By, Lady Oksana Goncharova

Almond milk was used in recipes in place of cow’s milk during Lent. Cow’s milk is an animal product and as such was not eaten during Lent. For a thick almond milk use a ratio of 1/4 cup crushed blanched almonds to 1 cup of liquid. For a thinner almond milk use a ratio of 1/8 th cup crushed blanched almonds to 1 cup of liquid. This ratio can be changed to suit your tastes. Take blanched almonds and chop in a food processor, mini chopper or crush in a mortar and pestle. Take crushed almonds and put in blender. Gradually add water and blend using the liquefy mode on blender. Keep adding water and blending. Alternatively use mortar and pestle with crushed almonds and water. Continue to crush almonds and water in mortar and pestle. After you have added all the water, you can run the liquid through a cheesecloth or strainer to remove the almond sediment. This sediment can be mixed again to produce more almond milk. In some of the recipes this sediment will not affect the outcome, so the straining portion can be omitted. Blend the almond milk just before using in a recipe as the almond milk has a tendency to separate or stir before using. Depending on the recipe, almond milk can be made from a variety of broths; (chicken, beef, pork), and a variety of wines; (red and white) instead of the water. The recipe will tell you which should be used. If there is no mention, just use the water recipe.

In many recipes, the saffron should be crushed before adding to the recipes. Take a teaspoon of the liquid being used in the recipe and add a few strands of saffron. Crush the saffron with the liquid in a mortar and pestle. Mix the saffron liquid into the recipe. The liquid could be, as an example: water, eggs, broth, milk or almond milk. Some recipes call for the saffron threads to be steeped in the liquid, like in soups, where the saffron will disperse by means of extended heating in the liquid. In this case the threads will not need to be crushed. An example of needing to crush the saffron is when I make pastry dough. I like to disperse the color and flavor throughout the dough.

This is a spice mixture very similar to the spices used for an apple pie. It is a sweet, mild mixture of spices. This is something that you can experiment with to make your own special mixture. I use a ratio of 1 part ground ginger, 1 part ground cinnamon, and 2 parts white sugar. Other mild spices could be added, like a little nutmeg or a little bit of cloves. Cloves can overpower the taste, so use sparingly. The ratios can be changed, as an example: use 2 part cinnamon instead of 1 part. Experiment with what suits you, the one common ingredient in powder douce seems to be the cinnamon. Some scholars believe that some of recipes for powder douce do not contain sugar. It is very likely that each medieval household had their own mixture and this may have changed by the spices on hand at the time. There is no true recipe for powder douce that has been found. Once you have a mixture to your liking, you can store it in an airtight container or spice shaker for later use and can be sprinkled on where the recipe calls for powder douce. A recipe similar to the powder douce can be found in Cindy Renfrow’s book, Take A Thousand Eggs Or More . 1) This is her recipe for “White Powder”: 2 teaspoons cinnamon powder, 1 teaspoon each of ginger and nutmeg powder and 2 teaspoons sugar. Le Menagier de Paris 2) from about 1393 gives a recipe for “Fine Powder”, which sounds like a form of powder douce: Take an ounce and a drachm of white ginger, a quarter-ounce of hand-picked cinnamon, half a quarter-ounce each of grains and cloves, and a quarter-ounce of rock sugar, and grind to powder. This recipe can be found under the “other odds and ends” section on the translated web site that I found. The 14th century French cookbook, le Viandier de Taillevent 3) gives us a translation of the “Fine Powder”, which is as follows; 9 parts ground white ginger, 2 parts selected cinnamon, 2 parts lump sugar, 1 part each of cloves and grains of paradise. Cariadoc and Elizabeth’s book, A Miscelleny, 4) has a recipe for the “Fine Powder”: 1 teaspoon ginger, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon cloves, 1/8 teaspoon grains of paradise and 1/4 teaspoon sugar. Most often I have seen powder douce used as a spice mixture that is added like a garnish after the dish has been cooked. There is one recipe in Curye on Inglysch5) which uses both powder fort and powder douce added afterwards. Recipe number 40 on page 106; “Morree.”

This mixture contains spicy, hot ingredients. There is no known recipe for powder fort. Cariadoc and Elizabeth’s book, A Miscelleny,6)gives a mixture of 1 part cloves, 1 part mace, 1 part cubebs, 7 parts ginger, 7 parts cinnamon and 7 parts pepper. This is a very spicy mixture. I have come up with a much less spicy mixture of 1 part ginger, 1 part cinnamon, 1 part cloves and 1/2 to 3/4 part pepper, as my taste go for the sweeter side of food. The 14th century French cookbook, le Viandier de Taillevent 7) gives us a recipe for “Spice Powder”, which is as follows; 4 parts ground ginger, 3 1/2 parts cassia, 2 parts nutmeg, 1 1/2 parts pepper, 1 part each of long pepper, cloves, grains of paradise and galingale. A recipe using powder fort can be found in Curye on Inglysch. 8) The recipe is for mushroom and leeks in broth.(page 100, recipe number 12, “Funges”.) The powder fort is added after it is cooked and before it is served. Powder Fort is another mixture where you will have to do numerous experiments to find the proper amount of spiciness for your taste. The resulting mixture can be stored in an air tight container as with the before mentioned powder douce.

Many medieval recipes say to draw or pass ingredients through a strainer. This can mean just strain the ingredients through a cheesecloth or strainer. This can also mean to pulverize the ingredients. The simplest way to do this is to use a food processor. This can also be done with a mashing type tool. Obviously, if the only reason you need to “draw through a strainer” is to remove the bones, then the strainer will do. Depending on the coarseness of the ingredients, use your judgment on the type of tool to use. Cooked apples will just need a mashing tool rather than the food processor. Almond milk will need a cheesecloth as the almond residue will fall through the holes of a normal strainer. Coarser ingredients will need the food processor to properly incorporate. Alternatively, if using the recipe in a competition, use a strainer and mashing tool to crush ingredients without the use of the food processor. Crush the ingredients with the mashing tool and push the resulting liquid through the slotted strainer. (or use mortar and pestle) Straining eggs is another common technique. This can be done by simply beating the eggs with a wire whisk or egg beater.

You will need unfiltered, raw honey for this technique. Place honey in small sauce pot and heat slowly, stirring frequently. A small amount of froth will eventually form at the top. This froth or “scum” will need to be skimmed off the top. Take a metal spoon and draw it across the top layer and skim the “scum” off. Continue this until the honey is “clear”, without a lot of froth forming. Filtered honey has already gone through this process and will not need further clarifying. Un-clarified honey will cloud up and become a solid mass. This was easily rectified by heating the honey and loosening the mass, making it liquid again.

This recipe comes from The Encyclopedia of Cooking Skills & Techniques.9) 1. Put the butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat. Melt gently. Skim off all the froth from the surface. You will then see a clear yellow layer on top of a milky layer. 2. Carefully pour the clear fat into a bowl or pitcher, leaving the milky residue in the pan. Discard the milky residue, or add it to soups. The resulting clear yellow fat can be heated at a higher temperature and is good for use in pan frying, as well as lasting longer in refrigerator or freezer. 10)

Adding yolks to hot ingredients must be done after cooling the hot ingredients some. If you add the yolks while everything is hot, you get lumps of cooked yolk, (curdled yolks). This is especially important while making sauces like, cawdels. ( An example of this kind of recipe is “Chykens in cawdel”, from The Forme of Cury in Curye on Inglysch.) 11) The sauce just will not thicken up if you add the cold yolk to the hot ingredients. After the ingredients have cooled a bit, add the yolks and heat slowly, stirring constantly and don’t let it come to a boil. This is one of those steps that the medieval cook may not have written down in their recipes. I came about this step by accident, trying to thicken a sauce for a feast many years ago. Not being well versed in sauce making, I didn’t know about this step.

Bread crumbs were primarily used to thicken the liquid in a recipe. Don’t buy premade bread crumbs for your recipes. Making your own is easy. Make or buy a whole loaf of the bread of your choice. I choose Italian bread for most of my recipes. I prefer to use bread that doesn’t have extra seeds and spices, etc, added. Let the loaf stale up out of any wrappers. Plastic bags will just make the bread moldy. Precut the loaf into small pieces to make it easier to crumb later. There are several ways to make the crumbs. One way is to grate the bread. Another is to roll a rolling pin over the stale bread. By far the quickest and easiest is to cut the bread into chunks and place in a food processor. You can stop the processor at whatever level of crumbs you want, from chunky to fine. I will use fine bread crumbs for my gingerbread recipe. Store your bread crumbs for future use, in a plastic freezer bag, in your freezer. Left over bread from feasts can be made into crumbs for future use.

Parboiling will make the ingredients milder/sweeter tasting. Many of the medieval recipes call for the ingredients to be parboiled before processing. Parboiling is done by filling a sauce pot with enough water to cover the ingredients. Bring the water to boil and add ingredients, continuing to boil, for a specified time. (Whole onions, peeled, will take about 10 minutes of parboiling) (Fresh herbs, cleaned and stemmed, will take about 3 minutes). After parboiling the onions, herbs, etc. they will have to be cooled some, and then the final processing can take place, whether it be chopping, mashing, or what ever the recipe calls for. (Drain water from ingredients first, then process. Herbs will have to be “rung” out or pressed with your fingers.)