Hello!
As you know, I am translating a book about medieval habits and daily life. This time I've found a curious one: "Leche Lombard".
As the author says, it is a popular dish served as a first course in a noble's house by mid fourteenth century: "consisting of pork, eggs, pepper, cloves, currants, dates and sugar all boiled together in a bladder – like haggis – then sliced and served with a rich sauce". 
Unfortunately, “leche” is the common Spanish Word for “milk”, so it’s just impossible to find it’s possible English meaning, the Net cleverly diverting any search to “leche” as the cow stuff.
 
So, do you know what could be the meaning of that word in (perhaps) old English? Even my best bet —https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=leche — derives joyfully me to “lecher”.
 
I am sure you’ll point at a solution, or, most probably, will find it straightaway. Remember I only need the meaning, not the translation (even if that would be welcomed).
 
Thanks a lot, as always.
 
All the best,
 
CM

Depends on the ingredients, I think, which seem to have changed according to taste and time over some centuries having been introduced apparently via clergy and soldiery who had direct or vicarious links with Italy. However older recipes point to a pudding with a loose jelly consistency (hence the bladder to hold it together) and which certainly used cream along with everything else.

Why a Spanish root word and not, say an Italian root, should end up associated with Lombardy in the English name for the dish is anyone's guess. It's not uncommon for English to have combined "foreign" elements within certain expressions without any seeming sensitivity to the diveristy of the "outside world" or logic in when this happens, but it may have been that the earlier Lombard version of the dish that was being emulated in medieval England had also itself imported the Spanish term too, that country perhaps having originated that particular spicy glutinous concoction.

But this is one that I wouldn't even try to translate - whether cream was the true original reason or not for the meal's nominal identity in English, it most certainly wasn't the dominant ingredient or taste that English cooks were aiming for.  I'd simply use the term the English cooks used, with all the glorious misdirection the words inferred regarding the taste of the dish - like peppermint, sweetmeats and toad-in-the-hole.

I'll agree with Nordmann in not attempting to translate it or search for any sort of etymological equivalence. The common theme of leches, at least in later versions is not so much the ingredients but that they are usually sort-of tarts, or a tart-filling (though not necessariy served in a pastry case)  ... often, but not always, with some of the ingredients in slices. So leche may derive from the Old French, lesche, laiche, leske - meaning a thin strip or slice, or as you say it could possibly be from Old French, lait, for milk (and note any 'milk' might be replaced by ground almonds in wine for Lenten versions, or be completely absent). There's really no consensus amongst food historians, at least in all the sources I've looked at. Similarly the Lombard connection, which seems clear enough on face value, doesn't seem to actually trace back to northern Italy and may have just been there to denote somewhere foreign and fancy-sounding, but with no real connection at all.

Hi Meles meles: that's really interesting. The old french link sounds quite plausible, as does the fancy-sounding tendency of cookers/restaurateurs to their creations.

Bear in mind that nearly all references to leche lombard or similar leches - and certainly any actual recipes for them - all come from the upper end of dining society, the nobility, such as the late 14th century Forme of Cury 'cookbook' (actually its just a collection of individual manuscripts) which were written down by the cooks of Richard II. Similarly the 15th century Austin manuscripts seem to have originated in the kitchens of a noble household: none of it is typical peasant fare by any means. So as in a classy restaurant the dishes sometimes have grand, traditional, often highly misleading titles (eg lamprey hay, but with no fish at all in it; or haslet containing no meat; or viande royall, but what exactly) which may have meant something at the time but the significance or in-joke (if indeed there ever was one) has since been lost.

Sure. The recipe for this leche Lombard is in a sub-chapter dedicated to meals and dinning protocols of a noble house. In previous paragraphs the author detailed the meals of the yeomen and common peasants, and of course there are big, and great, differences; potage being one of the most common visitors of a tenant's table (with a poached hare now and then and the eventual nicked trout —fish was so expensive at the time that kings and royals used to send fresh specimens to each other as a present—).

ComicMonster wrote:

... fish was so expensive at the time that kings and royals used to send fresh specimens to each other as a present ...

Freshwater fish in England was a challenge for the nobility - not because it was hard to find per se but because pike, perch and tench predominated (and featured prominently in peasant food). Trout, lamprey, bream, salmon and other fish that the Normans had a taste for and which had been easy enough to breed and catch back in Normandy were incredibly hard to cultivate in English waters where they were up against an indigenous population of "lesser" species (in Norman eyes) that seemingly could not be eradicated. Dedicating rivers and river stretches under very strict management - with penalty of death for any peasant who interfered with the process or, heavens forbid, dared to catch and eat the stuff being promoted there - only met with limited success, namely in southern England. The further north one went the more impossible it was to micro-manage the waterways to the extent required - as much a reflection of a greater variety in water brackishness in moorland areas as an obdurate people in these same climes, though the latter certainly didn't take much to being suddenly deprived of access to good nutritional food sources by these upstart blow-ins, however much cast iron they wanted to walk and ride around in.

The aristocracy got round this problem through investing huge amounts of money in private artificially constructed fish beds, often covering tens of acres of otherwise good arable land in their demesnes - a skill that had been originally developed by pre-Norman monasteries in England but which was taken to a whole new level by the Norman establishment. So much so that the monasteries which proliferated under Norman patronage also acted as sub-contractors managing these enterprises. It was monks also who developed regional waterways into fish-runs (protected and managed streams and rivers connecting the beds), a network of which sprang up across all the river plains of the kingdom.

One upshot of all that is to be found in the court records from pre-Black Death England listing executions for poaching of protected fish. By far the greatest number of these were prosecuted by abbots and bishops, even outside of their ecclesiastic jurisdiction (though a fair few fish-eating Christians ended up hanged by their religious overlords having been tried in those courts too - seemingly without a hint of theological irony!).

I am sure you are right, nordmann; is it possible that poor availability for peasants was more pronounced in the fourteenth-century? The book in question just singularizes that period, and focuses only in England. I guess fish was easier to get, even for (moderately) poor people in the coast.

By the 14th century the inshore waterways of England were probably at their most restrictive levels of access ever endured by the "common person" - at least until state-managed licensing was introduced in the 19th century in the face of alarmingly dwindling stocks. The Black Death seems to have been the turning point for this, as with many things. In its aftermath the absolute tyrannical stranglehold the aristocracy held over all resources - fish as much as labour - just could not be sustained any longer.

Coastal fishing wasn't faring much better - nearshore stocks had long been depleted, even before the Normans arrived, and the levels of investment required to fish further afield were very difficult to obtain. The ports that developed into what are now regarded as England's "traditional" fishing communities invariably had at some point in their foundation a local bigwig or monastery that was interested and far-sighted enough to put up the cash and buy proper vessels. By the 15th century England was already importing saltwater fish to such an extent that one of the petitions we know Richard III attended to when in York just before he met his Waterloo (wrong battle, I know) was a complaint from the fishermen of Grimsby asking the king to please impose punitive tariffs on European fish so that they could make a profit from their own less efficiently managed enterprises.

Some things never change.

Thanks nordmann, I always learn a lot with you and Meles meles, in fact with everyone in this great forum. 
Best regards.

This is just an observation about how names for dishes become adopted, adapted, change and evolve over time .... but I once (mid 1990s) in a small rural bar/restau' in southern Turkey, observed on 'the European menu' what was listed as a 'lorraine of fish' (other types of 'lorraine' were available). When this was duly delivered it was a sort-of quiche - ie a baked savoury egg/flour custardy-like tart, with yummy bits - indeed perhaps rather like a medieval 'leche lombard' - but made with locally caught fish, shellfish, vegetables and spices, all cooked in a local style.

It would appear that the restaurant's tourist-friendly name for what was essentially a local dish, had been translated to resemble the common 1970s cliché staple of the middle-class English dinner party, the (in)famous 'quiche lorraine'. Thus I suspect the restaurant was just simply aiming, very cannily, at their core clientele: retired affluent middle-class English (and German, Dutch, Belgian French etc,) of a certain age. However through a language misunderstanding, the key descriptive bit, the quiche, had got lost along the way, and so while it may have sold very well to tourists, no inhabitant of Lorraine would recognise it as anything akin to their own region's signature dish.

This is much in the same way that a haché of minced beefsteak, when served raw with pickles etc - ie what is generally called a 'steak tartare' in the US - is often known in most of Belgium and France as a 'filet americain', despite it's traditional (French/Belgian) presentation - that's with a raw egg on top, finely chopped raw onions, sliced cornichons and radishes, and served with Belgian-style frites - being largely unknown and even anathema (raw meat and raw egg, ugh!) in most in the continental USA.