Recipes from medieval cookbooks like the Forme of Cury are written in Middle English.
A red or brown dye extracted from the roots of alkanna tinctoria which was used as a dye for medieval meat dishes like Brewet Of Almayn.
Apples; one medieval dessert made with apples was called applemose was made with the pulp of stewed apples and almond milk, honey, rice flour, saffron and powder fort. Alternate spellings include applemoise, appulmoy and appulmoce. One apple tart recipe from the Forme of Cury was made with softened apples, figs, pears, and raisins colored with saffron and baked in a pastry shell.[1] Apples were also used to make cider.[2]
Game pies baked with fruit and spices. One medieval recipe for a bake mete of pears is made with gobbets of marrow.[1]
Spring sown barley, called ordeum in manorial records, was grown in larger quantities then the winter cereal variety bere. Records from Wisbech mention two different types of winter bere: hastibere and rackbere.[3] Winter barley was mostly used for the production of ale and bread, which were staples of the medieval diet. Spring barley was used for pottages as well as bread and ale.[4]
The froth of a fermenting ale or beer, brewer's yeast or leaven.[5]
It could mean a porridge or a meat broth like fish-browe
White bread made with wheat was considered the highest quality bread. Rye and maslin produced darker, less expensive loaves. Milled barley and oats produced coarse inferior quality bread. The cheapest breads sometimes included ground peas and beans mixed with grains. Making bread is relatively complex compared to pottages. First, the grain has to be milled creating coarse flour and bran. The weight of loaves was effected by a 13th century law called the Assize of Bread and Ale, where the price of a loaf was fixed but it's weight was determined by the price of grain.[4]
From the Forme of Cury Rylands MS 7: "Tak counynges or kyddes & hewe hem smal on morcels other on pects perboyle hem with the same broth, drawe an almand mylk & flesch therwith, cast therto poudour galyngale & of ginger, with flour of rys & colour it with alkenet, boyle hit, salt hit & messe hit forth with sugur and poudour douce."
Different versions of this recipe can be found in several 15th century cookbooks including Du fait de cuisine
A mix of oats, beans and peas that was used to make pottage.[4]
The Forme of Cury includes a recipe for a pottage made with cabbages, minced onions and the white portions of leeks boiled in gode broth and seasoned with saffron, salt and powder douce.[7]
Young onions; used as a flavoring for the dish corat
A dish of parboiled noumbles (animal entrails) cooked in gode broth thickened with egg yolks and flavored with chyballs (young onions), verjuice, saffron, powder douce and salt.[8]
"Lay them" as in cowche in dyshes
Cow; also kyne
A grain mix of spring barley and oats used to make ale.[4]
Fritters; in the middle ages apple fritters, milk fritters and herb fritters similar to pancakes were eaten with honey and sugar. In the 14th century oil or lard was usually used to fry the fritters.[9] One recipe for fritters calls for thinly sliced apples to be fried with butter in a batter of
In the middle ages wheat grain was sometimes be eaten whole. To prepare frumenty new cleaned wheat grain was soaked in water and boiled until it burst. After being allowed to cool, the grain was boiled with broth and either cow milk or almond milk. The mixture was thickened with egg yolk and flavored with sugar and spices. This dish, alternately called frumity, frumetye, furmenty, etc. was served alongside venison, mutton or porpoise.[10]
The name used in manorial records for wheat.[3]
A sauce made from bread, broth or vinegar, and spices. It was usually served over fish, meat, or fowl. It is one of the sauces from the Ashmole MS. 1439. Several recipes using this sauce appear in the Forme of Cury including fylettes in galyntyne and sowpes of galyntyne, Liber Cure Cocorum.
Also spelled gruel, gruelle, gruwel, grwel, grouelle, and greuelle.
A thin porridge or a potage made of meat broth that has been thickened with oatmeal or some other type of meal. The latter type is called grewel forced and is similar to scrapple; it is usually made with ground pork and may be flavored with saffron.[11]
Meat of a young goat
A dish of boiled and roasted ox tongue
To beat, as in scrambled eggs. (See letelorye)
A medieval dish similar to scrambled eggs. Eggs are heated together with cow milk, butter, saffron and salt and beaten.[12]
Maslin was a multigrain bread made from a mix of wheat and rye.[4]
A mix of oats and legumes used to make pottage. This mix also included vetches.[4]
A multigrain bread made from winter barley and wheat. This mixed grain was also used to produce ale.[4]
Animal entrails; parboiled noumbles might be served in their own broth thickened with bread, colored with blood, and flavored with wine, vinegar, onions, powder fort, and salt.[13]
Called avena in manorial records, oats were used in breads, ales and also in pottages.[4]
Peas
A type of sauce.
From the Liber Cocorum
Pieces
A thick soup made of grain usually consumed by poorer members of medieval society. Scholars have estimated that grain accounted for 80% of agricultural workers calorie intake and 75% of a soldier's. Though this figure was lower for members of the noble class grain still accounted for over half of their calorie intake. Potage was one of the main sources of grain in the medieval diet, along with ales and breads.[14] Oats were the main ingredient of a pottage, but peas and beans were also common ingredients.[4]
A dish of spit-roasted veal meatballs made with egg yolks and flavored with dates, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, saffron and currants. While roasting, the meatballs would be basted with a green-colored batter that was made from parsley, young wheat shoots or mallow.
Powder-douce, also spelled poudre douce (literally "sweet powder"), was a spice mix that included powdered galyngale and other aromatic spices.[15]
Spice mix of warm spices like ginger, pepper and cinnamon. Sometimes called "strong powder".[15]
Turnips. One recipe for rapes in potage from Forme of Cury calls for parboiled, cleaned and quartered turnips to be boiled in "gode both". The potage is flavored with salt, minced onions, saffron and powder douce.[7]
Rye was used to produce breads, but also served some non-culinary purposes such as providing thatch for homes.[4]
Rice was used in 14th century English cooking even though it was not a domestically grown crop. Ground rice or rice flour was called flour of rys. Blanc mange, a milk pudding similar to the Ottoman dessert called tavuk göğsü, was made with rice. Rice was used to make a compote with apples, saffron, honey, pepper, salt and almonds, and it was an ingredient in recipes prepared with white roses and spices, dates and meats. A recipe for 're smolle calls for blanched almonds and water thickened with rice flour to be seasoned with powdered ginger, sugar and salt.[16] Rice was also cooked in earthenware with broth and colored with saffron and almond milk.[17]
Salt was used as a flavoring and also to preserve meats. Records show that the household of House of Courtenay purchased a large quantity of salt for meat preservations in November 1341.[18]
Sage; alternately spelled sauge or salge.[19]
Boiled, stewed, to boil a liquid, or to boil a solid in liquid. Sethinge hot means boiling hot. Half soden ayren are soft-boiled eggs. For example, a recipe for Brewet of ayren (egg pottage) from The Forme of Cury: "Take ayren, water and butter, and seeth hem yfere (together), with safron, and gobettes of chese. Wryng ayren thurgh a straynor. Whan the water hath soden awhile, take thene the ayren, and swyng hem with verjous, and caft thereto. Set it over the fire, and lat it not boile, and serve it forth."
An unfermented grape juice, sometimes also made with crab apples.[20] Verjuice was a common base for medieval European sauces, which were generally thin and acidic. The 15th century Boke of Nurture features verjuice-based sauces for capon, veal, chicken and pork dishes. [18]
Vinegar; most sauces found in Medieval European cuisine are thin acidic sauces that use wine, verjuice or vinegar as a base instead of fat or oil. The 15th century Boke of Nurture features vinegar-based sauces for roast beef and goose. Sauce cameline was a sauce made with cloves, ginger, cinnamon, currants and vinegar; this spiced vinegar sauce was served with young herons, egrets, cranes, bustard, bitard, spoonbill, plover, etc.[18]
Wheat was mostly used to produce ale and breads.[4]