillevent:

193. Norse Pies (in the syle of the North).
Take cooked meat chopped very small, pine nut past, currants, harvest cheese crumbled very small, a bit of sugar and a little salt.

I used cooked chicken thigh meat for these pies, and goat cheese.  For the pine nut paste, I simply ground pine nuts, a small amount of olive oil, and salt, into a butter.  I then added currents, and seasoned the mixture with salt and a little bit of sugar.

The Salmon and Leek Pies were similarly made.  The leeks were softened in a small amount of olive oil, combined with the salmon and some fresh herbs (I used parsley) and the combined mixture was seasoned with salt & pepper, dried sage, ginger, and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

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With thousands of miles of coastline Scotland has fish and shellfish in abundance.  The fishing economy began in earnest when the Vikings arrived in the 8th century in search of herring and land to cultivate.  Fish was a regular dish as the church forbade the eating of meat during Lent and on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Herring, pike, salmon and bream were commonly eaten as well as eels, which were caught in lochs with wicker eel traps and barbed eel spears.  Food from the sea, river and pond was plentiful and cheap and by the Middle Ages was an integral part of most Scots’ diet. Entire coastal communities were set up devoted to catching, processing and packing fish for local consumption and export.

Lemon Barley Water

Rinse 3/4 cup barley under cold water until water runs clear.  Place barley in a 2qt saucepan, along with 6 cups water and the zest of several lemons.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes.  Strain, removing barley (can be saved for soup or used in another dish).  Add 1/2 cup honey, stir to dissolve.  Stir in juice of 2 lemons.  Let mixture cool to room temperature, then bottle and keep cool until serving.

To Pickle Cucumbers

Trim off the blossom end!  Slice cucumbers as desired and add to the container.  Make a brine: 2 cups malt vinegar, 1 cup water, 2 Tbl salt, 1/2 tsp peppercorns, 1/2 tsp mustard seed, 1/2 tsp celery seed, and 1 tsp dill seed.  Bring the brine to a boil.  Lower heat, and simmer 5 minutes.  Add one blade of mace to each jar. Ladle hot brine over the cucumber slices.  Allow the jars to cool (uncovered) 1 hour, and then refrigerate for 1 hour more.  Cover the jars and store up to 3 months.

Shortbread

I’ll be honest.  I don’t know whether or not shortbread is period for Beathog or not.  I know there are LOTS of people who believe it to have originated at least to the 12th century, originally as a “biscuit bread”, on the order of a modern day Italian biscotti.  Those claim that the yeast in the bread was replaced by butter, and the biscuit bread developed into what we know as shortbread.

Many others attribute shortbread to Mary, Queen of Scots, who, in the mid-16th century was said to be very fond of Petticoat Tails, a thin, crisp, buttery shortbread originally flavored with caraway seeds (the preferred flavoring of seed cakes of this period, as well).

All I know is that shortbread is simply made, with ingredients commonly used in the 14th century in Scotland, and appears in some form in every recipe collection since the beginning of recipe publication in Scotland.  Good enough for me!

MY RECIPE:

  • 12 oz flour
  • 4 oz sugar
  • 8 oz butter

Mix flour and sugar together, and then rub in butter.  Use the tips of your fingers; it should resemble sand.

Knead to form a smooth dough.  Press into an 8″ well-greased tin.  Mark out “fingers” and prick the surface all over with a fork.

Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 20-30 minutes.  Do not brown!  Cool slightly on rack before cutting into fingers, then cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

 

Seedy Cakes

There are numerous recipes for sweet, round seed cakes from the 16th and early 17th centuries.  A similar cake was described in Chaucer’s 14th century Canterbury Tales, where it is compared to the shape of the medieval round shield, the Buckler.  I was happy to find the following recipe in the earliest published Scottish cookbook, because it’s ingredients mimic my favorite modern seed cake recipe, which contains only eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, ground almonds, caraway seed, orange peel and a splash of liquor.

To make a Seed-Cake. 

Take 3 Doz. Eggs, keep out 6 Whites for glazing, take 3 lib of fine Sugar, beat your Sugar and Eggs, till they be thick and white, take 2 lib. an a half of Sweet Butter, and half a Mutchkin of Cream warmed, pour it into the Butter, and heat them together, till the Butter be white and light; take half an Ounce of Cinnamon, half an Ounce of Nutmeg and Cloves, an Ounce of Carvey-seed, 3 lib. of Cordecidron, 3 lib. of Orange-peil, 2 lib. of Almonds blanched and cut, then put in 4 lib. of flour among the Eggs, and put in the beaten Butter, put in half a mutchkin of brandy, mix them well together; then put in the Fruits and Spices, and the all well together, and put it in the Frame, and send it to the Oven.

[One note on the above recipe:  Medieval eggs were MUCH smaller than our eggs are today, so we see an exaggerated number of eggs used in these types of recipes.]

I feel confident that the modern redaction that I used had just the right taste to mimic a period seed cake recipe.  My cake was very moist and stored very well in an airtight container.  The perfect sweet, Medieval bite!

Beef: Roasted & Stewed

We really wanted to demo a large cut of meat roasted on a spit, and beef had to be our choice.  Beef was a rather expensive meat choice in much of England, and possibly in the Lowlands of Scotland, as well, as raising cattle required a great land investment.  But, archaeological evidence suggests that beef was the most commonly eaten meat in the Scottish Highlands during the Middle Ages.  Sheep were grown almost everywhere for wool, and mutton was the second most popular source of meat, followed by pig, goat, horse and deer.  Fresh meat could be cured with dry salt, pickled, or smoked to preserve.  Chickens and geese were also kept for food, and people who lived near rivers or the sea ate fish and other seafood.

The main reason we wanted to demo spit-cooking was that we wanted to show this common method of preparing large amounts of meat (which were often rather tough cuts, due to either the location they were found on the animal, or due to them being from an older animal).  Tough cuts of meat were usually boiled, or stewed, a favorable method that also produced a tasty broth that could be saved and utilized later for, say, a pottage or a sauce.

I’m going to have to update this post, later, with better pictures.  But, this photo shows the spit setup we used, with a pan located directly under where the meat would be, to catch the drippings as the meat was cooking and basted.  The actual fire area would be located beside the meat, not under it (dripping fat into a fire is a big safety no-no).  The drippings would be saved and, after the meat was cooked and removed from the fire and allowed to rest (to keep the juices from running out and leaving the meat dry), the meat would be sliced and returned to a sauce made from the drippings.

For our recipe, we looked to the earliest recipes we could find for seasoning beef in Scotland.  We seasoned the meat with salt, pepper, allspice, nutmeg, clove, mace, thyme and savory.  As it cooked, we basted it with a combination of beef stock & ale, which we later used to make a sauce with the drippings, more stock & ale, additional vinegar and some more of the same spices.

 

 

Fish Sausage?

I’ve done several fish sausages over the years, and I’m always asked the same question: “Fish sausage?  Really??”

Yes.  I believe it was actually a commonly eaten dish (for folks with access to fresh fish, which includes a great deal of Scotland), prepared with or without some type of casing, just as it is today.  Sausages of all kinds were commonly eaten, for reasons already stated elsewhere in this study.  But, we find few actual recipes, which is not surprising, because they often contain bits of this and bits of that, combined into one dish.  One example, which I’ve seen in several sources, combines the liver of one species with the scraped neck meat of another.  Eat what you have, and eat all of it.

One of the recipes we redacted for an Upper Crust book project (12 or 15 years ago), a 14th century manuscript of a Neapolitan cookbook, was a recipe for fish sausage.  In the 14th century!!  We’ve done fish sausages, joyfully, ever since!

This is a photo of a salmon sausage that we first made at West/AnTir War, for the Cooks’ Play-date Camp and made several times since, that uses a combination of smoked and fresh fish.  I have seen that combination used, as well, and it makes a lot of sense to stretch small amounts of fresh fish with fish from your preserved stores.

Below are a few sausage recipes from a 1616 Danish cookbook that show fish sausage examples both with and without casings of any kind:

XLIV. Pike sausage.

Take some of the fish, the [milten] and the blood. Chope it with pepper, coriander, onion, thyme. Put it in the stomach and let it seethe with the fish.

LII. A different way.

If you want to make a good dish of big fish, then take the back off the pike, carp, bream or another big fish. Chop it in pieces, salt it and put it on a griddle and make it nicely brown. Make a broth over it as previously said in chapter 50 about the pike. Make then from the apples coriander as previously said and pour it over. In this way you can also make sausage and prepare the liver of Pike.

LV – To make sausage of chopped fish. If you want to make sausage of this fish then take cloves, nutmeg flowers, small raisins, saffron and mix it with each other. Make of it sausages each one finger long and put in seething water and let well seethe. When they are well cooked take them up and put over them a brown sauce. Take thin ale, vinegar and gingerbread, let this well seethe and throw in herbs to taste. If you want it quite good take good wine and small raisins (called corinths).

For my sausage recipe, I took a suggestion from the Danish source, above.  I used a combination of fish that were found in medieval Scotland (mainly salmon and pollock), my own poudre forte (which contains cloves and nutmeg, among other 14th century spices) and added currants, as above.  Likewise, I made a sauce of ale & vinegar, some of the poudre forte along with some additional cinnamon and a small amount of honey, which I then thickened with bread crumbs.

Delicious!  It tasted like Scotland, and it tasted like the 14th century, to me, which was the purpose of this project in the first place.  This recipe will remain in Beathog’s own Receipt Book, certainly.

To Cook a Sausage

There are many examples of sausages being made, all over Europe, during the 14th century, so I must assume they were eaten in Scotland, as well.  Tough cuts of meat can easily be chopped fine, seasoned, stuffed into hog casings, and smoked for longer storage.  My husband entered such a sausage (redacted for an Upper Crust book project of a 14th century manuscript of a Neapolitan cookbook)  in the 2005 Pentathlon, — and we have used the recipe, faithfully, since.  It is a good basic formula, and adapts to variations in seasoning choices quite well.   For this version, we chose seasonings found in a recipe from Lady Castlehill’s Receipt Book,

To Make my Lady Cartrets Sausages:

TAKE THE BELLY OF AN HOGG FAT AND LEAN, and cut it small with a knife, and when you have such a quantity as you desire, season it with some Salt Pepper, Nutemegs, Cloves and Mace, and so fill them into little Guts, thin scraped.  You must put in a Pretty dale of Sage finely Chopt.

Also in 2005 Pentathlon, I entered two mustard recipes.  One, a 16th century Pear Mustard, was made with ground mustard seed, wine, and pear preserves, and was meant as a condiment for dried cod, of which I am anxious to try the combination!  But the second entry was a Lumbard Mustard, sweetened with honey, a 14th century recipe from France, but it was also made with wine — an expensive ingredient that would have to have been imported to Scotland.

I therefore turned, once again, to Lady Castlehill, to a recipe made with ale and apple cider vinegar, to accompany the (above) sausages:

To Make Mustard:

TAKE YOUR MUSTARD SEED, dry it, and pound it, then sift it through a fine sieve, then put to it some Beer, Vinegar and horseradish, a litle Pepper, & a litle salt put it in a stone bottle, and keep it close stopt.

And, just as the 2005 Pentathlon judges declared, my mustard and my husband’s sausage made the perfect marriage!  Delicious!

 

The Beloved Oatcake

Tolerant of cool, damp climates, oats became a staple in what is now Scotland prior to the Roman occupation of the British Isles. Oats were easily processed, requiring only hand milling in a rotary device called a quern.  Small cakes made of oats could easily be made with the addition of some water and fat.

Oatcakes have also been described as being the “mainstay of Scottish breads” for centuries.  Jean Le Bel, around AD 1357-60, describes the Beguine nuns making “little pancakes rather like communion wafers”. This is thought to be an early description of a Scottish oatcake.  Fourteenth century narratives related how solders would carry with them a bag of oats and an iron girdle (Scots equivalent of griddle) as their primary source of rations.  John Froissart, a fourteenth century chronicler, wrote this about the Scots:

“They neither care for pots or pans,
for they boil beasts in their own skins. They are
ever sure to find plenty of beasts in the country that they pass
through. Therefore they carry with them no other purveyance,
but on their horse: between the saddle and the pannel, they place
a broad plate of metal, and behind the saddle, they will have a
little sack full of oatmeal, to the intent that when they have eaten
of the sodden flesh, then they lay this plate on the fire, and
moisten a little of the oatmeal: and when the plate is hot, they
cast some of the thin paste thereon, and so make a little cake in
manner of a crak’nel, or biscuit, and that they eat to comfort their
stomachs. Wherefore it is no great wonder that they make
greater journies than other people do.”

Oatcakes remain a mainstay of the Scottish diet today, and are often enjoyed plain, or with butter, jam, or cheese.  The recipe I chose to use was one of the simplest form, and one easily baked on a hot griddle or stone.  I did bake mine in the oven, as I was preparing these for a large crowd and needed to make them ahead of time.  They were delicious!

MY RECIPE:

  • 1 cup+ rolled oats (cheaper, and were going to be processed anyway)
  • 1 Tbl melted butter (or fat, such as bacon grease)
  • 1/2 tsp salt (optional)
  • 1/2 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 375.  Process oats about 15 seconds to make less coarse.  Melt butter and add to oats with salt.  Mix well.  Add hot water and mix to form a stiff dough.  Push into a crumbly ball, adding more water of necessary.

Turn out on a lightly floured surface and roll dough out very thin (1/8 inch thick).  Using a round cookie cutter, cut into disks and place on ungreased baking sheet.  Bake 15-20 minutes, turning over once for even color (do not brown).  Allow to cool on wire rack.  Store in airtight container.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Flatbread?

For most Highlanders of the 14th century, food varied very little from day to day, commonly including a pottage, bread and ale.  Cereals remained the most important dietary staple in Scotland, throughout the Middle Ages, specifically oats, barley, and rye, which all grew well in the cool climate.  Bread made from wheat would have been eaten only by people of rank or wealth, as it grew poorly in the north throughout most of the medieval period and would have to have been imported from the warmer climates to the south or from France.  Flours made from dried peas and beans, or nuts (such as acorns) were also consumed in small amounts, and seem to do best when mixed with other flours (see recipe, below).  Rice was a late arrival to Europe, and potatoes were not introduced until the mid-16th century,– and for centuries, were used almost exclusively as animal feed.

When speaking of early bread-making, the question of whether yeast,– or a sourdough starter method– was used as leavening, always comes up.  Yeast was available in Scotland, there is no doubt about that.  As a general note, in regard to the use of yeast vs. sourdough, it is important to know that the precondition to using yeast was, for centuries, the presence of brewers. One reason sourdough was the main method in France for so long is that beer there began as a regional specialty, whereas wine was, if not universal, far more widespread.  In general, beer-drinking cultures have been associated with bread made with barm (the yeast “foam” that forms on top of fermenting beer), while wine-drinking cultures have preferred sourdough.

But, even with the wide availability of yeast in Scotland, the low gluten content of the available cereal grains resulted in dense, flat loaves.  Even if the wheat flour (necessary to produce lighter, well-risen loaves) was available, people who had no bread ovens (or were far from the city, where central ovens would have been available to them) baked small, flat loaves, referred to as “bannock”.  Small loaves,–each serving one individual person, were cooked on an open fire, on a girdle, skillet, or hot stone, and eaten immediately.  Fresh bannocks would have been made each day.

My flatbread was made, simply, using a combination of barley and chickpea flours, salt and water.  I did add a small amount of yeast and allowed the dough to “rest” overnight.  I did not achieve a “rise” to speak of, but I believe the addition of the yeast produced a lighter product.

I have also experimented with using leftover whey (from cheese making) and buttermilk (which would have been available from making butter) in place of the water, with satisfactory results.  The barley and pea flour combination makes a delicious, nutty tasting bread!

MY RECIPE:

  • 2-1/2 c barley flour
  • 1/2 c chickpea flour
  • (1/2 tsp yeast)
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1-1/2 c water (or other liquid)

Mix all ingredients and allow to rest overnight.  Form into walnut sized balls, and flatten with your hands (or a small rolling pin).  They should be rather thin.  Cook over med-high heat on an ungreased girdle pan (or skillet).