chck-n-pastry-msg - 3/20/08

Period and SCA chicken recipes cooked or baked in pastry.

NOTE: See also these files: recipes-msg, birds-recipes-msg, fowls-a-birds-msg,  butchering-msg, falconry-msg, roast-chicken-msg, chicken-msg.

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NOTICE -

This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.

The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.

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Thank you,
    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: Re:Need Recipes
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 14:40:09 GMT

This is Elizabeth of Demdermonde posting on Cariadoc's account.

"Help! we need recipes for an upcoming event....nothing fancy, just
filling (and good!)"--brighid & treise

Here are [two] recipes fitting your specifications; they are also
period.  Don't feel that at your first shot at head cook you cannot
hope to make period food:  there are a huge number of period recipes
out there, ranging from enormously complex to very simple, and these
are toward the simple end.  What I have below is the period recipe
(or a straight English translation of it) first, followed by our
worked-out version.  All have been done successfully at feasts I have
cooked.  I suggest you try them out for dinner at home to see if you
like them.  If you have any questions or for more recipes, email me. 
All of these are published in the Miscellany which Cariadoc and I
sell, as well as lots more recipes and other stuff.

Icelandic Chicken
Icelandic Medical Miscellany p. 218/D1 (from a 15th century Icelandic
manuscript, but actually probably originally 13th c. southern
European)

Original:  One shall cut a young chicken in two and wrap about it
whole leaves of salvia, and cut up in it bacon and add salt to suit
the taste. Then cover that with dough and bake like bread in the oven.

Our version:
5 c flour	about 1 3/4 c water
1/2 lb bacon	3 lb chicken, cut in half
3 T dried sage (or sufficient fresh sage leaves to cover)

Make a stiff dough by kneading together flour and water. Roll it out.
Cover the dough with sage leaves and the sage leaves with strips of
bacon. Wrap each half chicken in the dough, sealing it. You now have
two packages which contain, starting at the outside, dough, sage,
bacon, chicken. Put them in the oven and bake like bread (325! for 2
hours). We find the bacon adds salt enough.

The part of the bread at the bottom is particularly good, because of
the bacon fat and chicken fat. You may want to turn the loaves once
or twice, or baste the top with the drippings.

Fricassee of Whatever Meat You Wish
from Platina book 6 (15th c. Italian)

<snip. See chicken-msg for this recipe. -Stefan>

Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 12:40:00 -0500
From: mfgunter at fnc.fujitsu.com (Michael F. Gunter)
Subject: SC - Sweet & Sour chicken in a loaf

> Have you still got the recipe for the sweet and sour chicken in a loaf?
> It may not be period but it sounds like a good dinner!  The Berry Kuchens
> might be period--would have to see the recipe to tell for sure <evil
> grin

I first used the recipe back with my first feast some 10-11 years ago. I think
it was from a collection of period recipes but will not stake a dollar on that.
I used it again going by intuition and people seemed to love it.

Basically I roasted chicken, boned it and placed the bones in stock water.
I mixed with the chicken, honey, mint, vinegar, salt & pepper, garlic, and
basic chicken herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage). I played with it, changing the
ratios of sweet and vinegar until it tasted right. Then I cooked the stock
down until it gelled and poured it over the chicken. I placed the mixture in
hollowed out loaves of bread. You could add anything you wish to it (green
onions, celery, nuts, whatever). The dish is very popular when I make it
but I never make it the same way twice. I may have gotten the recipe from an
old Tournaments Illuminated. I'll have to check and give the proper recipe
and acknowledgements if I can find it.

> Allison

Gunthar

Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 16:49:38 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Fwd: Chekyns Recipe

Here you go folks. This serves 4-8.

A'aql

I will provide "documentation"  soon.
This is done on the fly and I haven't finished preparing my actual post for
this recipe.

Chekynes in Garlik
(A Composite recipe created from 2 recipes in "Ancient Cookery")
copyright 1998 L. J. Spencer, Jr.

8 chicken thighs
1/4 cup butter, melted
4 sheets phyllo (filo) pastry, cut in half
1 head garlic
1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
3/4-1 cup chicken broth
1 large pinch ginger, ground
1 large pinch cinnamon, ground
1 pinch cloves, ground
salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 400 deg. F. Wrap garlic minus 1 large clove of garlic in foil.
Bake 30 mins.

Brush a half phyllo sheet with melted butter. Place chicken at the top of the
sheet and roll up. Tuck ends underneath. Place on a greased baking sheet.
Repaet for other chicken pieces. Bake at 350 deg. F. until a golden brown.

Sauce:
Soak breadcrumbs in broth. Squeeze cooked garlic into crumb mixture. Blend
well. Mash raw clove of garlic into a paste. Add to mixture. Add remaining
ingredients and mix thoroughly. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat top low and
simmer until thickened, stirring frequently to avoid sticking.

To serve:
Put wrapped chicken on a plater and pour sauce over top. You may sprinkle with
a small amount of cinnamon for garnish.

A'aql al-Zib (pronouced "Ras")
Guildmaster
The Guilde of Ste. Martha

Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 22:15:31 -0800
From: Anne-Marie Rousseau <acrouss at gte.net>
Subject: Re: SC - meat pies

Hi all from Anne-Marie
I'm asked to share a specific recipe for the pastellum. Here it is...all
rights reserved, no reproduction without permission, blah blah blah.

have fun!
- --AM

A LOMBARD PASTELLUM
        Here is an example of a  dish that seems conserved between sources and
places, with little variation. The pastellum is a beautiful thing, round and
brown with the smell of bacon and spices. Medieval pigs were no where near as
chubby as our modern, commercially raised porkers, who are bred to be fat.
Modern bacon is too fatty, and will result in a very greasy end product. To
simulate more medieval bacon, either trim the fat off, partially cook the
strips to render some of the fat, or use "Canadian style" bacon. I also use
free-range chickens when I can, rather than the more portly commercial hens for
the same reason. Again, you may be able to approximate the young svelte
medieval chicks of the original recipe by removing as much of the fat as
you can before assembling your pastellum.

        Although the original is obviously meant to be a bird in a single pie,
bones and all, I've also made the more modern and convenient (to our standards)
version using boneless skinless pieces (approximating the fat and size of
chicks), wrapped individually in the pastry and bacon with great success.
from le Menagier a Paris [M25]

Chicks may be placed in pastry, back down and breast up, and broad slices of
bacon on the breast; and then cover.

Item, in the Lombardy fashion, when the chicks are plucked and prepared, have
beaten eggs, both yolks and whites, with verjuice and powdered spices, and
moisten your chicks in it: then put in pastry with slices of bacon as above.
See also An Early XIII Century Northern-European Cookbook, D3
Recipe Thirty-How one prepares a chicken in a pie (pastellum).
One should cut in two a young chicken and wrap it with whole leaves of sage,
add cut bacon, and salt. And wrap the chicken in dough and bake in an oven like
bread. In the same way one can make all kinds of fish pies and pies of fowl
and other meats.

Our version:
Four chicken thighs, or other pieces
1 egg beaten
2 T white balsamic vinegar or verjuice if you have it
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/8 tsp. clove
1/8 tsp. black pepper, fresh ground
Double crust pie dough or a single recipe pizza dough.
10-12 pieces of lean Canadian style or trimmed bacon

    Dip chicken pieces into egg and spice stuff. Lay on dough (pizza crust
or pie dough), layered with 5-6 pieces bacon on the bottom, and the rest on the
top.  Close up with remaining dough. Bake in baking pan sealed side down (it
can leak) for 1 1/2 hours at 350o. Cover with foil if it gets too brown.
Serve warm. Serves 4.

Alternately:
layer a chicken piece with two or three fresh sage leaves and a slab of
bacon. Wrap in dough as described above.

Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 10:05:40 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - capons in casselys.

cnevin at caci.co.uk writes:
<< Moderate (from the Ancient Cookery appended to Forme of Cury):
 XXVIII. For to make capons in ca??elys.
 Nym caponys and ?chald hem nym a penne and opyn the ?kyn at the hevyd (1)
 and blowe hem tyl the ?kyn ry?e from the fle?she and do of the ?kyn al hole
 and ?eth the lyre of Hennyn and zolkys of heyryn and god powder and make a
 Far?ure (2) and fil ful the ?kyn and parboyle yt and do yt on a ?pete and
 ro?t yt and droppe (3) yt wyth zolkys of eyryn and god powder ro?tyng and
 nym the caponys body and larde yt and ro?te it and nym almaunde   mylk and
 amydon and mak a batur and droppe the body ro?tyng and ?erve yt forthe.

For to Make Capons in Castles(?)

Take capons and scald them take a pen (quill) and open (pierce) the skin at
the head and blow them until the skin rise from the flesh and do the skin all whole and seeth the (flesh?) of hen(s) and yolks of eggs and good powder  and make a (stuufing or force meat) and fill full the skin and parboil it and do it on a spit and roast it  and drop it with ypks of eggs and good powder roasting
and take the capon's body and lard it and take almond milk and (wheat starch)
and make a batter and drop the body roasting and serve it forth.

You remove the skin from the capon whole.

Remove the meat from a couple of chickens and parboil it for about 20 mins.
Chop the chicken meat small, mix in egg yolks and good spices. Stuff the capon
skin with this mixture. Sew up any openings in the skin and boil the chicken
for 15 minutes.  Remove from the water and put it on a spit BESIDE the fire
and occasionally brush it with eggyolks that have been mixed with spices as
it turns by the fire

Lard  the capon. Make a batter of wheat starch mixed with almond milk. Roast
it (probably on a spit closer to the fire than the chicken). Toward the end of
the roasting brush the capon with the almond batter until it developes a
nice crust as it turns on the spit.

Ras

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 15:18:17 +0100
From: Christina Nevin <cnevin at caci.co.uk>
Subject: SC - Wheat vs Spelt Icelandic Chicken doughs

Over the Easter weekend I did some test cooking and thought some of you
might be interested in the Icelandic Chicken (from Cariadoc's Miscelleny)
results.
I decided to try different dough for the two halves, so for one half I used
organic wheat flour, and for the other organic stone-ground spelt flour. The
spelt was a lot harder to knead into a stiff dough as the recipe requests,
but once there, 'stayed' a lot better than the wheat dough (sorry, I'm not a
frequent baker so don't know the terms, if any).
The wheat dough took about 10 minutes longer to cook although it was the
same thickness, and was bland in the parts not flavoured by the bacon, sage
or juices. I chopped up and made stew out of the leftovers (de-boning it was
a pain) and that was very tasty - the dough came out like cubes of flavoured
suet, which normally I dislike, but this time actually enjoyed.
The spelt dough came out like a reasonably fine wholegrain bread in both
colour and texture. It was harder on the crust and much denser than the
wheat dough, requiring a bit more soaking in the juices whilst eating, but
it wasn't tough. It had a lot more taste of itself and I liked it much more.

Other than that, the dried sage I used was fresh (inasmuch as dried can be
fresh!) and in leaf form rather than the chopped stuff we usually get, and
quite strong tasting. My guinea pigs also really liked the dish and gave the
recipe the Big Green Light for feasts.
In summary, I think I'll stick to using spelt flour for this recipe in
future - and cut down on the sage.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lady Lucrezia-Isabella di Freccia   |  mka Tina Nevin
Thamesreach Shire, The Isles, Drachenwald | London, UK

Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 09:31:46 -0700
From: "Nancy Santella" <annaoftderturm at pathway.net>
Subject: SC - Icelandic Chicken

I have not tried special breads with this recipe. But I do like to take it
on trips using chicken breasts it makes a nice portable meal. They travel
will and when sliced cold make good finger food.

Anna oftderTurm
Sunder Oak, AEthelmearc

Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 10:53:47 -0500
From: "Michael F. Gunter" <michael.gunter at fnc.fujitsu.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Icelandic Chicken {RECIPE}

> << Make a stiff dough by kneading together flour and water. >>
>
> Just my two cents...
> I just did 70+ of these silly things last week and my experience was that a
> dough made from four and butter and/or crisco works *much* better, kinda like
> a pasty sorta thing.
> Isabetta

I have experienced the same thing with the recipe. We made it according to
the period recipe and then substituted a tastier pastry. But I came to the
conclusion that the period chicken was basically a travel food that needed
the stiff crust to transport well or that it became something like a clay
pot and wasn't meant to be eaten but simply a vessel for cooking the
chicken in. If you just break open the crust and serve the chicken without
it the chicken is very moist and tasty.

Just an observation.

Gunthar

Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 13:28:12 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Icelandic Chicken {RECIPE}

"Michael F. Gunter" wrote:
> I have experienced the same thing with the recipe. We made it according to
> the period recipe and then substituted a tastier pastry. But I came to the
> conclusion that the period chicken was basically a travel food that needed
> the stiff crust to transport well or that it became something like a clay
> pot and wasn't meant to be eaten but simply a vessel for cooking the
> chicken in. If you just break open the crust and serve the chicken without
> it the chicken is very moist and tasty.

A yeast-leavened dough also works well. As you say, though, it's not
clear what circumstances the dish is intended to be eaten under: if it's
a pie, or merely a travel container, or what. Obviously a whole bird,
with bones, would preclude its being cut in chunks and eaten as we would
eat a boneless meat pie now.

One consideration is that a bird wrapped in fatty bacon, especially
salty bacon, would allow for a bird pretty well protected from airborne
bad'uns, especially if wrapped in a stiff pastry of any kind (remember
our recent confit thread?).

This could well be either a travel food _or_ simply a sort of
cold-on-the-sideboard kinda emergency dish. Certainly the large pies of
the English renaissance, generally filled with clarified butter around
the main meat filling, were expected to keep quite a while without what
we'd call refrigeration.

Adamantius

Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 13:17:19 -0700
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Icelandic Chicken {RECIPE}

At 11:42 AM -0400 7/23/99, KriSiena at aol.com wrote:
>korrin.daardain at juno.com writes:
><< Make a stiff dough by kneading together flour and water. >>
>
>Just my two cents...
>I just did 70+ of these silly things last week and my experience was that a
>dough made from four and butter and/or crisco works *much* better, kinda like
>a pasty sorta thing.

1. I've always done it as described in the recipe quoted from the
_Miscellany_, and I like the result--sort of like pizza crust.

2. The reference to baking it in the oven like bread, and the lack of any
reference to shortening, makes me think that a simple flour/water dough is
what is intended. My impression from the English cookbooks is that adding
fat to a dough was considered something special enough so that it was
mentioned, and that the default "dough" was something like bread dough not
something like pie crust. Of course, I don't know if that was true for the
source of this recipe, which is earlier and (probably) mediterranean.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 20:18:41 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - Icelandic chicken. and sources.

Tollhase1 at aol.com wrote:
> Question,  I was given a bite of Icelandic chicken by camp crooked cat behind
> us.  I understood the recipe to be a chicken breast wrapped in bacon then
> pastry.  Was it then boiled?  Was the chicken pre cooked?

I¥ve already posted the versions from the Icelandic (Codex D) and Danish
(Codex K) and Thomas posted the Low German version (W). None of them says
anything about precooking. Here is the other Danish version, Codex Q - it
specifies raw chicken:

"MÊn sculÊ skÊrÊ et raat h¯¯ns ÊndÊ lang syndÊr oc takÊ hwetÊ deegh oc g¯rÊ
thÊrÊ af en flathÊ. oc skÊrÊ smath flÊsk i oc lÊggÊ salui blath allÊ helÊ.
co malÊn pipÊr oc salt oc windÊ thet h¯¯ns i thÊn deegh swa ath thÊt Êr alt
helt vtÊn. oc latÊ thÊt bakÊ Êm mykÊt sum ant br¯th."

My translation:

One shall cut a raw chicken in two lengthwise and take a flour dough and
make a plate thereof and cut lardons small into it and lay on it whole sage
leaves  and ground pepper and salt and wrap the chicken in it so it is
completely covered, and bake as much as other bread.

Nanna

Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 20:58:58 -0700
From: Anne-Marie Rousseau <acrouss at gte.net>
Subject: Re: SC - icelandic chicken redaction.

hey all froam Anne-Marie

Frederich asked:
>That aside, I must agree academically with Ras that by changing the recipe
>one bit from the original, one is not purely making that recipe.  However, In
>keeping with making such a thing for a modern palette. How could I change the
>dough so that people would like it more well still using it as a cooking
>vessel?

what dough did you use, and why did you pick that one? according to my
reading, we have little evidence on how early pastry was made, and whetehr
it was to be eaten or not. I've done this recipe with regular bread dough
(pretty good, though the inside was soggy, while the outside was nice) and
regular pastry dough (flour, water, salt and fat, as called for by the
later sources in my library). Regular pastry dough was the biggest hit with
the non-medievally inclined audience. I also find that if you use the whole
chicken, or half white meat and half dark, it makes a huge difference.
There is WAY more moisture in the dark meat.

Good for you for not "cheating" the first time you make this! :)

- --AM, who has been known to eat katsup with her Ramequins of Flessche :)

Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 04:08:17 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - icelandic chicken redaction.

Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:
> what dough did you use, and why did you pick that one? according to my
> reading, we have little evidence on how early pastry was made, and whetehr
> it was to be eaten or not.

True, but...

The recipe (or at least one early one) does say, as I recall, something
like "cut speck small and put it in [the dough]". This doesn't make it
clear how the fat (very possibly fresh & uncured, unlike what most of us
think of as bacon) is introduced.

It _could_ end up in the pastry as a shortening, as with the grated
unrendered suet you find in some English puddings.

Alternately, as AM points out, it may simply be that it's hard as a rock
and intended to be as edible as a rock. I've often heard it said by
people field-testing the dish that the thing to do is eat only the
bacon-juice-y bottom of the pastellum. YMMV.

Another consideration is that we don't know for sure how hard or soft
the wheat or other grain used in the recipe is. Using a softer wheat
flour might help with making the dough at least somewhat more edible by
modern standards, if it was intended to be eaten. If, on the other hand,
the recipe really is from some Mediterranean region, as has been
suggested, it may well have been a harder wheat.

Adamantius

Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 01:29:33 -0700
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at efn.org>
Subject: Re: SC - icelandic chicken redaction.

Now- about Icelandic Chicken? I'm sure that this will be taken as
heretical, but...
        Because the copy I have only say 'dough', I played with several
different doughs. Even pie crust. Now, I cook this in camp frequently,
so it has to work, and be dough that I can have ahead and just keep in
the cooler- mixing and rolling, etc., does not work well in camp. So I
cheat- and use folded puff pastry from the freezer case. It works, looks
good, is edible, and even tasty! Since I don't know what the 'dough' is,
I also don't know what the dough _isn't_.

'Lainie

Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 10:03:54 -0500
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - icelandic chicken redaction.

I think by rough dough, they are talking about a dough made from coarse meal
of probably no more than one bolting.  If this is the case, then the pastry
was probably not meant to be eaten.

Bear

Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 12:33:25 -0500
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - icelandic chicken redaction.

At 1:29 AM -0700 8/28/99, Laura C. Minnick wrote:
>So I
>cheat- and use folded puff pastry from the freezer case. It works, looks
>good, is edible, and even tasty! Since I don't know what the 'dough' is,
>I also don't know what the dough _isn't_.

That doesn't follow. Even if we don't know what the dough is, we know it
isn't made from cornflour, since maize is New World and the recipe is from
long before Columbus.So we know some things it isn't.

More immediately relevant, we can be pretty sure it isn't puff pastry,
since there are not (so far as I know) any recipes at all for puff pastry
nearly that early. The closest thing I know of is an Islamic recipe which
produces a pastry with many fine layers--but not made like puff pastry.

I think one can get some reasonable conclusions about medieval dough from
the available sources, although not with as much certainty as we would
like. In the English corpus, at least, you have specific references to
short pastes--doughs with shortening. It looks to me as if the default
"paste" is basically a flour./water dough, and the addition of shortening
is considered a variation worth noting. I agree that one can't be sure, but
since doing Icelandic chicken works well that way it seems to me that it is
the most plausible interpretation.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 18:53:19 -0700
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at efn.org>
Subject: Re: SC - icelandic chicken redaction.

cclark at vicon.net wrote:
> So if you want to use pie crust, period style, I would suggest either a
> plain flour-water dough (perhaps lightly salted, and probably using some
> non-wheat flour), or a flour, water, and melted butter dough. Don't use a
> whole lot of butter or it gets grease all over your fingers. Not good for
> your dexterity. (Though a slug might be more concerned about salt...)

Actually, I've been using my usual piecrust recipe, which is a boiling
water w/butter crust. And since the butter is salted, I usually don't
add salt ;-) And yes, it is messy, but it can be rolled up onto waxed
paper (albeit with some difficulty) for transport. Just not as easily as
the Pepperidge Farm stuff in the box :-)

'Lainie

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 07:32:32 -0800
From: Anne-Marie Rousseau <acrouss at gte.net>
Subject: Re: SC - question regarding the Icelandic chicken

hey all from Anne-Marie
Maggie asks:
>Btw, the only translation I have of the recipe is the one below. Are there 
>any further variations on it?

le menagier has a similar dish, with chicks wrapped in pastry with bacon and
spices and vinegar. we use single chicken thighs to simulate the smaller
chick...(whichh I realize isnt totally accurate...)

from le Menagier a Paris [M25]
Chicks may be placed in pastry, back down and breast up, and broad slices of
bacon on the breast; and then cover. 
Item, in the Lombardy fashion, when the chicks are plucked and prepared, have
beaten eggs, both yolks and whites, with verjuice and powdered spices, and
moisten your chicks in it: then put in pastry with slices of bacon as above.

also very tasty! especially if, like some of my household members, you think
whole sage leaves feel like a baby mouse in your mouth when you bit into
them....(I have very imaginative household members :))

- --AM

Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 23:11:51 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - Re: "Harpestraeng"+ ftp

Hauviette wrote:
>Will you be publishing your work?

No, but anyone who wants to is free to use it, for what it is worth.

>Hauviette,
>the linguistically challenged (and yes I have tried using online
>dictionaries, to my dismay)

I have yet to see the online dictionary that can deal successfully with a
heavily inflected language like Icelandic.

And just for fun, here is a fried chicken recipe from the younger Danish
manuscript (13th century):

Blom th hØns

M n scul  tak  hØns oc scald  th m. oc lith  th m synder oc sk r  alt kiØØth
fra been. oc riu  th t smath. oc siuth  the been. oc tak  th m sith n af
soth oc wind  kiØØth th r vm. oc strØ th r pulu r a. af cinamomum. oc l gg 
th t sith n i deegh th r gØrth  r af hwet  mial og slagh n  g oc bage th t
sith n i smØr  th smolt. th t heth r blom th hØns.

Coated hens (well, chicken, I guess)

One shall take hens and scald them and cut them apart and cut all the meat
from the bones, and tear it into small pieces, and boil the bones. Then the
bones are taken from the broth and the meat is wrapped around them, and
sprinkled with ground cinnamon, and put this in a batter/dough made of wheat
flour and beaten eggs, and bake it in butter or lard. That is called coated
hens.

I have here two Danish interpretations of this recipe (Hans Veirup•s Til
taffel hos Kong Valdemar og Bi Skaarup•s and Henrik Jacobsen•s
Middelaldermad - actually many other than Grewe have done work on these
recipes) and they vary rather widely - one suggests shaping pre-cooked
chicken meat around the bones to resemble chicken legs, then wrapping them
in a pastry dough and baking them in an oven, the other suggests leaving out
the bones, adding egg and flour to bind the meat, then to form oblong shapes
that are dipped in batter and deep-fried.

Nanna

Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 09:29:06 EDT
From: Seton1355 at aol.com
Subject: SC - here are your recipes- Lombardy Chicken

I *knew* organizing my recipes would come in handy!
BRUET OF LUMBARDY
Boiled Chicken in Almond Milk Pepper Sauce 

<snip of recipe. See chicken-msg file. -Stefan>

LOMBARD CHICKEN PASTIES  (MEDIEVAL COOKBOOK  P47)

350g shortcrust or puff pastry
2 Eggs beaten
2 tbsps Lemon Juice
Pinch Ground Black Pepper
? tspn Ground Ginger
450g Chicken Meat in small thin slices
3 Large rashers of streaky bacon (trimed in fat)

1.   Divide the pastry into six portions
2.   Mix the beaten eggs with lemon juice, pepper and ginger
3.   Dip the slices of chicken meat in the mixture then divide them between 
the pastry
4.   Lay  a piece of bacon on each pie
5.   Brush the edge of the pastry with any remaining egg mixture
6.   Fold the pastry and pinch the edges together
7.   Prick the pastry in several places
8.   bake at 220C for 15 minutes and lower the oven to 190C and cook for 
another 20-25 minutes

Lombard Pasties serves 150
(The Goodman of Paris c.1393; trans. Eileen Power)

ITEM in the Lombard manner when the chickens be plucked and prepared, take 
beaten eggs (to wit yolks and whites) with verjuice and spice powder and dip 
your chickens therein; then set them in the pasty with strip of bacon as 
above [large slices of bacon on the breast]

15# boneless chicken breast Bacon or dried, cured ham 
2 eggs, beaten   lard 
Verjuice or cider vinegar  flour 
fine spice powder   ice cold water 

As we do not enjoy eating whole chicks, I use boneless chicken breast.  Since 
the crust is so rich, a smaller pasty is sufficient.  (Simmer the chicken 
pieces in water until mostly done to ensure doneness of final product)  Cut 
each breast in half and dip chicken pieces in egg wash made with eggs, a dash 
of verjuice/vinegar and a little spice powder.  Place these pieces in pastry 
made of lard, flour and water.  Place on each piece of chicken, a piece of 
lean bacon or dried ham Smithfield would be good as it seems it would 
approximate European bacon better).  Seal pastry together and return to 
refrigerator to chill (15 minutes).  Remove form refrigerator and bake at 
400F 15 minutes or until golden and chicken is cooked.

  FINE [SPICE] POWDER.  Take of white ginger and ounce and a dram, of 
selected cinnamon a quarter, of cloves and grains [of paradise] eash half a 
quarter of an ounce, and of lump sugar a quarter and reduce them to powder. 
(p. 298)

<the end>