CUISINES BY REGION
we have was written in 1324, and is known as the Libre de Sent Soví.122
It is one of the oldest European recipe collections and has survived in
two manuscripts from Valencia and Barcelona. It contains a wide
range of soups, sauces, roasts, and desserts but comparatively few
seafood dishes. Popular ingredients are chicken, game animals, al-
monds, onions, and bitter oranges.123 The following is a recipe for
Mig-raust, meaning “half- roasted,” a dish that was a favorite of cooks
and diners not just in Catalonia but also in Italy:
Mig-raust ab let de melles [Mig-raust with Almond Milk]
If you want to make mig-raust with almond milk, do it this way: First roast
some hens. Then take stock made from other hens, and make stock with the in-
sides of the roasting hens, plus salted pork; and then take blanched almonds,
and make milk with the stock. And take the livers and pound them well, and
mix them with the said milk. And set this to boil with good spices: pepper, gin-
ger, cloves, cinnamon, and then add a sour ingredient and white sugar. And
boil all this, until you know that it is cooked. Then serve it in bowls together
with the hens; and if you wish, serve the hens on platters.... And if by chance
you don’t want to add sugar, use good honey.124
The fish recipes are for both saltwater and freshwater fish. In addition
to fish that was used fresh, the cookbook mentions dried eel and dried
salted tuna. The escabèche technique described above is an example of
the strong Arab influence in Catalan cooking; another is the use of bit-
ter oranges, rose water, almonds, and onions, as well as the overall
sweet-sour and sweet-salty character of many dishes. Recipes for veg-
etables introduced to Europe by the Arabs include asparagus and egg-
plant dishes. The instructions for preparing asparagus can be quite
simple. In one recipe the vegetable is cleaned, parboiled, and coated in
wheat flour, and fried until done. It is served on a platter with vinegar
as an optional seasoning.125
Pies, a standard feature of English and French banquets, are also
found in the Libre de Sent Soví, as the following poultry pie illustrates:
Panades de pols...ab aldem [Poultry Pie with Egg and Verjuice Sauce]
Take parboiled hens, and put them in pastry with slices of salted pork; and make
the sauce. Take eggs, beat them, and add as much verjuice as necessary. When
the pie is cooked, pour the sauce in the pie, and return it to the oven briefly, so
the sauce thickens. And if you don’t have verjuice for the sauce, use vinegar.126
A dessert contained in this Catalan cookbook that has stood the test
of time is called bunyols, a name it still bears today. Similar in style to
medieval Arab fritters, bunyols are made from well-risen dough, eggs,
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