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Old English Dishes: Take
In the "Kalendare de Potages dyuers" appears this recipe for A goos in hogepotte: "Take a Goos, & make hure clene, & hacke hyre to gobettys, & put yn a potte, & Water to, & sethe togederys; than take Pepir & Brennyd brede or Blode y-boylyd, & grynd y-fere Gyngere & Galyngale & Comyn, & temper vppe with Ale, and putte it ther-to; & mynce Oynonys, & frye hem in freysshe grece, & do ther-to a porcyon of Wyne."
A strange entremets was one termed Vyolette, accompanied by these directions: "Take Flourys of Vyolet, boyle hem, presse hem, bray hem smal, temper hem vppe with Almaunde mylke, or gode Cowe Mylke, a-lye it with Amyndown or Flowre of Rys; take Sugre y-now, an putte ther-to, or hony in defaute; coloure it with the same that the flowrys be on y'peynted a-boue."
Two fifteenth-century recipes quoted in Middle English, with no quantities, times or temperatures — normal for the period, when a written recipe was a reminder for someone who already knew the dish. Both are workable if you read the vocabulary and supply your own proportions.
- The Middle English, in orderHacke hyre to gobettys is joint and cut into pieces; sethe is simmer; grynd y-fere is grind together; temper vppe is slacken to a pouring consistency; a-lye is thicken or bind; in defaute means failing that, i.e. honey if you have no sugar; y-now is enough.
- Brennyd bredeBurnt bread — bread toasted hard and dark, then ground and steeped. It is a thickener and a colourant, and the scorch is the point: it gives the pottage its brown depth. Crustless bread dried in a 300F oven until well past golden does the same job.
- Blood as the alternative thickenerBlode y-boylyd is blood set by cooking and then crumbled or ground in; the recipe does not say whose, though the bird's own is the obvious candidate. Fresh poultry blood is not a supermarket item; a butcher who kills on the premises is the only realistic source, and it must be cooked through, not stirred in raw at the end. The burnt-bread version of the recipe is the practical one.
- GalingaleNot the same as ginger despite sharing the recipe. Medieval English galingale is usually taken to be lesser galangal (Alpinia officinarum), sold dried and sliced in Asian grocers; it is sharper and more resinous than ginger. Use the two in roughly equal small amounts, with cumin in a lighter hand than either.
- Freysshe grece and the onionsFresh grease means unsalted rendered fat — goose fat is the obvious choice here. The onions go in fried and separately, near the end, so they keep their sweetness rather than dissolving into the broth.
- AmyndownAmyndown (amydoun) is wheat starch, made by steeping and washing wheat and drying the sediment. Cornflour or the recipe's own alternative, rice flour, gives the same effect: a smooth set that does not cloud the colour.
- Which violetsSweet violet, Viola odorata, and other true violas — not African violets, which are an unrelated houseplant and should not be eaten. Use unsprayed flowers, and strip the green calyx, which is bitter.
- The colouring instructionThe last line, coloure it with the same that the flowrys be on y-peynted a-boue, is generally read as colouring the dish to match the flowers themselves, though the phrasing is ambiguous. The pressed flowers give only a modest tint: almond milk mutes it to a grey-lavender; cow's milk more so.
- Yield and serviceA goose of average size would stretch to roughly six to eight as a main dish, though the recipe gives no yield. The violet dish is an entremets — a small sweet or coloured course between the main services — and suits small portions, set like a thin blancmange.
The "Kalendare de Potages dyuers" is the table of pottages heading one of the great English culinary manuscripts of the fifteenth century, Harleian MS 279, which Thomas Austin printed for the Early English Text Society in 1888 as part of Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books; Victorian and Edwardian writers on "old English dishes" quarried it constantly for exactly the sort of quotation reproduced here. Hogepotte is the ancestor of hotchpotch and hodgepodge, from Old French hochepot, a shaken or jumbled pot — a dish defined by its method rather than its contents, and one of the oldest continuously used names in English cookery. The violet dish belongs to the other half of the medieval kitchen's ambition: an entremets, served between courses, valued for colour and novelty as much as flavour, and part of a family of flower dishes — primrose, hawthorn, rose — that ran on the same almond-milk-and-starch base with the blossom changed. Almond milk appears here not as a substitute but as the standard cooking liquid of the wealthy medieval household, useful because it kept better than dairy and passed on fast days, and the recipe's offer of "gode Cowe Mylke" or honey "in defaute" of sugar shows a text being copied for kitchens of varying means.