CUISINES BY REGION
brought to a boil. The broth, which should be quite thick but not too
yellow, can be eaten with Mustard Sops (pieces of toasted bread).10 A
civet was a potage that started with fried onions, to which a liquid,
spices, and pieces of meat were usually added. Popular in France and
Italy were civets of hare, rabbit, and venison.11
Pies and tortes (pies with edible crust) are found in recipe collections
from across Europe. The foodstuffs enclosed in pastry could be man-
ifold, from meat, cheese, and vegetables to fruits and nuts. These pies
often reflected local preferences, but some managed to rise to interna-
tional stardom, as was the case with the “Parma Pie,” a truly luxurious
dish that was, no doubt, the crowning of many a medieval banquet. It
was an unusually tall pie filled with layers upon layers of meat and
fowl. On fast days these layers would consist of fish and eel, fruits,
nuts, herbs, and spices. Below is the meat-day version of a “Parma
Pie” contained in the Viandier of Taillevent:
Tourtes parmeriennes [Parmesan (Parma) Pies]
Take mutton, veal or pork and chop it up sufficiently small; then boil poultry
and quarter it—and the other meat must be cooked before being chopped up;
then get fine powder and sprinkle it on the meat very sensibly, and fry your
meat in bacon grease. Then get large open pastry shells—which should have
higher sides than usual and should be of the size of small plates—and shape
them with crenelations (square, saw-toothed indentations at the top); they
should be of a strong dough in order to hold the meat. If you wish, you can mix
pine-nut paste and currants among the meat, with granulated sugar on top; into
each pasty put three or four chicken quarters in which to plant the banners of
France and of the lords who will be present, and glaze them with moistened saf-
fron to give them a better appearance. For anyone who does not want to go to
such expense for poultry, all he has to do is make flat pieces of pork or mutton,
either roasted or boiled. When the pies are filled with their meat, the meat on
top should be glazed with a little beaten egg, both yolks and whites, so that this
meat will hold together solidly enough to set the banners in it. And you should
have gold-leaf or silver-leaf or tin-leaf to glaze the pies before setting the ban-
ners in them.12
Much more modest than this “Parma Pie” but nevertheless found in
many medieval cookbooks from across Europe, was the mortarolum.
Named after the mortar in which the main ingredient, ground meat,
was turned into a paste, it appears, for instance, as morterol in Catalan,
mortereul in French, mortrewes in English, and mortroel in Dutch.13 A
fifteenth-century English manuscript contains an example of this
recipe. For the Mortrel de le chare, or “Mortrews of Meat,” chicken
meat and pork are cooked together, then taken out of the pot and the
bones removed. The meat is to be chopped small, ground well, and
87
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242 |
Page 243 |
Page 244 |
Page 245 |
Page 246 |
Page 247 |
Page 248 |
Page 249 |
Page 250 |
Page 251 |
Page 252 |
Page 253 |
Page 254 |
Page 255 |
Page 256 |
Page 257 |
Page 258 |
Page 259 |
Page 260 |
Page 261 |
Page 262 |
Page 263 |
Page 264 |
Page 265 |
Page 266 |
Page 267 |
Page 268 |
Page 269 |
Page 270 |
Page 271 |
Page 272 |
Page 273 |
Page 274 |
Page 275 |
Page 276 |
Page 277 |
Page 278 |
Page 279 |
Page 280 |
Page 281 |
Page 282 |
Page 283 |
Page 284