My friends cook book for medievalists – orginally called Sahramia, munia ja mantelimaitoa has just been published in English. I have received a signed copy of that I will pass on to one fortunate reader (one that doesn’t know Finnish).
The book is a delightful compilation of tried and tested medieval recipes that are easy to cook almost anywhere – at home or in your own encampment.
Since the book features food that has been a part of my favourite medieval food experiences, I would like to hear about your favourite food moments!
To enter the competition, leave a comment (and remember to include your email or other contact) and tell me about your favourite medieval food moment! What did you eat, where and why was it special? And if you haven’t had medieval food yet (and you really should, so you need the book) share any other food moment. Enter by monday 28.7, the winner will be announced on 29.7.
The book Saffron, Eggs and Almond Milk – The Medievalist’s Cook Book by Mervi Pasanen, Saara Nironen and Nanna Tuovinen (Softcover, 108 pages) is also is available via the publisher’s website and international shipping is free!
Have you ever tried Italian medieval recipes?
http://www.cucinamedievale.it/
Medieval food is so delicious. So many people have no idea of how good old recipes can be! From lemon pottage to tansy tarts to all those lovely dishes! Medieval feasts are such fun. My husband enjoys the venison roasts and enjoys chewing on the bones!
It is so much fun to enjoy a feast with friends….time to share and enjoy food together.
I’d say that my favourite medieval food moment was from the last year Battle of Visby event – when we made a rather delicious stew of the proper ingradients with the smoked meat and had it in the camp with some vine. Have to say that propper atmosphere adds a lot to the food itself.
You forgot to mention that it was spiced wine… mmmm
One of my favorite medieval food moments was actually an entire feast; I was in Finland for my coronation as Queen of Drachenwald, and the feast that was brought before us was an amazing spread, each dish was superlative. (My favorite, I think, was the cinnamon sugar lasagna. Yum, yum, yum!)
Where to begin? My strongest memory is probably from my first event with Albrechts Bössor: we had some kind of bread pudding flavoured with cinnamon, for some reason accompanied by a smoked herring. I’m still not sure what I thought about that one…
The most delicious dish so far was probably the grilled salmon stuffed with smaller fish. Yum! The different kinds of pirogi-like foods we’ve had over the years have also been very tasty.
But I think my favourite memories are from our simple porrige and bread breakfasts, when there’s just us in the group there, in various stages of dress (and indeed wakefulness), planning the day. It has an almost family feel to it that I love.
Oddly enough, my second time eating medieval food was at the co-authors wedding and it was incredible journey of new flavours.
I love cooking, and I have recently started with my medieval sewing, and everything historical is interesting. As a scoutleader I’m often outdoor doing cooking, but I think we have lost so much knowledge in the last 70 year of how to take care of our food, and cooking outdoors is boring when you can’t think of anything else then pasta to make, because it’s heavy or impossible to bring fresh food. So if this book have recipes suitable for outdoors as well, I would love to have it! Sannah Mika, Sweden, sannah@mika.se
Melted cheese with juniper at The Olde Hansa in Tallinn, Estonia. Who wouldn´t love melted cheese!! :D
My favourite mediaeval food moment in recent years was making giant rosy venison puddings in ox bung casings, cooking them over a fire and serving them up in Queen Elizabeth’s hunting lodge in Epping Forest.
I want the yummy book!
I have very many favourite medieval food moments, most of the time when my eaters like the food I cooked…
One of my most favourite ones was the first icelandic chicken I have ever tried. A friend of me had it with her at an event, and gave me a piece. It tasted heaven!
Or the moment I discovered an 950 a.d. oriogonal arab cook book and even reading alone made me drool :) . it is my fave original source I cook from since.
Or the moment where I discovered the yummy cooked taste of stinky fish sauce… a feast for taste buds!
My favorite feast moments involve cooking over a fire. At Pennsic (many years ago), I learned the power of the fire’s heat. I know, it seems obvious, but fire cooking is not the same thing as stove cooking. A chicken in an iron dutch oven hung over the fire required three gallons of water to make chicken soup. The liquid kept reducing so I added a gallon at a time. It developed into the richest, most inviting flavor I have ever had.
Recently, I learned how to make sausages. At an event, I hung them over a fire pit to smoke the meat. I served people all day form that spit.
Being a medievalist and kind of food nerd I really enjoy every oppurtunity to try a new dish or flavor.
But the most recent special moment was trying some repipies from An Early Meal.
We did bread cooked in a bag och spit roasted lamb hearts. All cooked over an open fire. It was delicious!!!
And so much fun trying to do it ”the real way”.
I have participated a couple of times a feast arranged by Saippuaenkelit. There were so many delicious dishes (four pages in the menu) that it is very difficult to say which is the best. If I have to choose one, it might be the dried meat and spiced liquor. Or oat porridge with honey and butter. Or goose eggs with nettle sauce. To be honest, I am amazed how we all were able to eat and drink for some 5 hours, a dish after a dish. Well planned menu, I’d say. Now I’d love to learn to make some medieval dishes myself.
My favourite moment was serving one of my favourite recipes, Almond Rice Pudding, to friends at a church potluck. They were amazed by the flavour, and wanted to know what book/magazine I had gotten it from. The look of shock when I told them it was from a 14th century book was worth the effort.
I really enjoy medieval food. The only ingrediant that I miss are the potatoes but God bless Marco Polo – we can substitute them with rice! We, at College of St. John of Rila had the first medieval cooking for a royal visit, stricktly following a medieval feast menu. And it was all delicious!
The best medieval food moment I can remember is when I made a pork pie from a medieval recipe. When we ate it at the Friday evening meal at the start of our event, it was cold and firm, and it tasted just right! Making it took me a bit outside my comfort zone, but it completely paid off and set the right mood for the event.
I would have to say my favorite medieval food being different periogi that I had the pleasure of tasting at a Yule event several years back after having just moved over to Scotland. The feast as whole was amazing with a stuffed pigs head and apple tartlets. Made the wonder of yule and missing home all a wonderful mixture with close friends nearby and the atmosphere inside of a lovely medieval church.
My best memory of medieval food is from a picnic that my friends and I had this spring. We made some pies and other small things and brought out to the forest. First a short walk and then food time. All in our period clothing.
The medieval tastes sort of comes together in the Ymbre tarte that we ate that day, with all the different spices Рbeautifully decorated with the mark of our small group, the boat of Svarte Sk̴ning. There are some pictures in this blogpost of mine:
http://andrea-hakansson.blogspot.se/2014/04/varpicnic-spring-picnic.html
Today is my Birthday. My favorite Birthday food memory is of my Mother baking me a birthday cake this day, fifty years ago.. We were camping with my sister’s Girl Scout troop in Yosemite state park. The girls were tent camping, we had a small travel trailer. Mother had to deal with altitude differences, and travel trailer oven. She was able to make and bake the cake, but, most of all I remember she had saved lemons from her tea at a restaurant the day before and made me lemon drizzle frosting for that cake. My favorite flavor is lemon. Powdered Sugar and fresh squeezed lemon frosting on a birthday cake in the middle of the forest., Made by Mom. Can’t get better than that. Thank you for allowing me to tell my story.
I find the general mix of flavours to be interesting. I enjoy modern foods but the different combinations of tastes are very interesting. My wife Nicole made some gingerbread based on a medieval recipe (with ginger of course) and it was totally different than modern gingerbread and I realized just how interesting it is to have an entirely new pallet of different tastes to experience. To be honest not all of them have been hits with me… but I find those that are to be an interesting experience.
RPM
Some of my favorite medieval cooking moments are when I’ve cooked things over open flames. One of the most amazing was when someone spent the whole day carefully preparing and cooking roasting a whole pig over an open flame… preparing a broth and side dishes; an entire feast… at an outdoors event – just like we were at an actual campaign. It was beautiful and delicious!
One of my favorite medieval good moments was at an event many years ago. I was new to the sca and volunteered to help cook feast. I arrived and feast was being cooked entirely over an open flame camp fire. There was a deer on a spit, sausages hanging over another, pots set out to boil: it was wonderful and I would love to recreate this experience someday
This spring, at the SCA event Double Wars, a lady served medieval ”chicken nuggets”. It was a real surprise to me, as medieval food is still in my mind something completely different from modern food. And my son, who is extremly picky, loved them!
I only have one ”medieval food moment”: my husband and I enjoyed a 12-course feast at the Bors Hede Inne at Camlann Medieval Village (http://www.camlann.org/bors_hede.htm). We were seated on benches at trestle tables in a room with beautifully painted murals on the walls. Of the 20 or so guests, we were the only ones dressed in period-style garments. The other guests looked nervous and there was chatter about what might be presented to us to eat. I recall one woman saying she’d ”absolutely faint if they serve us eel pie or something nasty like that”, which certainly didn’t comfort the other folks in our group.
Roger, our host and innkeeper, arrived with a small trumpet fanfare and after bread trenchers were handed around to be our plates, the courses began to arrive. There was no eel pie, to everyone’s relief. Instead we had assorted dishes of chicken and roasted pork, green vegetables, and spiced cherries. In between courses, we were entertained by minstrels singing and playing music.
I’d be very interested in this book and trying out the recipes for myself!
I love the Hungarian sausage (kolbasz) that my husband makes every year – but he does use a modern electric smoker…
At a Yule revel, I’d made a meat pie and put it out to share with the populace. What most people did not know was that I’d altered the recipe and the pie was entirely vegan. I was thrilled by people’s reactions when they tasted it…the pie was a hit…but even more excited by folks discovering that medieval food could be made for vegetarians and vegans and still taste yummy!
I’ve never had medieval food personally I’d love to try it. I’m just a American trying to further test his taste buds with a plethora of foods.. My first camping trip food consisted of fresh caught rattlesnake and rainbow trout.. With white rice and red beans.. A few herbs of thyme, dried oregano and onion all cooked in a cast iron pot over a open campfire.. :)
Food moments? Well, where to start? Soooo many moments to remember! I entered ”MIM – Mensch im Mittelalter” two years ago, but MIM is better known as ”Mampfen im Mittelalter” (munching in medieval times). :-) Favourite moment: Sitting in the camp of Morimondo, Italy, with some disgusting salty sausages and a lot of vegetables to create a medieval meal. All the others, mostly Italians, broiled the sausages. We tried too, but we could not eat those salty sticky things, bah. So, what to do? Squeeze all the sausage meat out of the casing, mix it with some bread and spices, roll nice meat balls and cook them with all the vegetables in some kind of stew (hotpot?). The best thing about it: you don´t need any salt, because the meat balls had enough for the hole pot. Yummy! And then go to the water place with your sticky meaty fingers and have a ”meat and greet” with your medieval friends :-)
Always so good things to eat at MIM, but I am only the kitchenaid and do know nothing about the recipes, so I DO need this book! :-)
My most memerable moment with medieval food was when a viking persona friend of my name Skyrr a viking desert. It was sublime and I loved it! I would love to make some more of this food and share it with friends and family!
Everything in the book will be delicious !!
The first thing that comes to my mind, is the time i tried to make ”äggost” (directly translated to ”eggcheese”) wich is an superold delicacy from the westcoast of sweden. I was in school, to become a baker/pastry chef, and i had never had this dish before trying to make it. I had just gotten a book for my birthday called ”Medieval food in modern Swedish”. A nice book with great recipies, but without any pictures..
Äggost is supposed to be this light, almost fluffy and creamy dish, served between heavier savory dishes, or as a dessert ( http://www.sverigeturism.se/smorgasbord/smorgasbord/provincial/bohuslan/food/aggost.html ), Howeever, Instead of just scooping the mixture into the mold, i pressed it in, so no whey or moisture was left. I thought the texture was supposed to be like cheese..
Left it in the fridge till the day after, and then popped out the ”cheese” from the molds, and had a taste.. It was disgusting. Like sugary rubber.. I didn’t do research that much before making the recipie, thats for sure.
But then.. Just months after this, i met someone who came to be my boyfriend for a few years. i was invited for dinner at his mothers place during easter and was served äggost – the way it was supposed to be served. And i kind of fell in love with the dish, but swore not to make it till i had done some more research and my (then) mother in law, had taught me how to do it properly.
Also, the time i just happened to cook the perfect, whole salmon over an open fire, during a weekend reenactment-stay at a Vikingfarm.. that was something special :) Stuffed with butter, fresh dill, chives and salt.. Served with, honeyglazed cabbage, a vegetable stew with spelt, turnip, carrots, mushrooms and other yummy stuff.. All together with nice viking/medieval friends, inside the longhouse, beside the fire.. It was cold and wet November outside. Everything felt very authentic..
Most memorable event alltoghether was my cousins wedding in Hollola: it was medieval themed all the way!
Have not tried medieval food jet so therefor I need the book to start exploring the subject. I am a vikingreenacter so I have tried vikingbread that was delicius with honey mmmm……
My first outstanding medieval meal was at Olde Hansa in Tallinn, with a large variety of ingredients, flavours and dishes, served in a wonderful setting on the last trip hubby and me made before the kids (I was eight months pregnant). But one of the best ever was when I myself managed to make doucetes from Let them boyles recipe for a feast. It was so delicious that I now serve it for mundane Christmas and bring it to parties for more people to enjoy the medieval flavours far from cabbage and honey butter on rye bread.
I made a baked custard tart out of one of my books for the last event I went to and I didn’t even get to explain what it was to my friends, when they started eating there were so many ”Mmmmmm…”s and OOOOhhhhh”s in the tent you couldn’t hear anything else!
I was at a medieval event, but the best dish I had was dutch-oven peach french toast prepared by a friend over the campfire. SOOO delicious! I would love to learn to make some medieval foods though!
I just came back from the medieval market at Gásir, N-Iceland, where I got to taste two really good dishes. One was a stew made of barley, lamb meat, onions, cabbage, carrots, spices (which?) and Icelandic sea salt, cooked in an iron pot hanging over an open fire.
The other dish was a leg of lamb, wrapped in rhubarb leaves and spiced with angelica, cooked in a bed of stones heated in the fire. The hot stones were placed in a hole dug in the ground, then the leg was put on top of the hot stones, and the whole thing covered with grass turf. After a bit over an hour – voilà ! Pink, juicy, a mild but distinct flavour, just perfect. I was told that this cooking method was used in medieval Icelandic monasteries because wood was/is rare, and this method is far more efficient than burning wood. Also we did not have baking ovens until the 20th c. This kind of earth-oven is called ’seyðir’ in Icelandic and was also used to bake bread. Still today we say: ”Hvað er á seyði?” meaning ”what’s cooking?”
Most of my experience with medieval food has been my efforts to recreate Migration Period and Viking era food. I’ve tried several Viking flatbread recipes one of which I discussed in my food blog, here, and attempted to make a plausible Carolingian era pot of beans here and here. I enjoy reading books about early cookery (including medieval cookery) and experimenting with the authors’ proposed recipes or redactions of actual surviving recipes.
My favorite medieval food moment has to be one involving the making of medieval food. Smelling the spices, most common to me as spices used when baking for Christmas, feeling the heat from the fire and laughing with friends. Experimenting our way through recipes to create a stunning meal. I’d love a copy of this cookbook to continue experimenting with medieval food.
Weell, I dont have a Medievel foodmoment, wish I had but I dont..thats why I need the book ;) .but I have several other foodmoments,like this one time , me and my friend we had a rule for newyears-eve-dinner..it had to be something we had never made before…tasted,yes, made,no…so we found a recipie for som Indian chickendish and went out to get all ingredients…we got all ingredients with some help, and started making the food. One of the steps was to marinate the chicken in some of the spices.When the dish was ready we served chicken with some wierd, oldlooking shade of pink….ppl was really unsure if they dared to eat….It was yummi, but looked like **** …
Fingers crossed and wishing a great weekend :)
Favorite medieval food moment? I had to think long and hard on this. But it was rather an emotion, not the food itself. It was a few years ago, when our dance group had a 10-year anniversary celebration. We decided to do it properly, and it was the very first time we researched the old recipes, and set the table like it used to be in the Medieval period. It was the mood in the air, the sense of accomplishment, and the pride of having achieved it, that still makes me smile when I recall the moment. And, the fact that everybody loved it!
I am way too behind on my reading to be on time for your contest, but your request to hear our favourite Medieval food moment reminded me of one of the first feasts I attended after moving to the Kingdom of An Tir in 1990. One of the deserts was so simple and so unexpected that it really surprised me. They had taken fresh cherries, removed the pits and filled the holes with whole almonds. I will never forget the feeling of biting into the fresh cherry, expecting to hit a really hard pit which would need discarding, and instead hitting something that just gave when my teeth hit it, yet with a satisfying crunch. That interplay of textures from the softness of the cherry to the firmness of the almonds, combined with the yummy flavour of both plus the unexpectedness of it all makes it still, after all these years, one of my favourite food moments of any sort. It must have taken forever to empty and re-fill all of those cherries, which makes it even more Medieval in mind-set–labour was cheap back then!