Medieval Fruit Pies – Apple, Pear
Facts and interesting information about Medieval Food and meals,
specifically, Medieval Fruit
specifically, Medieval Fruit
Medieval Fruit
The wealthy nobles of the Middle Ages ate little fresh fruit and unprepared food of this variety and was viewed with some suspicion. Fruit was usually served in pies or was preserved in honey and fresh fruit was traditionally eaten by the poor. Little was known on nutrition and the Medieval diet of the rich Nobles lacked Vitamin C and fiber which led to an assortment of health problems from bad teeth, to skin diseases, scurvy and rickets!
Medieval Fruit availability
The wealthy nobles of the Middle Ages ate little fresh fruit and unprepared food of this variety and was viewed with some suspicion. Fruit was usually served in pies or was preserved in honey and fresh fruit was traditionally eaten by the poor. Little was known on nutrition and the Medieval diet of the rich Nobles lacked Vitamin C and fiber which led to an assortment of health problems from bad teeth, to skin diseases, scurvy and rickets!
Medieval Fruit availability
Western Europe was originally very poor in fruits, and was improved by foreign importations, mostly from Asia by the Romans. The apricot came from Armenia, the pistachio-nuts and plums from Syria, the peach from Persia, the cherry from Cerasus, the lemon from Media, the pomegranate, the quince from Cydon in Crete; the olive, fig, pear, and apple, from Greece. The quince, generally cultivated in Medieval Times, was looked upon as the most useful of fruits. Not only did quince form the basis of the farmers' dried preserves to make a sort of marmalade, but it also served for seasoning meat. Several sorts of cherries were known, but did not prevent the small wild or wood cherry from being appreciated at the tables of the peasants.
Wild and Exotic Medieval Fruit
The Portuguese claimed the honor of having introduced oranges from China. Raspberries were still completely wild and wood strawberries have been introduced into gardens in Medieval times. Apples was the only cultivated fruit, but their are other varieties that grew wild. Some wild fruits like pears, quinces, and peaches were served on a few medieval tables. Wild strawberries, raspberries, and red currants could be found in the woods. It was only Nobility that could afford exotic fruits such as dates. It is about the same date melons begin to appear and were watered them with honeyed or sweetened water.
Wild and Exotic Medieval Fruit
The Portuguese claimed the honor of having introduced oranges from China. Raspberries were still completely wild and wood strawberries have been introduced into gardens in Medieval times. Apples was the only cultivated fruit, but their are other varieties that grew wild. Some wild fruits like pears, quinces, and peaches were served on a few medieval tables. Wild strawberries, raspberries, and red currants could be found in the woods. It was only Nobility that could afford exotic fruits such as dates. It is about the same date melons begin to appear and were watered them with honeyed or sweetened water.
Medieval Fruit
The following fruits were available during the Medieval era, even though many were looked upon with sheer distain, especially by the Upper Classes. Below is a list of some of the fruit available during Medieval times of the Middle Ages:
The following fruits were available during the Medieval era, even though many were looked upon with sheer distain, especially by the Upper Classes. Below is a list of some of the fruit available during Medieval times of the Middle Ages:
§ Apples
§ Oranges
§ Lemons
§ Apricot
§ Quince
§ Peaches
§ Cherries
§ Strawberries
§ Raspberries
§ Red currants
§ Melons
§ Pomegranate
A. Redaction
From The Forme of Cury: XXVII For to make Tartys in Applis.
Tak gode Applys and gode Spycis and Figys and reysons and Perys and wan they are wel ybrayed colourd with Safron wel and do yt in a cofyn and yt forth to bake wel.
Modern Redaction:
Filling:
A. Redaction
From A Propre new booke of Cokery: To make pies of grene apples.
Take your apples and pare them cleane and core theim as ye will a Quince then make your coffyne after this maner take a little faire water and halfe a disshe of butter and a little safron and set all this vpon a chafyngdisshe till it be hote then temper your flower with this vpon a chafyngdissh till it be hote then temper your floure with this said licour and the white of two egges and also make your coffyn and ceason your apples with Sinamon ginger and suger inough. Then put them into your coffyn and laie halfe a disshe of butter aboue them and close your coffyn and so bake them.
Modern Redaction:
Filling:
Mix all of the pie ingredients together, except the butter, and pour into the pie shell. Carefully place the butter on top of the apple mixture. Cover with the lid. Bake at 375º F for one hour.
Burke, Ray. “The Bee, The Reed, The Root: The History of Sugar”, 1997.
<http://www2.gasou.edu/gsufl/sugar/sugar-b.htm>
Flandrin, Jean. “Seasoning, Cooking and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages” from Food, a Culinary History, New York, 1999.
The Forme of Curye, facsimile. Friedman, David and Elizabeth Cook.
<http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/>
“Concerning Trees and Their Fruit”, 1988.
<http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/trees.html>
Gerard, John. Herball or generall historie of plants, 1594.
<http://rainweaver.com/Herbal_Guild/mandrake.html>
Herr-Gelatt, Lis, writing as Dame Aoife Finn. "Raising a Coffin or the Fine Art of Making Period Pies."
<http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/Period-Pies-art.html>
Hieatt, Constance and Butler, Sharon. editors and translators. Curye on Inglysch. England, 1985.
Matterer, James. “To make a Char de Crabb”, 1998.
<http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec77.html>
McDaniel, Amanda “Galen.” University of Virginia; 2003.
<http://hsc.virginia.edu/hs-library/historical/antiqua/galen.htm>
A Propre new booke of Cokery, facsimile. James L. Matterer, trans.
<http://www.godecookery.com/trscript/trscript.html>
Redon, Odile, Francoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen. Trans. Edward Schneider. Chicago, 1998.
Rumpolt, Marxen. Ein New Kochbuch, Germany, 1581. Grasse, M, translator.
<http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/GK_ASappletart.htm>
Scully, D. Eleanor. Early French Cookery. Ann Arbor, 1995.
Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, England. 1995.
Scully, Terence, trans. Cuoco Napoletano: The Neapolitan Recipe Collection. Ann Arbor, 2002.
Washington Apple Education Foundation, “Golden Delicious”
<http://www.bestapples.com/varieties/golden.html>
Various Authors. “Stefan’s Florilegium flour-msg”
<http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/flour-msg.html>
Valoise Armstrong (tr) Der Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin (1553). http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html
Luigi Ballerini (ed), Jeremy Parzen (tr) and Stefania Barzini (2005) The Eminent Maestro Martino of Como: The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book. California Studies in Food and Culture, 14. Edited and with an Introduction by Luigi Ballerini, Translated and Annotated by Jeremy Parzen, and with Fifty Modernized Recipes by Stefania Barzini. http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9423.html
Catherine Francis Frere, ed. (1913) A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye (of the sixteenth century). In A collection of Medieval and Renaissance Cookbooks, 1991, Duke Cariadoc of the Bow.
Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, eds (1985). Curye on Inglysch: English culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century (including the Form of Cury). London: Oxford UP.
Gervase Markham (1683) The English Housewife. Transcribed by Kirrily Robert, http://infotrope.net.sca/texts/english-housewife
Cindy Renfrow, 1991, Take a Thousand Eggs or More: A Collection of 15th Century Recipes, Volume 1, published privately
Terence Scully (1995) The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell.
Comments in making the 14th century apple pie.
In attempting the first try at this recipe it should be noted not to try and reheat to serve hot, as this has a tendency to harden the pastry of the pie. The first attempt was made with, all purpose flour, and the use of butter and this may have in fact when reheated on uneven heat (camp stove) may have been the cause to make the crust hard. The second pie, was not reheated in this method, but allow to warm up to outdoor temperature which was 30 degrees C. and thus the crust was tender and in making the crust tender did take up some moisture from the pie filling.
PIES
Pies; the filling and baking of sweet fruits, nuts, and cheese or savory which are of meat, fish, eggs, cheese as primary ingredients and spices in casings composed of flour, fat, and water is an ancient practice. The basic concept of pies and tart changed little throughout the ages. Cooking methods baked or fried in ancient hearths, portable colonial/pioneer Dutch ovens, modern ovens, flat bread, flour/fat/water crusts, puff paste, milles feuilles, and cultural preference: pita, pizza, quiche, shepherd's, lemon meringue, classic apple, chocolate pudding, alll figure prominently into the complicated history of this particular genre of food.
The first pies were very simple and generally of the savory kind. Flaky pastry fruit-filled turnovers appeared later in the early 19th century. Some pie-type foods are made for individual comsumption of which these portable pies... pasties, turnovers, empanadas, pierogi, calzones...were enjoyed by working classes and sold by street vendors. Pie variations; cobblers, slumps, grunts, etc. are endless!
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the word "pie" as it relates to food to 1303, noting the word was well-known and popular by 1362.
"Pie...a word whose meaning has evolved in the course of many centuries and which varies to some extent according to the country or even to region....The derivation of the word may be from magpie, shortened to pie. The explanation offered in favour or this is that the magpie collects a variety of things, and that it was an essential feature of early pies that they contained a variety of ingredients....Early pies were large; but one can now apply the name to something small, as the small pork pies or mutton pies...Early pies had pastry tops, but modern pies may have a topping of something else...or even be topless. If the basic concept of a pie is taken to mean a mixture of ingredients encased and cooked in pastry, then proto-pies were made in the classical world and pies certainly figured in early Arab cookery."
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] (p. 602-3)
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] (p. 602-3)
A fourteenth century apple pie
A. Redaction
From The Forme of Cury: XXVII For to make Tartys in Applis.
Tak gode Applys and gode Spycis and Figys and reysons and Perys and wan they are wel ybrayed colourd with Safron wel and do yt in a cofyn and yt forth to bake wel.
Modern Redaction:
Filling:
- 8 large Golden Delicious apples, if available Granny Smith apples peeled, cored and sliced
- 4 Bartlet pears peeled, cored and sliced
- ½ cup of raisins
- ½ cup of figs, sliced
- 2 tsp cinnamon,
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp ginger
- ¼ tsp cloves
- a pinch of saffron
Pie Shell (modified slightly from “Raising a Coffin”):
- 2 cups of wheat flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup of butter
- ½ cup of milk
- egg yolks for glazing
Rub a tablespoon of the butter into the flour and salt with your fingertips. Take the remaining butter, and add it to the liquid. Heat the liquid over med. heat until it just breaks a boil, and the butter is melted. Make a well in the flour, dump in the liquid and melted fat, and stir quickly with a wooden spoon to combine. Cover with a cloth to keep it warm, and let the dough rest for 10 minutes or so in a warm place.
Pinch off two thirds of the very warm dough. Reserve the remaining third for the lid, in a bowl with a cloth covering it. The amount that was made was used on and inch base, with sides approx. 2 to 3 inches high. Pat the dough into a circle. With knuckles, thumbs, palms, and any other means possible, mold the dough into a bowl shape or cylinder. Splay out the top edges slightly.
Roll the remaining dough into a circle. Flatten out into a ten inch circle. Cut a one-inch circle in the center. If you have any excess dough, use it to decorate the lid or sides with rosettes, leaves, vines, etc. Score the bottoms of these with a fork, and moisten, then attach to a scored section of the lid. When the pie has been filled, moisten the edges of the base. Put the lid on top. Pinch the edges together. Using a small knife or kitchen shears, cut small, inch deep cuts into the edges, making an even number, all around the edge. Fold every other "notch" down, to make a crenellated edge. Pinch the crenellations to ensure they stay down.
Mix all of the pie filing ingredients together. Pour into the pie shell and cover with the pie lid. Bake at 350º F for one hour. After one hour, glaze the pie shell with the egg yolk for a lovely golden brown color. Return to the oven for another twenty minutes.
Pinch off two thirds of the very warm dough. Reserve the remaining third for the lid, in a bowl with a cloth covering it. The amount that was made was used on and inch base, with sides approx. 2 to 3 inches high. Pat the dough into a circle. With knuckles, thumbs, palms, and any other means possible, mold the dough into a bowl shape or cylinder. Splay out the top edges slightly.
Roll the remaining dough into a circle. Flatten out into a ten inch circle. Cut a one-inch circle in the center. If you have any excess dough, use it to decorate the lid or sides with rosettes, leaves, vines, etc. Score the bottoms of these with a fork, and moisten, then attach to a scored section of the lid. When the pie has been filled, moisten the edges of the base. Put the lid on top. Pinch the edges together. Using a small knife or kitchen shears, cut small, inch deep cuts into the edges, making an even number, all around the edge. Fold every other "notch" down, to make a crenellated edge. Pinch the crenellations to ensure they stay down.
Mix all of the pie filing ingredients together. Pour into the pie shell and cover with the pie lid. Bake at 350º F for one hour. After one hour, glaze the pie shell with the egg yolk for a lovely golden brown color. Return to the oven for another twenty minutes.
A sixteenth century apple pie
A. Redaction
From A Propre new booke of Cokery: To make pies of grene apples.
Take your apples and pare them cleane and core theim as ye will a Quince then make your coffyne after this maner take a little faire water and halfe a disshe of butter and a little safron and set all this vpon a chafyngdisshe till it be hote then temper your flower with this vpon a chafyngdissh till it be hote then temper your floure with this said licour and the white of two egges and also make your coffyn and ceason your apples with Sinamon ginger and suger inough. Then put them into your coffyn and laie halfe a disshe of butter aboue them and close your coffyn and so bake them.
Modern Redaction:
Filling:
- 10 large Golden Delicious, peeled, cored and sliced
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- ½ cup of butter, cut into pieces, room temperature
Pie Crust:
- 2 cups of all-purpose flour – (or other types of flour)
Have made using all purpose flour and buckwheat flour
- pinch of saffron (you may choose to leave out – as this is a coloring agent)
- 1 cup of water
- ½ cup of butter
- 2 egg whites
Mix all of the pie ingredients together, except the butter, and pour into the pie shell. Carefully place the butter on top of the apple mixture. Cover with the lid. Bake at 375º F for one hour.
Bibliography
<http://www2.gasou.edu/gsufl/sugar/sugar-b.htm>
Flandrin, Jean. “Seasoning, Cooking and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages” from Food, a Culinary History, New York, 1999.
The Forme of Curye, facsimile. Friedman, David and Elizabeth Cook.
<http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/>
“Concerning Trees and Their Fruit”, 1988.
<http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/trees.html>
Gerard, John. Herball or generall historie of plants, 1594.
<http://rainweaver.com/Herbal_Guild/mandrake.html>
Herr-Gelatt, Lis, writing as Dame Aoife Finn. "Raising a Coffin or the Fine Art of Making Period Pies."
<http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/Period-Pies-art.html>
Hieatt, Constance and Butler, Sharon. editors and translators. Curye on Inglysch. England, 1985.
Matterer, James. “To make a Char de Crabb”, 1998.
<http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec77.html>
McDaniel, Amanda “Galen.” University of Virginia; 2003.
<http://hsc.virginia.edu/hs-library/historical/antiqua/galen.htm>
A Propre new booke of Cokery, facsimile. James L. Matterer, trans.
<http://www.godecookery.com/trscript/trscript.html>
Redon, Odile, Francoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen. Trans. Edward Schneider. Chicago, 1998.
Rumpolt, Marxen. Ein New Kochbuch, Germany, 1581. Grasse, M, translator.
<http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/GK_ASappletart.htm>
Scully, D. Eleanor. Early French Cookery. Ann Arbor, 1995.
Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, England. 1995.
Scully, Terence, trans. Cuoco Napoletano: The Neapolitan Recipe Collection. Ann Arbor, 2002.
Washington Apple Education Foundation, “Golden Delicious”
<http://www.bestapples.com/varieties/golden.html>
Various Authors. “Stefan’s Florilegium flour-msg”
<http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/flour-msg.html>
Valoise Armstrong (tr) Der Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin (1553). http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html
Luigi Ballerini (ed), Jeremy Parzen (tr) and Stefania Barzini (2005) The Eminent Maestro Martino of Como: The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book. California Studies in Food and Culture, 14. Edited and with an Introduction by Luigi Ballerini, Translated and Annotated by Jeremy Parzen, and with Fifty Modernized Recipes by Stefania Barzini. http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9423.html
Catherine Francis Frere, ed. (1913) A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye (of the sixteenth century). In A collection of Medieval and Renaissance Cookbooks, 1991, Duke Cariadoc of the Bow.
Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, eds (1985). Curye on Inglysch: English culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century (including the Form of Cury). London: Oxford UP.
Gervase Markham (1683) The English Housewife. Transcribed by Kirrily Robert, http://infotrope.net.sca/texts/english-housewife
Cindy Renfrow, 1991, Take a Thousand Eggs or More: A Collection of 15th Century Recipes, Volume 1, published privately
Terence Scully (1995) The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell.
Comments in making the 14th century apple pie.
In the making of this pie, I Christiana have included recipes from the gode cookery for the filling and used the recipe from Propre New Book of Cokery – Pie crust from England 1545. It is also listed in this blog. Account of no oven for the campout, the pie was made in a residencial house kitchen, and transported ready made.
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