The Mystery of Medieval Spice Mixtures

Click on picture to see series of photographs of spices used to make a powder fort.*

Seitan Bake part one includes a generic range of spices: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, long pepper, grains of paradise, and black pepper. These are spices discussed over and over in medieval recipes. I, myself, am not over fond of cinnamon and so tend to make my medieval spice mixtures ginger and pepper heavy. It would be correct to say that I used a powder fort mix in the seitan.

It would also be correct to say that many more (and less) well-researched people have tackled the vagueness that surrounds the contents and proportions of many medieval spice mixtures. I've linked to some of them below, and I would encourage anyone wanting to tackle the issue him or herself be not limited by the ideas of others or the few specific ingredient lists found in the existing manuscripts. Ultimately, you have to eat it. Ultimately, the powder fort of 15th c. France is not the powder fort of 14th c. England, and the powder fort of 14th c. London is not the powder fort of 14th c. York. Similar spices may have been used across all these places and eras, but it is just as valid to add a little something known in period that is not a part of that usual spice range. This is particularly noticeable in the powder douce recipes, which contain a splendid mess of possibilities.

Other people's ideas about the perfect combination of the mystery spice mixes mentioned in medieval cookery manuscripts: powder fine, powder forte, powder blanche, powder douce. Powder may also be spelled as poudre.

An article with a basic spice conversation and multiple recipes for Powders fine, douce, and forte:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080131160345/http://www.thorngrove.net/athenaeum/powder.htm

Other recipes for Powder douce:

http://cookalong.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-poudre-douce.html
http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/powderdouce
http://recipes.medievalcookery.com/douce.html
http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/mediaeval/fetch-recipe.php?rid=medi-powder-douce
http://www.recipezaar.com/poudre-douce-powder-douce-361645
http://www.livinghistorylectures.com/Powder%20Douce.pdf


Also try: apple pie spice, chai spice blend

Others for Powder Forte:

http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/powderforte
http://recipes.medievalcookery.com/fort.html
http://www.livinghistorylectures.com/Powder%20Forte.pdf
http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/mediaeval/fetch-recipe.php?rid=medi-powder-fort

Powder Fine:

http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/finepowder
http://recipes.medievalcookery.com/fine.html

Powder Blanch:

http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/powderblanch
http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/mediaeval/fetch-recipe.php?rid=medi-blanche-powder

You know, I do think it is time for me to pack up my own blends of these spices just to save some time in prep--right now, I tend to measure them out individually, but it would be faster to mix the spices in the proportions I prefer.

*Use of this image is believed to be consistent with fair use as it is used in a reduced-size format, in a no-profit context, to link back to a series of publicly viewable photos which illustrate the subject matter of this educational post. Attribution for photo is found by clicking back to the photo series.

Seitan Bake part one

::rough draft version::

So, I've been thinking about mock meats for the SCA cook. There are plenty of Lenten recipes and so forth in period cookery, but once you cross to veganism or vegetarianism, the substitution of fish for beef is no longer a possibility.

There are no "meat analogues" in western Euro cookery before 1601, as far as I know. One could speculate on the use of certain vegetables or nuts or fungi as part of a meatless medieval diet, but I have not noticed anything that describes such a use. In eastern cuisine, meat analogues come into wide use with the spread of Buddhism. Pre-1601, both tofu and seitan are used in various Oriental cuisines specifically as meat replacements. Thus, both of these substitutes, while not in use in Europe at this time, do exist in cookery in our time period for the purpose of replacing meat. If you wish to use a meat analogue to create a vegetarian version of a beef/chicken/pork/lamb/fish dish, these would be a good choice.

I, myself, enjoy meat analogues, and find that they are very nice forserving as the source of chewiness when experimenting with sauces. However, tofu is something I rarely eat because of the effect of unfermented soy on my body. The primary fermented soy-based analogue, tempeh, does not appear in any written records before the 19th century.

Seitan, however, is a wheat based meat analogue believed to have originated in ancient China, AND it is easily made by the home cook.

So, for my first medievaloid mock meat, I decided to alter Joanna Vaught's standard seitan recipe with the typical spice profile as usually found in medieval sauces. Out with the veggie broth, nutritional yeast, and so forth, and in with a red wine sangria, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, & long pepper.

One reason I particularly like Joanna's base recipe is because she adulterates the traditional 100% vital wheat gluten (VWG) recipe with Bob's Red Mills chickpea/fava bean flour. Any Scadian cook worth her salt knows that these two legumes are proven period, and most nutritionists still recommend the practice of complementary protiens. The VWG plus the legume flour works to create such an improved product while still staying in that pre-1601 range we love so well.

But after that, it's all in your spices. I used sangria and olive oil for the wet ingrediants, VWG, chickpea flour, and the above mentioned spices for the dry mixture, blended it all together, rolled it into sausage shapes, and steamed it in the rice cooker for an hour.

And what flavor sensation did I get out of the pot?

Something that tasted remarkably like unsweetened cinnamon bread.

:sigh:

Well, I certainly did not expect it to taste like beef or pork, but I was hoping the wine would give it a little more of a stewed flavor. And, too, I know that basic seitan like thise is a first step.

So, now, I have to decide what sort of second flavoring treatment I am going to give it. I've got a texture and a flavor profile that should work with many a medieval meat recipe... Now to see how it subs in.

Blancmange as a savory dish

A Modified Medieval Dinner of Delish +3

Blancmange is a ubiquitous medieval dish, and a careful reading of the many, many, many recipes reveals a lot of different ways to interpret the recipe. My first attempt to do so was straight out of Pleyn Delit and I didn't like it very much.

I needed a quick dinner tonight, though, and something that would appeal to omnivores. Digging through the fridge, I found I had some vegan mushroom soup I had made some while ago, and it occurred to me that this would be a very good way to try blancmange again.

I'd like to say I felt all kinds of clever, but it's not like rice cooked in mushroom soup is any sort of unexpected dish here in the land of hotdish. What I did feel pretty good about was the realization that it would serve as a veganized blancmange, as the soup had been made of equal parts mushroom broth & sweetened almond milk, plus flour, salt, little garlic. So, into the pot it went, one measure of the soup, one measure of water, a teaspoon of Better Than Bullion's no-chicken base, and one measure of rice.

I couldn't believe how good it was when compared to the Hieatt redaction . And it does not taste like your usual Lutheran Church Basement cuisine. Thank heaven. Instead, a hint of savory, a hint of sweet, and what I imagine the flavor profile of blancmange might have been before it evolved into the milk jello of modern cuisine.

That, in and of itself, would be a fine medieval blancmange. Mushrooms instead of chicken and otherwise almonds, sugar, rice. The blancmange is served with asparagus, onions, and a mock chicken breast that had been defrosted and "seared" in olive oil.

Cooking Vegetarian for Medieval Feasts

I have not been the cook for a feast in a long while, but one thing that always irked me was the meat-heavy planning that went into most feasts at that time. One of my proudest moments was the day a vegetarian couple came to me and said, "Oh, thank you so much, this was the first feast at which I have ever had enough to eat and had a variety of things to choose. And it was all good."

(That would be Stone Lion II, many years ago, and the last feast I planned. I've offered a few times since, but there are always others who are hungry for the position, and I let them have it.)

When I started expanding my website to include interests beyond illuminated manuscripts, I put up a small page of recipes that I had prepared as primary vegan proteins at feasts. Very simple legume dishes. It's rarely been accessed, according to the site statistics, but it nonetheless deserves saving, and it is here. I had a good time writing the recipes as if I was writing in period, and I think I may continue that tradition with original recipes meant for period cookery--another good reason to developed this blog's voice here. In any event, I cook these recipes all the time, and will move them here for safekeeping. Where they still won't be accessed much. ;-)

I recently found a link to another page that considers vegans and vegetarians in feast planning, Katherine Rowberd's Medieval food for vegetarians. I like this article, in that she has the same attitude I have: if you pay attention and plan, you can stuff everyone and no one will notice. She has a reasonable essay on planning and a selection of recipes to choose from for cooks who are not interested in researching. I'd eat feasts more often if more Head Cooks followed this advice.

Danial Meyers has listed out a whole swathe of piscetarian & vegetarian recipes on his site, here. Note that this is a site that considers fish as a vegetarian alternative (a la the use of pesco-vegetarian as a vegetarian dietary style). :-)


Gode Cookery has one wild mashed up table of contents for all recipes, here. Sift through them for recipes that support the more restrictive dietary styles. Some are completely medieval, others are not.

McCheaper Veggie Burgers

Garbanzo Burgers and Beets

Well, I love veggie burgers. There are limited brands available to me, as the majority of commercially prepared burgers have a soy base. There are rice burgers and there are sunflower seed burgers and other kinds I can eat, but the price of the pre-made veggie burgers is silly in comparison to the cost of the components--and they are, ultimately, processed products.

So I spent some time looking through variations available on Allrecipies.com and finally decided to try the Garbanzo Bean Burgers. I followed the recipe pretty exactly, with the addition of cumin, flax seed, and onion. The resultant product was tasty enough, nothing to write home about, but the effect--veggie crumbles---versus the amount of work it was to make these things means I won't be making them this way again.

Vital Wheat Gluten. That's what I figured would be needed--that, and a higher proportion of garbanzos to veggies, mostly because the amount of veggies versus legumes in this recipe was so perfect that there wasn't really a taste of anything. I love garbanzos and so want that flavor to dominate. I began thinking about how the recipe might be modified to make up for that, only to stop by Outpost in my neighborhood and find that they were out of the VWG. Feh.

Fortunately, the wait was a blessing in disguise: I got home and found that Joanna Vaught had posted a generic recipe for burgers featuring VWG as the agent that assists the burger in binding. I can't wait to try. If my first try turns out even a teensy bit promising, I can see multiple versions appearing in these posts.

And beets? mmmmmm. beeeeets. I less than three beets big big big time.

Experimental soup

Beets, Rutabega, and Cauliflower Tangerine Soup

So, I'm trying this veggie burger recipe. And it leaves a lot of leftover veggie scraps that are too little to do much of anything in a single dish, but it just kills me to throw away usable food.

So I throw it all into the pot to make a veggie stock, always a useful thing in a house like this one, and suddenly spied the huge number of tangerine peels I'd generated earlier in the day. MM, snackariffic tangerines. In they went.

Throw in a cut up head of cauliflower, cook to soft, and there you go, a soup of citrusy cauliflower goodness. I think I put in too many peels, and next time would start small--the peel of one tangerine rather than three.

Beets is beets, cherry tomatoes is cherry tomatoes, and the rutabega was served up with a litle olive oil and sprinkled with seseme seeds.

ETA, 8 May

I thought this might make a fabulous cold soup, but the pith in the peels made the soup bitter while it was refrigerated. I ate it all, but it wasn't as nice as I hoped it would be. Hopefully, fewer peels will help with that, too.