Do you have any recipies, with redactions for pottages? Simpler foods as would be used by soldiers on campaign, and the like?

--------------------

One of my favorites to make are what was called small provisions and they were very much like todays pasty. Cold water pastry filled with minced meat and onions and other root veg and a very thick kind of gravy in one end and then soft fruit stewed with honey nuts and what ever was available and you liked in the other end. They were made to fit in one hand and the pastry was baked hard so that they did not break up while they were carried in their day sacks.

There is always pottages of many discriptions. Some would have had meat in as they would I am sure have cought the odd rabbit or farm yard chicken on route.

It is quite hard to bake on site but if you have a large fire with a grill of irons accross it a little like a BBQ then put a Griddle plate over that and a beaton up old large pot to cover the item of food you are baking you creat an oven that works quite well but you have to keep a good watch on it as you can not regulate the heat in any way.

One of my other favorites to make are Griddle cakes. They are very much like todays Welsh Cake and the mixture makes alot of little cakes that are cooked on the griddle over the fire.
I will have to look up the quantities but the basic ingreadients are:-

S/R Flour
Butter
Caster Sugar
Sultanas
If you like it a little pinch of Cinnamon.

Sieve flour into bowl add butter till it looks like breadcrumbs. Add sugar and sultanans and cinn
Mixture should resemble a soft dough. take enough mixture to foarm a ball in your hand and then flatten to about 5Ml rounds and place on the hot griddle, keep turning them untill they are goldern brown eat hot or cold.

The "pasties" you describe seem to be much like today's Cornish Pasty. Can you document a pasty like this for 15th C? I've been trying to but have been so far unsuccessful.

Also, I'm very interested in knowing your period source for the Welsh cakes, as they are one of my favorite sweets.

Thanks!

the Pasties are very much like what we know as a real Cornish pastie today and I got the recipe from a book called The book of English Cookery. And If I remember rightly they date back further than the fifteeth century.

The Welsh cakes we called Griddle cakes and I have found a couple of books one a printed book called the good housewifes rare receipts and the other one was a book of my Grandmothers who wrote it down and had made a foot note of the book she had the recipe from but I can not now remember what that was called. She was welsh and so it had a bit of interest for her. She died well over twenty years ago now.

but as i am not familiar with english cooking terms, can anybody explain me what a cold water pastry is in german? and/or how its made?

thanks a lot!

It forms a very hard and tough coffin - case. Those kinds of cases were not eaten but viewed as wrappers. It means that the case can get burned without much harm to the contents, especially if you have too hot an oven, as it gets thrown away it doesn't really matter.

The cornish pasties were supposedly used by Cornish miners who had a ready wrapped meal in a disposable case which protected the contents from the filth of the mine.

As for common dishes, well a tricky one, we all know that in the middle ages Oysters were poor mans food, see the Breughel Engraving of the poor and the rich kitchens (later but still valid).

Problem with common dishes they are like most other common things not noted, many of the recipe books are of special foods, however The Stir Hyt Well, a 15th recipe book that came into the possession of Samuel Pepys features broths and force meats, as well as a few remedies.

Remember bread is a staple source of carbohydrates, I rarely see anything resembling proper bread at events, too many granary loaves or 'rustic' things. Years ago we knew a man who specialised in ancient bread making and made us a range of breads, from the poorer maslins to nicer brioche type breads.

Whilst ovens are a pain to set up for a weekend event, they are possible. I made one years back by digging into the side of a bank we were camped near and basically used willow twigs and a clay mud and slow baked it to set it - that is the time consuming bit. But we managed to bake some bread rolls and more importantly I cooked pigeon in red wine and garlic. It was more an experiment to see if we could rather than a catering excercise.

--------------------

A COFFYN
To make paste and to raise coffyns- Take fine flour and lay it on a board and take a certaine of yolks of egges as your quantity of flower is, then take a certain of Butter and water and boile them together but you must take heed ye put too many yolkes of egges, for if you doe it will make it dry and not pleasant in eating, and ye must take heed ye put not in too much Butter, for if you doe, it will make it so fine and short that you cannot raise it: and this paste is good to raise all manner of coffyns...
-The Good Huswives Handmaid for Cookerie in her Kitchen- 1588

3 c. flour
1/2 c. water
4 oz. lard
1 egg yolk
1 t. salt

Mix flour and salt in a bowl. Melt lard and water in a saucepan until very hot. Pour over flour mix and stir together quickly. Stir in the egg yolk, then knead to make a smooth fairly stiff dough. Allow to rest 30 minutes before rolling out.

Given the warning "you must take heed ye put too many yolkes of egges, for if you doe it will make it dry and not pleasant in eating", it would seem in this case at least that the author of the recipe intends for the pastry to be eaten.

This is my reconstruction which I've used with great success for (gasp, has it been that long??) over 20 years. Makes a tough disposable case when rolled out thick, and a nice edible one when rolled out thin. I tend to use lard for the disposable cases and butter for the edible ones.

A fun thing to do with this is make up a batch, roll it out thick and use it to wrap up a small bird such as a cornish game hen or dove. Tuck some herbs and/or garlic and/or onions into the body cavity and seal tightly. Bake as long as necessary for the size of the bird.

Gwen

I have made horrible inedible ones....

Yours has enough shortening to make it palatable.

--------------------

is it correct, that the sweet stuff is in the same "body" as the meat and onions and so on? dont they "melt" together? should i put a "wall" of pasty between them?

tasty i have to say!