It’s been a few months since I last posted on ‘Dish of the Day’ and the original thread was getting somewhat long and cumbersome. So after that brief repose to let the first course settle I’m now picking the thread up again. As before it’s a culinary attempt to mark the passing of various historical dates, especially if they have a foody connection however tenuous, with a suitable dish or menu, often with some history of food and cooking thrown into the mixture as well.

Dish of the Day

As before ideas, suggestions, comments, and corrections are very welcome.

Bon appétit!

1 June 1533 – the coronation of Anne Boleyn

With Henry and Anne’s marriage having been declared legitimate just the day before, one might have thought her coronation would have been a rather hastily planned affair. Far from it. Henry spent an exorbitant amount of money on the coronation of his second wife and the planning was meticulate. His intent was to show all of Christendom that Anne Boleyn, not Catherine of Aragon, was his rightful queen, and that the child she carried (she was about six months pregnant) was his legitimate heir to the throne. The pomp and pageantry started on the 29th May with a vast river pageant, and continued on the 30th with a procession through the city. On the 1st June she was crowned in Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Cranmer followed by a grand coronation banquet in Westminster Hall.

This is Cranmer’s own account, in a letter written to Mr Hawkyns, the English Ambassador to the court of the Emperor Charles V, 27 June, 1533 [Harl. MSS. 6148. fol. 23].

"Now then on the Sunday was the Coronation, which also was of such a manner. In the morning there assembled with me at Westminster Church the Bishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Winchester, the Bishop of Lincoln, the Bishop of Bath, and the Bishop of St. Asaph, the Abbot of Westminster with ten or eleven more Abbots, which all revestred ourselves in our pontificalibus, and, so furnished, with our Crosses and Croziers, proceeded out of the Abbey in a procession into Westminster Hall, where we received the Queen apparelled in a robe of purple velvet, and all the ladies and gentlewomen in robes and gowns of scarlet according to the manner used beforetime in such business; and so her Grace sustained of each side with two bishops, the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Winchester, came forth in procession unto the Church of Westminster, she in her hair, my Lord of Suffolk bearing before her the Crown, and two other Lords bearing also before her a sceptre and a white rod, and so entered up into the High Altar, where divers ceremonies used about her, I did set the Crown on her head, and then was sung Te Deum. And after that was sung a solemn Mass, all which while her Grace sat crowned upon a scaffold which was made between the High Altar and Choir in Westminster Church; which Mass and ceremonies done and finished, all the assembly of noblemen brought her into Westminster HaIl again, where was kept a great solemn feast all that day; the good order thereof were too long to write at this time to you. … "

(… Cranmer then cuts to the real gist of the matter by impressing on the ambassador that he must get the message across to the Emperor that after the first clandestine marriage in December 1532 and the second, official, but no less private marriage on 25th Jan 1533, their marital state is entirely legal and above board despite only having been declared as such on the 28th May by Cranmer himself).

Cranmer’s letter is amongst the collection of  letters and papers, foreign and domestic during the reign of Henry VIII (vol 6 1533) that are available on line, and these contain a vast amount of information relating to the event. Some of these entries are just as simple summaries of the relevant document, but many others are transcribed and can be read on-line in full.  I’ve even found this sketched seating plan [Harl. MSS 41, fol. 12r]:

“A design and seating plan for Anne Boleyn's Coronation Banquet.”

 

Anne is seated alone at the centre of the top table under a canopy of state, only poor old Cranmer, still clutching his crozier, was allowed to sit at the far end of the same table: nothing and nobody was to blur the focus of the occasion. Henry VIII is decorously placed in an observation gallery above where he watched with the French and Venetian ambassadors. Notice that Anne is clearly depicted with her hair down which is how all Queens went to their coronation, and I think this is what Cranmer meant in his above letter by "she in her hair".

The duke of Suffolk as High Steward had responsibility for the banquet, a function that he discharged in a doublet and jacket dripping with pearls and mounted on a horse. Lord William Howard in crimson velvet was also on horseback, and he was deputizing for his brother, the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshall of England, who had been sent on an embassy to France, and he was in overall charge of the whole coronation.

From Harl. MSS 41, f. 2. B. M:
"Beneath the inclosure were four great tables, extending the length of the hall. At the first were seated those of the realm who have charge of the doors ; below them, at the same table, were many gentlemen ; at the second table, the archbishops, bishops, the Chancellor, and many lords and knights. The two other tables were at the other side of the hall : " celle du hault bout" was the mayor of London, accompanied by the sheriffs ; at the other were duchesses, countesses, and ladies. The duke of Suffolk was gorgeously arrayed with many stones and pearls, and rode up and down the hall and around the tables, upon a courser caparisoned in crimson velvet ; as also did my lord William, who presided over the serving, and kept order : they were always bareheaded, as you know is the custom of this country."

At the top table, standing on Anne’s left was her half-aunt, Anne Howard, Dowager Countess of Oxford, and on her right, Elizabeth Browne, Countess of Worcester. Their role was to stand beside the Queen's chair, and  "which divers times in the dinner time did hold a fine cloth before the Queen's face when she list to spit or do otherwise at her pleasure". There were also, "two gentlewomen sat at her feet, under the table, to do her bidding" ... they were probably in charge of the royal pisspot. To ease her during the lengthy proceedings, for she was six months pregnant, a comfortable inner chair had been purpose-made to fit inside the marble one.

From Harl. MSS 21,116, f. 48. B. M:
The appointment what number of officers and servitors that shall attend upon the Queen's grace, the Bishop and the ladies sitting at the Queen's board in the Great Hall at Westminster, the day of the coronation, as followeth :

Carvers : The earl of Essex  for the Queen ; Sir Edm. (Edward) Seymour for the Archbishop.
Cupbearers : Lord Derby for the Queen ; Sir John Dudley for the Archbishop.
Sewers : The earl of Sussex for the Queen ; Sir Thos. Arundell for the Archbishop.
Panters : Viscount Lisle, chief panter ; John Apricharde ; John Gislym.
[Butlers] : Earl of Arundell, chief butler ; Ric. Hill, Edm. Harvye. [Ewers] : Sir Henry [Thomas] Wyat, Jeffrey Villers, Henry Atkinson. Chief almoners for the Queen : Lord Bray, Sir Wm. Gascoyne .....

[and on through about three hundred names down to],

..... Officers appointed for serving the waste [ie the leftovers given to the poor]. Panter : Wm. Wilkinson. Clerk : Jas. Harington. Cook :John Hautcliffe. Larderer : John Dauson. Cooks for the "Worchouses" [presumably cooks to arrange and prepare the leftovers for delivery to local almshouses];  John Birket, Ric. Parker, John Stevens, John Johnson, Steven God, Wm. Whitfeild.

The first course of twenty-eight dishes was ceremoniously carried in by eighteen newly-created Knights of the Bath, escorted by Suffolk and Howard, both on horseback, and to the accompaniment of “trumpets and hautbois”.

Only after the Queen had been served with her first two dishes, was the Archbishop served,  and then all of the other guests at the four long tables in front, all seated in strict order of rank starting from the right hand side of the Queen. The second and third courses consisted of a further twenty-four and thirty dishes respectively for Anne but there were fewer for the guests. The lavishness and magnificence of the food were provided from specially enlarged kitchens, and set off by a profusion of 'subtleties', with the the "wax ships" (model ships probably constructed in sugar and gum paste) singled out for particular praise. The whole banquet lasted several hours.

When Anne had finished the whole company stood while she ceremoniously washed her hands. She then moved to the centre of the hall where she was served by the Lord Mayor with a 'void' [a ceremonial closing 'digestive'] of expensive spiced confections, wafers, and hippocras in an ornate gold cup. Having drunk the hippocras she then presented the cup to the Lord Mayor and thanked him and his Aldermen for their efforts. She then left the Hall, no doubt exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure, and the company departed, the Lord Mayor clutching his golden cup.

But despite all the detail in state papers - who was there, who did what, who wore what, who provided it and how much did it all cost - there is no record of what was eaten. However I daresay it was the usual coronation fare of boar’s head, whole peacock, swan, sturgeon, pike, game birds, ornate pies, pastries, tarts and custards,  see Dish of the Day for 14 January 1486.

The only thing mentioned as passing Anne’s lips is the final cup of hippocras.

Hippocras was wine spiced with a variety of spices: typically containing cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, grains of paradise and long pepper. The various ingredients of the mix, or gyle as it was known, were bruised in a mortar and then left to steep in the wine, usually for a day and a night. Sometimes they were enclosed in a small bag weighted with a pebble to help it sink, otherwise the liquid had to be strained to filter out all the spicy bits. Some lazy vintners made their hippocrs by adding a few drops of the essential oils of the appropriate spices to the wine. Another way was to add to the wine a few drops of a preparation known as 'essence of hippocras'. This was made by extracting the flavour from the spices by means of distilled wine or aqua-vitae. Only a little of this strong extract was needed to transform an indifferent wine into a 'gallant hipocras'. The wines most commonly used were claret for red hippocras and white Spanish or Portuguese wines for white. I’m sure Anne got the very best hippocras possible.

At this time most oriental spices were still very expensive, so only the aristocracy and nobility were able to afford to drink hippocras. Taken at the end a meal with wafers and comfits as a digestive, it was most usually brought to table cold. Throughout Europe it was an important item in the court table ritual known as the void or issue de table, as as anne’s banquet. Later, when spices were more readily available, it became a popular drink at wedding and christening feasts but it was rarely ever a day-to-day drink.

So here's a Tudor English recipe for making hippocras, from 'The Booke of Kervinge and Sewing' (London, 1508):

"Take ginger, pepper, graines, canell, sinamon, sugar and tornsole [a plant related to, but distinct from tournesol, the common sunflower, used for its purple-red dye] than looke ye have five or sixe bags for your ipocras to run in, and a pearch that your renners may ren on, than must ye have sixe peuter basins to stand under your bags, than look your spice be ready, and your ginger well pared or if it be beaten to pouder, than looke your stalkes of sinamon be well coloured and sweete: canell is not so gentle in operation, sinamon, is hotte and dry, graines of paradice be hot and moist, ginger, grains, long pepper ben hot and moist, sinamon, canell and redde wine colouring.

Now knowe yee the proportions of your ipocras, than beate your pouders, eache by them selfe, and put them in bladders and hange your bagges sure that no bagge tough other, but let each basinge touch other, let the first basin be of a gallon, and each of the other a pottell, than put in your basin a gallon of red Wine, put these to your pouders, and stire them well, than put them into the firste bage, and let it ren, than put them in the second bagge, than take a peece in your hand and assay if it be stronge of Ginger, and alay it with sinamon, and if it be strong of sinamon, alay it with sugar, and look ye let it ren through sixe renners, and your ipocras into a close Vessel and keep the receit, for it will serve for sewers, than serve your souvraign with wafers and ipocras."

On the occasion of a Queen Consort's coronation one would normally of course proclaim, "long live the Queen!" ... but as we all know Anne only lasted three years before she got the chop.

Since this was supposed to be the 50th of Sgt Pepper.

Quote :

This recipe for baked stuffed red peppers is a classic Woman's Weekly recipe from 1958. Stuff the peppers with bacon, egg and breadrumbs and sprinkle with plenty of cheese. These roasted peppers serves 6 people and will take around 1hr and 15 mins to prepare and cook. These delicious peppers work out at only 240 calories per serving - ideal if you're counting calories or looking for a healthy dinner recipe the whole family can enjoy. The delicious breakfast combo of the bacon and eggs means you can enjoy these peppers anytime of day. How about a hearty brunch, healthy lunch or light dinner.
Ingredients
•6 small-medium red peppers
For the filling:
•200g (7oz) streaky bacon, chopped
•1 onion, peeled and chopped
•Knob of butter
•30g (1oz) breadcrumbs
•2 hard-boiled eggs, shelled and chopped
•45g (1½oz) finely grated Cheddar cheese
•Salt and freshly ground black pepper
.Method
1 To make the filling: Put the bacon, onion and butter in a frying pan and cook gently for about 10 mins, until onion is tender. Take off heat and stir in breadcrumbs, chopped egg, half the cheese and some seasoning.
2 Set the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.

3 Cut tops off peppers and pull out the cores and seeds. Rinse them well. Slice a little off bottom of peppers, if necessary, so that they stand up straight.
4 Spoon the filling into the peppers and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese. Stand them in a roasting tin, cover loosely with foil and bake for 45 mins. Remove the foil and cook for another 10 mins, to brown the tops. Serve hot with peas, or cold with salad.

7 June 1832 – The Parliamentary Reform Act (1832) became law.

Prior to this Act, parliamentary constituences were mostly based on ancient counties and boroughs. But by the beginning of the 19th century, while some ancient boroughs had very few, if any, voters and thus were basically in the control of the aristocratic landlord (so-called 'rotten boroughs'), others, such as the ‘village’ of Manchester had expanded over previous decades to have populations of many thousands yet were still represented by only a single MP. Moreover only men who owned considerable property could actually vote, and thus the franchise only extended to about 2% of the population..

There had been calls for reform long before 1832, but without success. The Act that finally succeeded was proposed by the Whigs, led by Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey. It met with significant opposition from the Pittite factions in Parliament, who had long governed the country; and opposition was especially pronounced in the House of Lords, notably from the Duke of Wellington. Nevertheless, the bill was eventually passed,

London’s Reform Club was founded in 1836 by Edward Ellice, MP for Coventry and Whig Whip, whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of the 1832 Bill. Accordingly the Reform Club was initially restricted to those who pledged support for the Reform Act, and the many MPs and Whig peers among the early members developed the club as the political headquarters of the Liberal Party. The Reform Club is famous for its restaurant, the menu of which still regularly featuring long-established favourites such as 'Lamb cutlets à la reform', a dish created in the mid 19th century by Alexis Soyer who was then the Reform Club's chef. But we’ve had that particular recipe here before (24 May 2016), so for something different and to reflect the battle to get the Reform Bill through Parliament, how about some ‘Whigs’ and ‘Torys’?

Wiggs or whigs were leavened buns that were lighter and richer than household bread, and they were always flavoured with carraway seeds, or caraway comfits. As a result they were not everyday fare but usually eaten only on special occasions. Elizabeth David was of the opinion that the name wigg was derived from an Old Norse word meaning wedge: because she could find no clues in old recipes about how wiggs should be shaped, she assumed that they would have been made up into a round loaf and then cut across to form the wedges. In reality, they were probably made up into various shapes, though Randle Holme in 'The Anatomy of Armoury' (1688) specifically says that wiggs were elliptical in shape.
 
From 'The Country Housewife's Family Companion' by William Ellis (London, 1750):

Whiggs -Take half a Peck of Flower, and mix it with an Egg-shell full of Carraway Seeds, and half a Pound of Sugar; then melt twelve Ounces of Butter in a Pint of warm Milk, and with three Parts of a Pint of Ale Yeast knead all together into a Paste, and after it has lain to ferment and swell, make it into Wigs and bake them. - Or, Take three Quarters of a Pound of Butter, and mix it with a Pottle of fine Flower, and half a Pound of Sugar, Nutmeg, Mace, and grated Ginger, four beaten Eggs and half a Pint of Ale Yeast, with a little Canary, if you please: These mix with a little warm Milk, and knead the whole into a light Dough, to stand about half an Hour before a Fire to ferment and swell; then just before they go into the Oven, wash the Wigs over with beaten Yolks of Eggs; if the Oven is quick in Fire, they will be baked in half an Hour on Tin Plates.

And for Tories ... this is from '365 Orange Recipes: an orange recipe for every day in the year' (Philadelphia, 1909):

Orange Torys - Grate all of 1 thin-skinned orange, rejecting the seeds; seed and chop 1 cupful of raisins, add ½  cupful of sugar, 1 beaten egg and 1 cupful of cracker crumbs. Roll puff-paste very thin, spread with the above mixture, cover with paste, cut in strips and bake in a quick oven.

Alternatively, if one is of the 'plague on both your houses' viewpoint, and seeing that tomorrow (8 June 2017) there is a General Election, there's always this recipe from 'Art of Cookery' (1774) by Hannah Glasse:

To Make a Westminster Fool.
Cut a penny loaf into thick slice, moisten them with sack, and lay them in the bottom of a dish; then take a quart of cream, six eggs beaten up, two spoonfuls of rose-water, some grated nutmeg, and a blade of mace, with sugar enough to sweeten it; put all these into a sauce-pan, st it over a slow fire, and keep it stirring all the time to prevent a curdling; when it begins to be thick, pour it into the dish over the bread. Let it stand till cold.

.... and to drink I suggest a cup of Earl Grey tea, named of course after the PM in 1832, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, who pushed the reform bill through parliament.

Yesterday, but today or any day for the foreseeable future, a suitable dish to serve in 10 Downing St. would be humble pie but I suspect it would stick in the Maybot's gullet. Now 'humble pie' seems to have nothing to do with 'umble pie' unless it's a 19th c play on words since 'humble' is from the Old French for 'lowly' or 'insignificant' whereas 'umbles' are the innards of an animal but something like a particularly unappetising version of haggis in pastry seems like an appropriate repast for someone who has created such mayhem (pun intended).

Should her kitchen staff feel so inclined, here's a recipe from the Liber cure cocorum written in Lancashire around 1430.

Nombuls.
Take tho hert and tho mydruv and the kydnere,
And hew hom smalle, as I the lere;
Presse oute the blode, wasshe hom thou schalle,
Sethe hom in water and in gode ale;
Coloure hit with brende bred or with blode;
Fors hit with peper and canel gode,
Sett hit to tho fyre, as I the telle in tale;
Kele hit with a litelle ale,
And set hit downe to serve in sale.

This version from Original Receipt in 'The Country Housewife and Lady's Director' by Prof. R Bradley, 1728 appears to very much like a mince pie of the original Christmas type and rather tasty.

To make Umble Pye. From Mr. Thomas Fletcher of Norwich.
Take the Umbles of a Deer and boil them tenderly, and when they are cold, chop them as small as Meat for minc'd Pyes, and shred to them as much Beef-Suet, six large Apples, half a Pound of Sugar, a Pound of Currans, a little Salt, and as much Cloves, Nutmeg and Pepper powder'd as you see convenient; then mix them well together, and when they are put into the Paste, pour in half a Pint of Sack, the Juice of two Lemons and an Orange: and when this is done, close the Pye, and when it is baked, serve it hot to the Table.

'Humble pie' seems to have taken off as a dish in its own right in various places around the world though and now recipes can be found using both sweet and savoury fillings. A restaurant in Melbourne serves an upmarket version which is An artfully arranged collection of chicken liver parfait, black pudding (blood sausage), sautéed calves sweetbreads, spinach with caramelised kaiserfleisch and veal jus.

'Humble' it is not.

As you say Ferval, the umbles were not necessaily to be thought of as just the lowly, unappetising bits 'left over'. Indeed, as the finest, the choice, the rarest, the tastiest, and most perishable parts of an animal ... they were were usually offered first to the principal guest.

The whole point about offal is that it doesn't keep as well as regular muscle meat, and so it needs to be eaten first while it is still very fresh. I suspect that as it deteriorates rapidly, butchers often sold it relatively cheaply to get rid of it quickly, although when it wasn't so fresh it could still be well-spiced and made into a pie, sausages, or potted meat ... and presumably that is how offal has come to be considered as lowly food. But again as Prof Bradley's recipe indicates, umble pie could still contain quite expensive ingredients, so it certainly wasn't food just for the poor.

Pepys in his diary for 11 November 1667 recorded, "This day I had a whole doe sent me by Mr. Hozier, which is a fine present, and I had the umbles of it for dinner." [ie the rest would keep but the umbles needed to be eaten straight away]. While on 8 July 1663 he wrote, "Going in I stepped to Sir W. Batten, and there staid and talked with him (my Lady being in the country), and sent for some lobsters, and Mrs. Turner came in [she was his neighbour: her husband, like Pepys, was a civil servant working in the Navy Office], and did bring us an umble pie hot out of her oven, extraordinary good, and afterwards some spirits of her making, in which she has great judgment, very good, and so home, merry with this night’s refreshment." [so he didn't consider umble pie as being unworthy to appear alongside lobster on the supper table even when he had guests].

That said however, Pepys, always the gourmand, did sometimes consider umbles to be rather disappointing fare. On 13 September 1665 he wrote, "I took boat, and in my Lord’s coach to Sir W. Hickes’s, whither by and by my Lady Batten and Sir William comes. It is a good seat, with a fair grove of trees by it, and the remains of a good garden; but so let to run to ruine, both house and every thing in and about it, so ill furnished and miserably looked after, I never did see in all my life. .... He did give us the meanest dinner (of beef, shoulder and umbles  of venison which he takes away from the keeper of the Forest, and a few pigeons, and all in the meanest manner) that ever I did see, to the basest degree."

I can't find the reference but I'm fairly sure there is a record of an alfresco banquent held for Henry VIII and Catherine Howard following a deer hunt. The dead stag was brought before the king and queen, where it was ceremoniously disembowelled and the bloody heart and liver ritually presented to Catherine. I'm not sure whether it was then cooked and eaten but such ritual actions are nevertheless very reminiscent of a sacraficial offering. For the ancient Greeks and Romans the liver was the usual offfering to the gods, as well as being used in divination and to verify that the sacraficed animal was pure and unblemished ... and old style butchers shops even today often display small animals, such as rabbit, hare, kid or suckling pig, whole and unbutchered with the liver, heart and kidneys still attached and displayed to show just how fresh the meat is. And of course foie de veau, calves' liver, is nowadays typically a very expensive dish often only to be found in the finest restaurants ... and usually cooked very rare so it has to be supremely fresh.

15 June 1215 – King John put his seal to Magna Carta. 

Drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebellious barons, the ‘Great Charter’ promised the protection of church rights; protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown; and all to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Although rescinded by John just a few years later, after his death the charter was re-established as part of English law, and was then typically re-affirmed by each monarch in turn ... although as time went by and Parliament passed new laws, it lost much of its practical significance. In any case the original charter was really only concerned with the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, rather than the rights of the majority of the population at the time: the villeins who were bound for life to their feudal lord. Nevertheless the charter remained an iconic document even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th century and Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often being cited by politicians and campaigners.

Only three clauses of Magna Carta still remain on statute in England and Wales: those concerning the freedom of the English Church and the "ancient liberties" of the City of London (clause 13 in the 1215 charter), and the clause giving all freemen a right to due legal process (clause 39 in the 1215 charter), “No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.”

But amongst all the clauses protecting the rights of the church, the barons, and the freemen, as well as those curtailing the power of the king, there are - fortuitously for this thread - a couple of rather specific clauses that, in a rather oblique way, were concerned primarily with food.

Clause 33 – “All fish-weirs are in future to be entirely removed from the Thames and the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea-coast.”

This clause is unusual in that it demanded action to remedy an abuse apparently unconnected with the actions of the king or his agents, but rather seems to have been intended primarily to benefit the City of London, although it was extended to cover the whole of England. In the form complained of, these fish-weirs were substantial V-shaped structures of wood or sometimes stone set in riverbeds to catch fish by guiding them into central baskets or nets. They proliferated in the Thames where they helped to provide a ready food supply for London’s growing population. Like the entire population of the country, Londoners were supposed to eat fish instead of meat throughout the whole of Lent and on the numerous religious fast-days throughout the year. But by the 13th century the fish-weirs constituted serious obstructions to river craft both upstream and downstream of the city and were affecting the city's trade.


A fish weir with basket traps adjacent to a mill (from the Luttrel Psalter).

By ordering the removal of these fish-weirs Magna Carta effectively stopped most fishing activities along the river by individuals or small family enterprises, in favour of commerce conducted by merchants, guilds and other big businesses. The people of London lost their ready access to a major food source in order that the commercial movement by barge or ship, of wine, wool, grain and other goods, would be unrestricted. This of course forced a shift away from local river fisheries to larger sea-fishing businesses, and in turn to the industrial-scale salting and drying of sea fish on the coast for transportation inland. As a consequence poorer people throughout the country had to increasingly rely on stockfish and pickled herring, while fresh river fish, such as pike, salmon, bream, eels, lampreys etc would become increasingly obtainable only by the better off, who could either afford to buy from the few remaining inland fisheries, or who had private access to fishponds or waterways on their own land.

Here are some freshwater fishy recipes from ‘Forme of Cury’ (circa 1380), for tench, pike and eels:

Tenches in cyuee – Take tenches and smyte hem to pecys ; fry hem. Drawe a lyour of raysouns coraunce wiþ wyne and water; do þerto hool raisouns & powdour of ginger, of clowes, of canel, of peper; do the tenches þerto & seeþ hem with sugur cypre & salt, & messe forth.
Pykes in brasey – Take pykes and vndo hem on þe wombs and waisshe hem clene, and lay hem on a roost irne, þenne take gode wyne and powdour ginger & sugur, good wone, & salt, and boile it in an erthen panne; & messe forth þe pyke & lay the sewe  onoward.
Eles in brewet – Take  crustes of brede and wyne and make a lyour; do þerto oynouns ymynced, powdiur ginger & canel, & a litel water and wyne. Loke þat it be stepid. Do þerto salt; kerue þin eelis & seeþ hem wel and serue hem forth.

Another clause in Magna Carta (clause 23 in the 1215 document) states – “Neither township nor man is to be distrained to make bridges over rivers, except those who should of old and rightfully do so.”

This was not about maintaining the crossings of public roads over rivers, but rather it was about an abuse of royal rights whereby communities along rivers might be compelled to provide and maintain bridges and other crossings for the sole use of the king when he was hunting.


King John hunting a stag as depicted in a 14th century chronicle.

As well as hunting with dogs, John, like all the Angevin kings, was also a keen falconer, but unlike Henry II and Richard I he spent years at a time in England, travelling widely and always taking his birds with him. He appointed officials to look after rivers where he went hawking for river fowl, as his enjoyment of the sport depended on his being able to get exclusive access to river banks and to cross quickly from one bank to another. Although some communities, particularly those within Royal Forests, lay under a long-standing obligation to provide such bridges and crossings, it appears to have been widely extended during the twelfth century. During John’s reign the penalty for failing to provide a bridge had become fixed at five marks (£3. 6s. 8d.), a not inconsiderable sum, and the fine was usually imposed on the spot.  Both the practice and the large and arbitrary penalties resulting from it were clearly greatly resented as injurious not only to villagers but also to their lords, who risked being punished if their tenants did not supply the bridges demanded from them. Meanwhile, in order to protect their sport, both Henry II and King John forbade anyone else from hunting along all rivers where game abounded (it was termed putting the river ‘in defence’), for instance it is recorded that in 1213 the King had ordered the arrest of several fowlers found taking birds ‘within five leagues of our rivers' in Dorset. Clause 23 did not deny that the king could legitimately require bridges to be built at certain places, but aimed to curtail what seems to have become a limitless extension of this right. Furthermore there’s clause 47, which besides promising the deforestation of all land newly afforested, that is land that he’d commandeered for his personal hunting use, specified that the King was obliged to promise similar release for “all riverbanks that we have put in defence in our time”.


A 13th century falconer.

Interestingly, in the midst of the King's many political worries around the time he was being coerced into accepting Magna Carta, he was still fussing over seemingly trivial matters, such as his much-loved falcons. On Monday 16 March 1215 (just 13 weeks prior to Magna Carta) a letter was sent to John fitz Hugh in his capacity as constable of Windsor Castle. The instructions, with their reference to the gyrfalcon ”than which we have no better” almost certainly came direct from the King himself:

"Rex Ioh(ann)i fil(io) Hug(onis) etc. Mittimus ad vos per W(illelmum) de Merc' et R(adulphum) de Erleham tres girfalcon(es) et girfalc(onem) Gibbun(i), quo meliorem non hab(emus), et unum falconem gentilem, mandantes quod eos recipiatis et in mutis poni faciatis et ad opus eorum pingues capras queri faciatis et aliquando bonas gallinas et singulis septim(anis) eis habere faciatis semel carnem leporum, et ad mutas custodiend(as) queratis bonos mastiuos. Custum autem quod posuitis in custod(em) falconum illorum et expensis Spark(elini) hominis W(illelmi) de Merc' qui eos custodiet cum i. homine et i. equo comp(utetu)r vob(is) ad sc(ac)c(ariu)m. T(este) me ipso ad Getindton', xxi. die Marc(ii) anno r(egni) n(ostri) xovio."

"The King to John fitz Hugh. We are sending you, via W(illiam) de Merk and R(alph) or Earlham, three gyrfalcons, and Gibbun's gyrfalcon [presumably one of the hawks kept by a falconer named Gibbun] than which we have no better, and a 'gentle' falcon, ordering that you receive them and place them in the mews, and seek out fat goats for them, and from time to time good chickens, and each week ensure that they are fed on the meat of hares, and find good mastiffs to guard the mews. The cost that you incur in keeping these falcons, and the expenses of Spark(elin) the man of W(illiam) de Merk, their keeper, with a man and a horse, will be accounted to you at the Exchequer. Witnessed by the King himself at Geddington, 21 March in the 16th year of our reign" (1215). [Charter Roll 16 John, m.6 C, TNA C 54/9 m.6.]

Besides being instructed to receive four falcons, one of them described as the best that the King possessed, John fitz Hugh was given detailed commands on the diet to be fed to these birds and to ensure the falcons' safety in their mews by obtaining the best guard dogs. This letter, along with several others, rather gives the impression that King John was inclined to micromanagement, in particular of those matters that lay closest to his heart: his jewels, his prisoners, his hostages, his hawks and his hounds.

Gyrfalcons, mostly obtained from Norway, were prized in particular for use against cranes, herons and other waterfowl. The King's insistence that his own gyrfalcons be fed on hare meat at least once a week accords with accepted custom whereby diet was intended to discourage fat, and training for falcons intended to fly against cranes and herons was undertaken with flight first against lures and then against live hares. Like the hare, the heron makes sudden twists and turns that the falcon had to learn to predict. Cranes, by contrast, escape through long straight flights. Of King John's love of crane hunting there is no doubt. In 1212, for example, the King fed fifty paupers in penance for each of the seven cranes that he had sinfully hunted on a Holy Innocents' Day (28 December).



How to prepare a whole heron or crane (from Harleian MS. 4016 (circa 1440):

Take a heron; lete him blode as a crane, And serue him in al poyntes as a crane, in scalding, drawing and kuttyng the bone of the nekke a-wey, And lete the skyn be on, & c; roste him and sause him as þe Crane; breke awey the bone fro the kne to the fote, And lete the skyn be on.
Crane yrosted – his sauce is to be mynced with pouder of ginger, vynegre, & Mustard.

Alternatively if you’re having trouble getting a whole crane or heron ... then here's a cake recipe “adapted from an old English recipe” which appeared in the 1988 edition of the 'Lincoln Cathedral Cookbook':

Magna Carta Cake.
8 oz (225 gm) stale white bread without crusts.
½ pt (250 ml) milk
2 tablespoons (2 x 15ml) rum
4 oz (125 gm) dried fruit
2 oz (50 gm) chopped candied peel
3 oz (75 gm) mixed chopped pecans, macadamias, almonds
Grated rind of 1 large orange and 1 large lemon
2 oz (50 gm) shredded suet
2 oz (50 gm) soft brown sugar
1 level teaspoon (1 x 5ml) mixed spice
1 level teaspoon (1 x 5ml) cinnamon
1 level teaspoon (1 x 5ml) nutmeg
1 egg

Butter a 9” x 5” (23 cm x 13 cm) tin or ovenproof dish.
Break the bread into small pieces and put into a mixing bowl containing the milk and rum, and leave to soak for an hour. Beat out lumps with a fork.
Add fruit, peel, nuts, lemon and orange rinds, suet, sugar and spice and mix well.
Beat egg and stir into the mixture to give a soft dropping consistency.
Turn into buttered dish and bake in pre-set oven (350°F, 180°C, Gas Mark 4) for 1½ - 2 hours till crunchy on top and set underneath.

21 June 1791 - 'The Flight to Varennes' – Louis XVI of France, Marie-Antoinette, and their immediate family attempted unsuccessfully to escape from Paris.

After the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 the royal family had resolutely stayed well away from Paris at the Palace of Versailles. However in October, following an assault on Versailles, the revolutionary National Assembly ordered their evacuation to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, saying it was for their safety. But watched over by the National Guard and confined to the palace they increasingly felt themselves prisoners. Louis however still believed that most people in the countryside were loyal to him, and he had hopes that if they could get to the royalist forces under General Bouille that were then gathered at Montmédy near the frontier with the Austrian Netherlands, he could initiate a counter-revolution.



The royal party’s escape began in darkness around midnight on the 20th June to an ingenious plan organised mainly by Axel Fersen, a Swedish aristocrat, military officer and diplomat, who was a devoted admirer (and possible lover) of Marie-Antoinette. On Fersen's suggestion a royalist officer, the Chevalier de Coigny, had for some weeks been making frequent visits to the palace, always wearing the same plain coat and hat. When the time came, the plan was that Louis would wear an identical coat so that the guards would take him for the visiting chevalier. The royal children were all to be dressed as girls and the Dauphin’s governess, the Marquise de Tourzel, was to pretend to be a Russian aristocrat in charge of the whole group, while the role of the children's governess was to be played by Marie-Antoinette dressed in plain black. The King himself would pretend to be the Russian baroness’s valet.

Fersen’s scheme initially proceeded as planned on the evening of June 20th, however it was soon beset by a number of problems and delays. The king’s escape was delayed by a visit from the Marquis de Lafayette and Jean-Sylvain Bailly, who kept him talking longer than expected. Marie-Antoinette slipped out of the Tuileries as planned, but then spent some time wandering lost in the unfamiliar streets outside before eventually locating her waiting carriage. The king’s entourage, due to congestion in the streets, was forced to take a longer route out of Paris than originally planned and it was further delayed near the city gates by a wedding party. All these delays put them at least 90 minutes behind schedule once they'd all finally met up outside the city walls.

Fersen had wanted the party to use light coaches to cover the 200 miles to Montmédy as speedily as possible, with the king and queen travelling separately, but Marie-Antoinette insisted they must all be together, so Fersen met them with a large heavy coach drawn by six horses that could accommodate them all. Louis would not let Fersen travel all the way with them as he did not want to escape ignominiously conducted by a foreign soldier, so Fersen presently dropped out and the Royal family proceeded with just a driver, changing horses at points along the way. Even so, the heavy carriage could only go at little more than a fast walking pace and they were soon hours behind schedule and too late to join up with the loyal military escorts that Fersen had arranged to accompany them along the route.

Back in Paris, the King’s escape was discovered around dawn on the 21st by which time the King’s coach was probably in the vicinity of Châlons. A contingent of National Guard was immediately sent in pursuit, and fast couriers despatched to carry word of their flight. Word also spread quickly around Paris prompting an angry reaction, with widespread claims that Louis' disappearance was evidence of an imminent counter-revolution or foreign invasion. Some also accused high ranking city officials, including Bailly and Lafayette, of assisting the royal family's escape.

Meanwhile the King’s coach proceeded slowly on its journey and in the evening reached Sainte-Menehould (around 80 kilometres from Montmédy), by which time news of their flight had already reached the town ahead of them. According to one tale when they arrived at Sainte-Menehould, Louis, always attentive to the inner man, insisted they stop to sample the local cuisine. Whether this is true, or that they just stopped to change horses, it does nevertheless seem the they were rather complacent and incautiously got out of the coach. The local postmaster, Jean-Baptiste Drouet, had seen Marie Antoinette when he was in the army and he recognised her. He then checked the face of the party’s ‘valet’ against the King’s printed image on an assignat (similar to a bank note) and found them to match. He quickly rode on to Varennes, the next stop, and was there when the lumbering royal coach arrived at close to midnight. Drouet went straight to the town authorities insisting that the travellers were Louis and Marie-Antoinette. After some hesitation (their passport was perfectly in order – having been signed by the King no less), an elderly citizen who had once lived at Versailles was brought in. As soon as he saw Louis he instinctively bent his knee in homage and Louis admitted that he was the King. The game was up.

 
'The arrest of Louis and his family at Varennes', by Thomas Falcon Marshall (1854).

The royal party were held overnight and at 7am a large contingent of National Guardsmen arrived with orders to accompany them back to Paris. Just as they were all about to depart Varennes on the return journey, a squadron of royalist troops arrived and they contemplated an assault to rescue them, but fearing the King and his family would be massacred, the royalist officers refused to attack and withdrew, and so with a large armed escort the royal family set out back to Paris.

Whatever public affection the king had enjoyed in early 1791 was shattered by the events of June 20th and 21st. The royal family was returned to Paris and reinstalled at the Tuileries Palace, this time under a more visible guard. Their failed adventure triggered a rush of crude propaganda that ridiculed the royals and their fumbled escape attempt. There were widespread demands for the immediate abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a republic. Some went further and insisted the King be put on trial for treason against the constitution. It was widely believed that the Austrians had organised the royal escape and evidence was found in the Tuileries after the palace was stormed by a murderous mob in 10 August 1792. Following this assault, on the 13 August the royal family were sent to prison and on the 21 September the National Assembly proclaimed France a republic. Louis and Marie-Antoinette were tried for treason and both were found guilty, one of the main charges being that by they attempted escape to Montmédy they had tried to incite a foreign power to invade France. He went to the guillotine on 21 January 1793 and she met the same fate on 16 October. 

But returning to their attempted escape in June 1791, for ‘Dish of the Day’ I propose that speciality of Sainte Menehould that so tempted Louis XVI … it was a dish pigs’ pettitoes or trotters, and the town is still famous for its pieds de cochon:



A dish styled à la Menehould usually refers to something dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried or grilled, and often with mustard on the side. The constant factor seems to be the breadcrumbs and it was already a classic way of preparing many dishes before Louis’ unfortunate last meal in freedom.

I can’t find a suitable English recipe for pig's trotters cooked in breadcrumbs, and anyway trotters aren't to everyone's taste, but there is this recipe for mutton in the "French Way, call’d, St. Menehout" from almost the right date, taken from Hannah Glasse's 'The Art of Cookery' (1796):

Mutton ... Another French Way, call’d, St. Menehout.

Take the Hind Saddle of Mutton, take off the Skin, lard it with Bacon, season it with Pepper, Salt, Mace, Cloves beat, and Nutmeg, Sweet Herbs, young Onions, and Parsley, all chopp’d fine; take a large Oval, or a large Gravy-pan, lay Layers of Bacon, and then Layers of Beef all over the Bottom, lay in the Mutton, then lay Layers of Bacon on the Mutton, and then a Layer of Beef, put in a Pint of Wine, and as much good Gravy as will stew it, put in a Bay-Leaf, and two or three Shalots, cover it close, put Fire over and under it, if you have a close Pan, and let it stand stewing for two Hours; when done, take it out, strew Crumbs of Bread all over it, and put it into the Oven to Brown, strain the Gravy it was stew’d in, and boil it till there is just enough for Sauce, lay the Mutton into the Dish, pour the Sauce in, and serve it up. You must Brown it before a Fire, if you have not an Oven.

"Let them eat cake"." Qu'ils mangent de la brioche",
Following on from Meles' post about the Royal flight to Varennes, the above saying is usually attribured to Marie Antoinette.
This is a recipe for Brioche de St Genix, a Savoyard dish which should fill even the hungriest Jacobin:


Ingredients
Pralines:
1/3 cup sugar
40 almonds
3 drops red food coloring
Brioche:
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
3 tablespoons sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 cup warm whole milk, or cream (100 to 110 degrees F)
6 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for greasing
2 eggs, lightly beaten, plus 1 egg
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon rock sugar
Directions
For the pralines: Mix together the sugar, almonds, food coloring and 1/3 cup water in a pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat; do not stir until the water starts boiling, then you can start swirling the pan gently. When the liquid starts to thicken, after about 5 minutes, stir continuously until you feel a caramel texture. Take the pan away from the heat and stir until the sugar crystallizes, 12 to 15 minutes. Place the almonds on parchment paper and let them cool.  

For the brioche: Stir together the flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a medium bowl. Gradually add the warm milk, butter and lightly beaten eggs into the flour mixture; knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl, and allow the dough to rise until it is doubled in size, about 2 hours. Deflate the dough by placing your fingers under it, lifting a section of the dough, and then letting it fall back into the bowl. Work your way around the circumference of the dough, lifting and releasing. Cover the bowl tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, during which time the dough may continue to rise and may double in size again.  
Turn out the dough onto a floured surface. The dough must be cool to the touch, so only take out the dough immediately before you get started. Flatten the dough slightly, and then add 1 1/2 handfuls of the pralines in the center. Fold and shape the dough around the pralines so they are completely surrounded by the dough and both sides are closed. Flip the dough over so the new "seam" side is down and roll gently with both hands to shape and smooth out the dough.  
Place the dough on a greased baking pan and let sit at room temperature until it doubles in size, about 2 hours.  
Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F.  
Whisk together the remaining egg and sugar to make an egg wash. Cover the dough with the egg wash using a pastry brush and sprinkle with the rock sugar.  
Bake for 25 minutes with the oven door closed, then for another 15 minutes with the door open. This will ensure the brioche is baked evenly and does not brown too much on the outside.

"Let them eat cake".

Yes, poor Marie-Antoinette, while she almost certainly didn't say that, or at least not in the way that it is usually remembered, it seems likely to now be stuck with her for eternity. And while Louis XVI certainly enjoyed his food he wasn't, despite how he was often portrayed, a fat, greedy, glutton. He certainly was nothing like his near contemporary the grotesquely, obese British Prince Regent, the so-called 'Prince of Whales', later George IV.

Marie-Antoinette was actually quite abstemious in her diet. Protocol demanded that the King and Queen usually dined daily in public, on which occasions they were served with an enormous number of elaborate dishes: all very rich, large, copious, expensive and beautifully presented. Louis generally tucked in happily, sampling this and tasting that, but often Marie-Antoinette, after nibbling a few mouthfuls just for the sake of etiquette, often excused herself and went to dine alone. She hated eating in public and especially under intense public scrutiny. For several years after their marriage she had failed to conceive and inevitably everyone at court was watching for any signs or reasons for this 'failing'. Although nothing is certain I suspect she had some form of stress-driven eating disorder, it wasn't classic anorexia nor bulemia, but she certainly wasn't always a healthily normal eater, even in later life after eventually producing the required heirs in abundance. In the privacy of her own apartments Marie-Antoinette usually ate just simple soups, bread (good white bread but not usually brioche), poached fish or chicken, and lots of vegetables, often in the form of cold, cooked vegetables, similar to what is nowadays called in French a Macédonie (I can't think what it is in English), that is, chopped french french beans, diced carrots, peas etc ... cooked, then allowed to cool and mixed together with a dressing.

Nevertheless for all her fairly simple tastes - at least in her personal food preferences - for their attempted escape from Paris she made sure that the already overloaded coach was fully supplied with ample packed-lunches ... and dinners ... and suppers ... and all with choices of wine ... and there was a bottle of brandy too. Amongst all these provisions there were several of her favourite vegetable 'Macedonie' dishes. But diced carrots and peas aren't the easiest things to fork off a plate at the best of times, and are near impossible to eat in a lurching carriage. But apparently Marie-Antoinette's personal cook (who was presumably in on the plot) had planned for this by setting her favourite diced vegetable salads in aspic jelly, just so they wouldn't roll off the plate if eaten on the move. This is often claimed to be the origin of things like vegetable or seafood terrines, although this is clearly nonsense as setting food in jelly had be going on for centuries, nevertheless it does show that someone at least was thinking ahead. If only Louis and Marie-Antoinette had stuck with their prepared picnic meals and not been tempted by some sizzling pig's trotters en route.

23 June 1314 – The Battle of Bannockburn.

The Wars of Scottish Independence began in 1296 when a large English army invaded Scotland. Initially the English were successful under the command of Edward I, ‘The Hammer of the Scots’, and by 1304 Scotland had been conquered. But in 1306 Robert the Bruce seized the Scottish throne and the war was reopened.

Edward II came to the English throne in 1307 but was incapable of providing the determined leadership that had been shown by his father, and the English position soon became more difficult. Stirling Castle was one of the most important castles that was held by the English as it commanded the route north into the Scottish Highlands, and accordingly in 1314 it was besieged by Robert the Bruce's brother, Edward Bruce. Edward II mustered a large force and marched into Scotland to try and relieve the English garrison in the castle, but they were intercepted on the plain to the south of Stirling by a smaller army commanded by the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce.

The battle took place over two days. On the first (23 June) the English heavy cavalry charged several times but failed to break the Scottish formation and the day ended with neither side having gained the upper hand. Nevertheless the failure of the English to defeat the smaller Scottish force had affected English morale. On second day the English again launched an ineffectual charge but then they were steadily pushed back until eventually the English army broke. Edward fled with his personal bodyguard, eventually slipping away to Dunbar and then by sea back to Berwick, but for the rest of his army the defeat turned into a rout. Many were killed on the battlefield or by the pursuing Scottish army as they attempted to get back to England. Estimates suggest that perhaps only a third of the English foot-soldiers managed to get back to their own country, while overall Scottish losses were comparatively light.

The defeat of the English army opened up the north of England to Scottish raids and allowed the Scottish invasion of Ireland. These finally led to the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton. under which the English Crown recognised the full independence of the Kingdom of Scotland, and acknowledged Robert the Bruce, and his heirs and successors, as the rightful rulers.

The battle takes its name from the Bannock Burn (I think that's right, isn't it Ferval?), a stream that still crosses the plain south of Stirling castle ... although where exactly the battle was fought is still debated. A bannock is of course a heavy, unleavened barley or oatmeal bread (and so common wherever wheat, with it's higher gluten content, isn't the principal grain crop), ... baked on a griddle, a skillet or just a hot flat stone once the ashes have been brushed aside, and was it was just the sort of simple bread, easily cooked in the field, that was eaten by both armies on the eve of battle.



However for dish of the day, seeing as it is a major milestone in Scottish independence, I think something a wee bit special is required and accordingly a 'Selkirk bannock' should fit the bill. The Selkirk bannock is somewhat different to a traditional bannock - notwithstanding the deliciousness of ordinary bannocks - for it is a rich, fruity  and buttery tea bread:



The first reference to the Selkirk bannock in print seems to be in the novel 'The Bride of Lammermoor', by Sir Walter Scott (1819), where it is mentioned amongst the petticoat-tail shortbread and sweet scones as ‘delicacies little known to the present generation’. But barely a decade later Robert Chambers, a Scottish publisher, noted in 'The Picture of Scotland' (1827) that, ‘Before quitting Selkirk, it ought to be mentioned that it is famous for the manufacture of a peculiarly light and agreeable species of bread, called “Selkirk Bannocks”. The loaves were originally made of barley-meal, but are now composed of the finest flour.’ Many recipes resembling Selkirk bannock can be found in old Scottish cookery books under the guise of a bun loaf. For instance in ‘The Practice of Cookery, Pastry, and Confectionary’ (1820) Mrs. Frazer offers a recipe called a ‘rich half-peck Bun’, which is very similar.

The method of producing a true Selkirk bannock usually starts with a sourdough and requires one or two long fermentation periods before baking, however this quicker recipe, adapted from F. Marian McNeill’s book, ‘Recipes from Scotland’ (1947), produces something fairly similar without the need for long fermentation. At any rate it still makes a rich and soft tea bread.

Selkirk Bannock recipe adapted from 'Recipes of Scotland' (1947) as given on Scotsman Food & Drink

Ingredients
• 500g strong white bread flour
• 300g whole milk
• 50g unsalted butter
• 50g lard (you could replace this with 50g butter)
• 100g sugar
• 150g sultanas
• 7g fast action yeast (or 15g fresh yeast rubbed into the flour)
• 10g salt

Method:
1 - Mix the flour, sugar, salt, yeast and sultanas in a large bowl. Melt the butter and lard over a gentle heat in a small saucepan, take off the heat and whisk in the milk.
2 - Pour this over the dry ingredients and combine. Knead gently for three to five minutes.
3- Cover with a damp cloth and leave to prove for 1 hour or until 1.5 times its original volume. Alternatively you can add the raisins after this proving time when you shape the dough.
4 - Shape the dough to make it round, and transfer to a greased baking sheet. Leave to rise for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
5 - When doubled in size bake in the centre shelf of a preheated oven (180˚C) for 30 minutes.

28 June 1914 – the assasination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo by the Bosnian-Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip. Princip was one of a group of six assassins coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a member of the Black Hand secret society. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's southern Slav provinces so they could be combined into a pan-Slavic state or Yugoslavia.  The assassins were armed and trained by Serbian Military Intelligence. Over the following six weeks those two shots echoed around Europe as the intricate network of international treaties and alliances drew one state after another down the slippery slope to the outbreak of the First World War.

On the morning of 28 June 1914, Franz-Ferdinand and his party arrived by train in Sarajevo where they were welcomed by the city’s Governor-General, Oskar Potiorek. Six automobiles were waiting but by mistake, three local police officers got into the first car with the chief officer of security; and the special security officers who were supposed to accompany their chief got left behind. The second car carried the Mayor and the Chief of Police of Sarajevo. Franz Ferdinand, Sophie, Governor Potiorek, and Franz-Ferdinand’s personal body guard, Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach, rode in the third car. Security arrangements within Sarajevo were limited. The local military commander, General Michael von Appel, had proposed that troops line the intended route but was told that this would offend the loyal citizenry. Protection for the visiting party was accordingly left to the Sarajevo police, of whom only 60 were on duty on the day of the visit.

The day’s program, timing and route they would take had all been published in advance in the local newspapers. After a brief inspection of a military barracks, the motorcade left the barracks at 10:00 for the town hall by way of the Appel Quay. It was here at about 10:10am that the motorcade passed the first assassin, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, who was in front of the garden of the Mostar Cafe armed with a bomb. But Mehmedbašić failed to act. A second assassin, Vaso Čubrilović, was positioned a few paces further down the street armed with a pistol and a bomb. He too failed to act. On the opposite side of the street near the  Miljacka River was Nedeljko Čabrinović armed with a bomb. As Franz Ferdinand's car approached Čabrinović threw his bomb but the bomb bounced off the folded back convertible cover into the street and exploded under the following car putting that car out of action and wounding 16–20 people.

Čabrinović promptly swallowed a cyanide pill and jumped into the Miljacka river. However his suicide attempt failed as the out-of-date cyanide only induced vomiting, and the river was only 13 cm deep due to the hot, dry summer. Police dragged Čabrinović out of the river, and he was severely beaten by the crowd before being taken into custody. The Arch-Duke’s motorcade had briefly stopped following the bomb attack but now sped on towards the Town Hall leaving the disabled car behind. Three more conspirators were positioned further along the route but Cvjetko Popović, Gavrilo Princip, and Trifun Grabež all failed to act as the motorcade passed them at high speed.

Arriving at the Town Hall for a scheduled reception, Franz Ferdinand showed understandable signs of stress, interrupting a prepared speech of welcome by Mayor Fehim Curčić to protest, until he was calmed down by Duchess Sophie. The Mayor completed his address and Franz Ferdinand replied, adding a few remarks about the day's events and thanking the people of Sarajevo for their ovations, "as I see in them an expression of their joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination.”

Officials and members of the Archduke's party discussed what to do next. The Achduke's chamberlain, Baron Rumerskirch, proposed that the couple remain at the Town Hall until troops could be brought into the city to line the streets. Governor-General Oskar Potiorek vetoed this suggestion on the grounds that soldiers coming straight from manoeuvres would not have the dress uniforms appropriate for such duties. "Do you think that Sarajevo is full of assassins?" he concluded.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie gave up their planned program in favour of going to the hospital to visit the wounded from the bombing. At 10:45 am they got back into the motorcade, once again in the third car. In order to avoid the city center, it was decided that the royal car should travel straight along the Appel Quay to the Sarajevo Hospital. However, in the confusion the driver, Leopold Lojka, wasn’t told of the change in plan and followed the original planned route by turning right into Franz Josef Street heading towards the National Museum which was to have been the next stop.


Franz-Ferninand and Duchess Sophie leave Sarajevo Town Hall.

Meanwhile the remaining conspirators, after learning that the first assassination attempt had been unsuccessful, dispersed demoralised. Princip seems to have gone to a nearby café, Schiller's delicatessen, on the corner on Franz Joseph Street and Appel Quay, just across from the Latinska Bridge. It is possible that this was a deliberate move since it lay on the original planned route for the Archduke’s return journey from the Town Hall, but by now it seems no-one expected the royal party to return by the same route. Either way it was completely by chance that this was precisely at the point where the Archdukes' motorcade turned off the Appel Quay, mistakenly following the original route . Governor Potiorek, who was sharing the vehicle with the Imperial couple, called out to the driver to reverse and take the Quay to the hospital. Driver Lojka stopped the car close to where Princip was standing, prior to backing up. Princip stepped forward and fired two shots from a distance of "about four of five paces". The first bullet hit the Archduke in the neck, the second inflicted an abdominal wound on the Duchess. Princip was immediately arrested. At his subsequent sentencing he stated that his intention had been to kill Govenor Potiorek, rather than Sophie.

Both victims remained seated upright while being driven to the Governor's residence for medical treatment. As reported by Count Harrach, Franz Ferdinand's last words were "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!". Sophie was dead on arrival at the Governor's residence and Franz Ferdinand died 10 minutes later. It was their 14th wedding anniversary.


Immediately after the shooting. This picture is often said to depict the arrest of Gavrilo Princip but it is now generally thought to show the arrest of Ferdinand Behr, a bystander who was initially suspected of involvement in the assassination.

It was certainly by luck that Princip, having failed to act as the motorcade sped past on the way to the Town Hall, had ended up in a new position at Schiller’s delicatessen, exactly where the car would be briefly stopped by taking the a wrong turn. But there is also an oft-repeated tale that Princip only happened to be there because he’d gone into Schiller’s to get something to eat … this something even being sometimes described most specifically as a cheese sandwich.  I’d never encountered this story when I did O level history but I have come across it several times in recent years, both in TV documentaries and on several, otherwise quite reliable, websites. However none of the statements by Princip himself nor those by witnesses, made either directly after the event or under cross-examination during Princip’s  trial, make any reference to him buying food from the delicatessen or indeed even going into it.  However in interviews in the 1960s and 70s, when memories might well have dimmed, fellow conspirator Cvjetko Popović did state that Princip was inside the café having a coffee, while Princip’s brother said that Princip's girlfriend, Dragitsa, had rushed into Schiller’s and told him the Archduke's car was stopped outside. So Princip may well have been either waiting with intent, or drowning his sorrows, by having a coffee in Schiller's. But he most certainly wouldn’t have been eating a cheese sandwich which would have been a most unusual thing to eat in Sarajevo in 1914. However he could conceivably have been eating a Bosnian cheese  ‘pie’ either a sirnica made with cottage cheese, or a zeljanica made with spinach and cheese, and maybe this little embellishment has become translated into English as the cheese sandwich. So while the tale cannot be disproved there does seem to be a possibility that it was Princip’s need for a cup of coffee that put him exactly in the right place at the right time.


Moritz Schiller's delicatessen at the junction of Franz Josef Street and Appel Quay (the Latinska Bridge is just out of sight to the right). The x markes the spot where Franz-Ferdinand's car was stopped allowing Princip to fire from the pavement outside the cafe.

For 'dish of the day' these Bosnian specialities, which moreover can be eaten by hand in the street or in a streetside cafe, do seem appropriate. Cheesey sirnica or zeljanica are actually just specific varieties of a dish that is found throughout the Balkans, Turkey, the Levant and North Africa ... burek, or börek, byrek, byurek, boureki and brik, just to name a few variants. This is a family of baked filled pastries made of a thin flaky dough known as phyllo (or yufka), and usually filled with a savoury meat, cheese, or vegetable filling.

The dish was well established at the Ottoman court by the 15th century when there were already detailed regulations applied throughout the Empire regarding the thickness of the crust, the type and quality of ingredients, and the price. It was via the Ottomans that the dish was introduced to the Balkans and Mediterranean, but it may originally have come from central Asia when the Turks migrated to Anatolia in the Middle Ages. Alternatively it may have its origins in Eastern Roman or Byzantine cuisine, since Cato the Elder included a similar layered pastry and filling pie, called placenta, in his De Agricultura (160 BC):
"Shape the placenta as follows: place a single row of tracta along the whole length of the base dough. This is then covered with the mixture [cheese and honey] from the mortar. Place another row of tracta on top and go on doing so until all the cheese and honey have been used up. Finish with a layer of tracta...place the placenta in the oven and put a preheated lid on top of it."

So for todays dish here’s a recipe for Bosnian burek. While Serbian burek is round and can be made with cheese, vegetables or minced meat, in Bosnia it is only called burek if the filling is meat - if the filling is of something else, cheese, spinach, pumpkin or whatever, it is called pita (pie). Bosnian burek is also typically wound in a distinctive spiral shape.

Manu's Menu : Bosnian Burek

A very informative entry Meles. You keep outdoing yourself with these. You're right about the details surrounding the assassination not being widely known (at least not in the English-speaking world) until relatively recently. And there are several things in there you've mentioned that I certainly wasn't aware of. In addition to that I also now have a craving for a greasy slice of cheese and pumpkin pita.

MM, why don't you use these articles to start your own blog? Heaven knows, they are worthy of a wider audience and might eventually attract some advertising to give you a bit of income and could be linked to your B&B business as well. Already you have an archive ready to publish on the appropriate dates and it can't be that difficult given all these weans that seem to be making a career, and a living, from their vapid ramblings. Your contributions are both informative and engaging so why should we few be the only ones who get to enjoy them? Go for it, what's to lose?

Yes, I thought of a blog, too, ferval.  That seems to be where people put things of import these days, though I gather Facebook also has pages dedicated to specific subjects. 

I was wondering about a blog for myself, something about strokes and books/reading.  The latter something I have knowledge about foisted on me, and the other of which I have always been interested in. The trouble is I am something of a magpie, having some interest in many subjects but no deep knowledge of anything.  (Except, I suppose, the popularity of first names in NZ.)

ferval wrote:

MM, why don't you use these articles to start your own blog?

In the words of the late Barry Norman "and why not?"

......................................................................................................................

Eighty years ago today, this made it's first appearance:

Blogs ... yes I had been thinking of starting one linked to my b&b business as part of its website ... basically along the lines of the changing seasons, what's going on, local festivals, what's in season, mushrooms, bird-watching, flowers ... all that sort of thing. But it would be a fair bit of work to keep up with, and other things crop up.

Regarding 'Dish of the Day' I note I have just missed several key dates. American Independence was of course on the 4th July, although we have done that before. I'd also sketched out something for 2nd July to mark the passing of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act in 1928, which finally gave women in the UK electoral equality with men ... and the interesting links between the suffragette movement and vegetarianism. However I never got the time to finish it ... but it will keep until next year.

So now, and only one day late .....

6 July 1483 – The Coronation of Richard III.

The coronation that took place on Sunday 6th July 1483 was, only a fortnight earlier, unplanned. London was prepared for a coronation, that of King Edward V on 22nd June, but that was fated not to take place. Edward had been declared illegitimate and his Protector asked to take the throne. It was also a joint coronation as Richard and his wife, Anne Neville, were crowned together. This was the first joint coronation in 175 years since Edward II had his wife Isabella of France crowned beside him on 25th February 1308. The absence for so long of a couple being crowned together was in part a testament to the upheavals of the previous century or more. So, perhaps, this joint coronation of a settled, mature couple, Richard being 30 and Anne aged 27, promised much. They already had a son to act as their heir. The omens were promising.


Richard III and Anne Neville.

With the exception of three earls who were minors, too young to attend, and a small handful of others, the entire English nobility turned out to celebrate the coronation. Notably absent from all the proceedings were of course the twelve-year-old Edward V and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, who were both now lodged, close-guarded, in the Tower of London. In addition to the absence of these two princes there were several other notable anomalies full of both promise and foreboding, which, while masked by all the rapturous pageantry, were doubtless well noted by all those there. As ever the significance is in the detail and so I hope you’ll excuse the rather lengthy description of the coronation procession and banquet, although I find even the most minor of details fascinating in their own right. The coronation and banquet followed much the same pattern as that described above for the coronation of Anne Boleyn ('Dish of the Day' for 1st June) but whereas only 800 guests attended Anne’s coronation feast, at Richard III’s there were 3000 and that's without counting all the officials, ushers, cooks, and servants.

On Sunday 6th July, King Richard and Queen Anne processed from White Hall to Westminster Hall, walking on a carpet of vibrant red cloth. The master of the ceremonies that had now begun to unfold was Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham ... despite John Howard having just been granted the offices of Earl Marshall and High Steward of England, which usually would have made him the man traditionally positioned to oversee the coronation. Buckingham, though, had been instrumental in handing Richard the crown, and he was now determined to be second only to the King, though it is questionable whether second was ever going to be enough for this proud man. For Buckingham the coronation set a precedent of spoiled indulgence and naked ambition, that was soon to overflow into rebellion.

The spectacle proper began as the king and queen now walked the short distance from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey. They walked barefoot, as was traditional, behind a large cross and members of the clergy. Anne, as was also traditional for a queen's coronation, wore her hair loose which is how she is depicted above. Just behind them Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, carried the blunt sword of mercy while next to him Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, bore the Lord High Constable’s mace, and so he also walked in a position senior to all the other dukes and earls alike. (An odd turn of events for a man known for a lack of loyalty that was unpalatable to Richard. Stanley had been involved in a long feud over possession of Hornby Castle with Sir James Harrington. Richard had, as early as 1470, taken Harrington’s side in the affair yet chose to lavishly honour Stanley. Was this a nod to the inescapable political reality that Edward IV had worked within? Stanley headed a veracious, up and coming family that boasted a huge force of men upon which they could call. It may have been a genuine attempt to build political bridges. If he was to rule all of England, niggling local feuds would have to be put to bed. Either way, an old enemy was in a place of high honour).

Next came the Earl of Kent and Richard’s closest friend Francis, Viscount Lovell, each carrying a pointed sword of justice. Richard’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, held the sceptre, and the King’s nephew John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, bore the orb. Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, solemnly bore the sheathed sword of state held upright before him. Finally came Surrey’s father, John Howard, Duke of Norfolk carefully holding the crown in his hands. Richard himself walked enrobed in a sumptuous purple velvet gown, a bishop at each shoulder and his train born without much humility by the Duke of Buckingham, while the Wardens of the Cinque Ports held the cloth of estate above the King’s head. With all the jewels, rich cloth and vivid, vibrant colours, and moreover the presence of nearly the entire English nobility, the message of a bright new future was clear for all to see.

Behind followed a series of earls and barons bearing the queen’s regalia. Anne walked behind with Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond holding her train. (Margaret Beaufort happened to be both the wife of Thomas, Lord Stanley and the mother of the final, glowing ember of Lancastrian hope in exile, the future Henry VII. Margaret Beaufort was a natural Lancastrian yet, although just a countess, she too walked ahead of any duchess). Richard’s sister Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, walked alone in state followed by a further 20 ladies of the nobility and a host of knights and squires.

As they entered Westminster Abbey, the space erupted with choral rejoicing. Divested of their ceremonial garb, the king and queen were anointed with holy oil by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. When they had been enrobed in sumptuous cloth of gold, the elderly Archbishop lowered a crown upon the heads of the new king and queen. A solemn Te Deum was sung and High Mass was said. England was rejoicing in the king and queen that God had appointed to her.

They then all processed back to Westminster Hall for the coronation banquet. The royal table was placed on a dais, and on the floor of the hall four further long tables were placed, one for the attending bishops, the second for the high ranking nobility, a third for the barons and the fourth for the ladies invited. In order of rank they all filed in and pledged their loyalty before the king and queen before taking their seat.

Who Sat Where

The Queen sat on the King’s left. On the King’s right was the seat for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop was 79 years old and, tired by the lengthy Coronation rite, did not attend. But his 'deputy', the Bishop of Durham, William Dudley, sat in his place. Behind the Queen stood two noble ladies who held a cloth over the Queen when she ate or drank: the Countess of Surrey stood on the Queen’s right and the Countess of Nottingham stood on her left. The Countess of Surrey was Elizabeth Howard, wife of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and daughter-in-law of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshall. The Countess of Nottingham was Jane Berkeley, wife of William Berkeley, Earl of Nottingham. She was first cousin to Richard III as her mother and Richard’s mother, Cecily Neville, were sisters.

Two of Richard III’s squires sat at his feet during the banquet to give "any service needed" and I'm guessing since they were hidden under the table, that they were in charge of the royal pisspot. Anne also had two maids sous table, presumably for the same purpose. I'll bet there was much stifled giggling under the top table as inevitably their services would have been required at least once during the five hours of the banquet. I wonder though how did the elderly bishop of Durham manage as there is no record of any similar provision being made for him. (It's uncertain exactly how old William Dudley, the Bishop of Durham was, but he was probably well into his 60s and he died barely four months after the coronation on 29 November).

Four long tables were set up on the length of the hall. The first on the King's right hand side was headed by the Lord Chancellor and included all the bishops and prelates. The second was for all the senior nobility: dukes and earls (those that weren't involved in any official capacity), together with the King’s Chaplain and the Lord Mayor of London. The third table was for the barons and lesser nobility as well as the Judges, the officials of the Exchequer and other men of the law. The last long table was for the Queen’s ladies, including the Duchesses of Suffolk and Norfolk at the top end, and next to them the Countess of Richmond (Margaret Beaufort, whose son would topple Richard from his throne just two short years later).

In addition to those actually seated at the four long tables, there were separate seatings elsewhere for “the lordes and ladyes” and for “the comons.” Inside the Hall there were also two small stages, one for the minstrels and trumpeters, and one for the heralds, at the top end of the Hall in the corners behind the high table.

The Food

When everyone was seated, the first course was brought in accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets. Leading the procession of dishes to the top table were Sir Robert Percy as Marshal of the Hall, the Earl of Surrey as Steward, Lord Lovell as Chamberlain, and Sir William Hopton as Treasurer, the Duke of Norfolk as Earl Marshal, and the Duke of Buckingham as the Great Chamberlain ... followed by seventeen newly-made Knights of the Bath carrying the actual dishes. First served was the King on gold plate, then the Queen on gilt plate, then the Bishop of Durham on silver plate. Once the top table had been served the first two dishes, the other four long tables were served, starting at the right-hand table ... and down until at the last to the lowest-ranked at the bottom end of the left hand table (although at least even the lowly baron's wives sat there had been invited and had got a seat ... and so were several cuts above the mass of the better sort of common people who, while they had been admitted, could only watch from the sides).

First Course
Potage: frumentie with veneson and bruett Tuskayne [Frumentie – a dish of boiled wheat, milk, spices etc with venison and potage/broth Tuscan]
Viand comford riall [Meat minced, spiced, pressed in a cloth, boiled and served in slices, “royal”]
Mamory riall [Small pieces of brawn, capon or partridge, “royal”]
Bief and moton [Beef and mutton]
Fesaunt in trayne [Pheasant with tail feathers displayed]
Cignett rost [Roast cygnet]
Crane rost [Roast crane]
Capons of hault grece in lymony [Fat or crammed capons in lemon]
Heronshewe rost [Roast herons]
Gret carpe of venyson rost [Shredded or sliced venison, roasted]
Grett luce in eger doulce [A large pike in a sweet-sour sauce]
Leche solace [A sliced jelly]
Fretor Robert riall [Fritter “Robert royal”]
Gret flampayne riall [a large pie or tart decorated with points of pastry “royal”]
Custard Edward planted [An open pie “Edward decorated” I wonder what that means]
A sotiltie [A subtlety]

That was the first course as served to the top table, everyone else got a slightly pared down version.

Before the second course of the feast was served there was the traditional bit of drama when the King’s Champion burst into the hall. Sir Robert Dymmock (whose family still hold the ceremonial position) rode in on a horse draped in red and white silk while he wore a suit of white armour. He threw down his gauntlet and issued the traditional challenge to any who doubted King Richard’s right to rule. With no challenge forthcoming, the Champion was served a goblet of red wine. Taking a draught, he cast the rest upon the floor and then, keeping the cup as his traditional reward, he rode from the room.

Second Course
Gely partied with a devise [A jelly, divided by a “devise”]
Viand blanc in barre [White meat decorated with ornamental gold or silver strips]
Pecokes in his hakell and trapper [Peacock with his neck feathers and tail plumage]
Roo reversed in purpill [Roe deer - turned inside-out?]
Runers rost [Roast rail]
Betorr rost [Roast bittern]
Peiene rost [Roast pigeon]
Partriche rost [Roast partridge]
Pomes birt [Birtles, sweet summer apples]
Scotwhelpes rost [Roast knot, a bird of the snipe family]
Rollettes of veneson farced [Rolls of venison, stuffed?]
Gret carpe and breme in foile [Great carp and bream in foil]
Leche frument riall planted [Sliced jellied frumentie “royal decorated’]
Frettour rosett and jasmine [Fritters flavored with roses and jasmine]
Tart burbonet bake [Unidentified baked tart]
Venyson bake [Baked venison]
A sotiltie [A subtlety]

There was intended to have been a third course which would have been served only to the top table, but by this time it was getting dark so it wasn’t served (presumably it all went as alms to the poor or largesse to the commons).

Third Course
Blaundsorr [Chicken or fish stewed in wine and spices]
Nosewis in compost [a dish composed of nuts in a spiced/sugared preserve of fruits or vegetables]
Venyson rost [Roast venison]
Telle in barre [Teal decorated with ornamental gold or silver strips]
Langettes de lyre [Tongue-shaped pieces of brawn]
Pety chek in bolyen [Small chicken in boullion?]
Egrettes rost [Roast egrets]
Rabettes souker rost [Roast suckling rabbits]
Quailes rost [Roast quail]
Briddes brauncher rost [Young birds roasted]
Freshe sturgion with fenell [Fresh sturgeon with fennell]
Creves de ew doulce [Freshwater crayfish]
Leche viole and canell [Sliced jelly flavored with violet? and cinnamon]
Frittour crispe [Crispy fritters]
Rosettes florished [Garnished rosettes?]
Oranges bake [Baked oranges]
Quynces bake [Baked quinces]
A sotilty [A subtlety]

Instead of the third course, the banquet went straight to the ceremonial “void” that is the formal closing digestive of hippocras (spiced wine) with darioles (spiced biscuits) and wafers. This was served just to the King and Queen by the Mayor of London (by a long-established right) in ornate gold cups which the Mayor kept as his traditional “fee”. Everyone then rose and paid final homage to Richard and Anne, who then retired to their private chambers. It was then dark, so probably about 21:00 and the whole banquet had lasted about five hours.

Here's a recipe for the very first dish served to Richard III and Anne, frumentie with veneson, taken from 'Forme of Cury' (written by Richard II's royal cooks in about 1385):

To make frumente. Tak clene whete [wheat] & braye [grind/crush] yt wel in a morter tyl þe holes gon of [til the whole grains are broken down]; seþe [boil] it til it breste [burst/swells] in water. Nym [strain] it vp & lat it cole [cool]. Tak good broþ [broth] & swete mylk of kyn [fresh cow’s milk] or of almand [almond milk] & tempere it þerwith [mix in]. Nym [strain] ȝelkys of eyren rawe [raw egg yolks] & saffroun [saffron] & cast þerto; salt it; lat it nauȝt boyle after þe eyren ben cast þerinne [don’t let it boil once the eggs have been added]. Messe it forth with venesoun or with fat motoun fresch [serve it with venison or fresh mutton].

And from the unserved third course there's the delightfully named, nosewis in compost, that is nuts in a type of chutney preserve ... for once something medieval not containing huge quantities of exotic meat (recipe again from 'Form of Cury'):
 
Compost. Take rote of persel [parsely root], of Pasternak [parsnip], of rafens [radishes], scrape hem and waische hem clene. Take rapes [turnips] & caboches [cabbages], ypared and incorue [pared and cored]. Take an erthen panne with clene water & set it on the fire; cast alle þise þerinne. Whan þey buth boiled cast þereto peeres [pears], & perboile hem wel. Take alle þise thynges vp & lat it kele [cool] on a faire cloth. Do þereto salt; whan it is colde, do hit in a vessel; take vinegar & powdour [a ready prepared mix of spices, but which ones isn’t clear] & safroun [saffron] & do þereto & lat alle þise thynges lye þerin al nyȝt, oþer al day [let is stand a night and a day]. Take wyne greke [Greek wine] & hony, clarified togider; take lumbarde mustard [ground mustard with honey, wine and vinegar, like prepared French mustard] & raisouns courance, al hole, [whole raisins] & grynde powder of canel [cinnamon], powdour douce [another prepared spice mix, this one probably containing sugar] & aneys hole [whole aniseed], & fenell [fennel] seed. Take alle þise thynges & cast togyder in a pot of erthen [an earthenware pot], & take þerof whan þou wilt [take from it whenever you want, it’s a preserve] & seue forth.

..... Or if that's all too much of a palaver there's always that stalwart of school-dinners, spotted dick.

As erudite and interesting as ever MM, thank you. As well as enjoying the results of your researches, I amuse myself by trying to think of more contemporary dishes that could be descendants of your receipts. The first recipe, if the straining of the crushed boiled wheat means they retained the thickened liquid rather than the grains, then that, along with the stock, egg yolks and saffron, would make something very close to a classical veloute or perhaps a spicy sauce anglaise. On the other hand, if they chuck away the boiling liquor and bung in the grain then it's a very hearty soup if not fancy porridge. It's such a shame that there wasn't a medieval Delia to leave us idiots' guides with all the details of these instructions.
I notice that another of the dishes is jellied frumente sliced - cold custard?

As to the compost (compote?), were it made entirely from fruit rather than mostly sweetish veg with some pears, then it would be, more or less, mostarda di frutti, something of which I am rather fond although I buy it in jars from the Italian deli. As you can see from this recipe it's at least as much of a palaver to make today as it was in Richard's kitchen.

The 'nosewis in compost' recipe reminded me of when I made a batch of Branston-type pickle, to a recipe I'd found online (Branston, quite understandably will not divulge how their chutney is actually made). Anyway I was forced by circumstance to substitute radishes and turnips for unobtainable swede/rutabaga. All this of course because jars of pukka Branston are obscenely expensive in France and usually only obtainable through specialist grocers. Anyway I made a large batch of pickle/chutney about 5 years ago, and still have about a dozen jars in the cellar. When first made they were rather 'raw' and sweet-sour-acid in flavour, but now having matured, mixed and ameliorated, they are, though I say it myself, rather fine and a very passable imitation of real Branston. I suspect compost also much improved with age.

7 July 1928. Sliced bread is sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri.
 
Otto Frederick Rohwedder, a jeweller from Davenport, Iowa, invented the first loaf-at-a-time bread-slicing machine sometime before 1912. But the prototype that he'd built was destroyed in a fire, and so it was not until 1928 that Rohwedder had a fully working machine installed at the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. Their product, "Kleen Maid Sliced Bread", was advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped" and went on sale for the first time on 7 July 1928 (which was also Rohwedder’s 48^th birthday). Initially however their bread was slow to sell because the sliced loaves, although wrapped, were not tightly packaged, and so rather had the appearance of a loose pile of bread slices, rather than a neatly sliced whole loaf. Accordingly most bakers were sceptical about Rohwedder’s machine and doubted that customers would really buy bread that would go stale faster just so they wouldn’t have to slice it themselves.

But one baker, Gustav Papendick in St Louis, did buy the second of Rohwedder's prototype bread slicers. Papendick then promptly set out to improve it by devising a way to keep the slices together, at least long enough to allow the loaves to be wrapped. After failures trying rubber bands and metal clips, he settled on a method of steering the cut slices onto a shaped cardboard tray, which correctly aligned the slices, so allowing a mechanized wrapping machine to function. Sliced bread finally went mainstream in 1930 when 'Wonder Bread', a brand that had been launched nationally in 1925 by the Continental Baking Company, started selling all their 'Wonder Bread' loaves machine-sliced and mechanically packaged.


This photograph depicts a "new electrical bread slicing machine" in use at an unnamed bakery in St. Louis in 1930 ... and so it almost certainly shows Rohwedder's machine in use at the the Papendick Bakery Company.

As commercially sliced bread resulted in uniform and somewhat thinner slices, people ate more slices of bread at a time, and ate bread more frequently because of the ease of eating another piece of bread. This increased consumption of bread and, in turn, increased the consumption of spreads to put on the bread, such as jams and  peanut butter.

So, just by way of a light snack before bed, how about a sandwich made with thinly-sliced white bread? And in deference to yesterday's anniversary of Richard III's coronation, I guess that should be a cheese and pickle sandwich, made from Wendsleydale cheese and 15th century 'compost' pickle.

14 July 1789 - Bastille Day ... but I'm afraid I didn't come up with anything. However Trike, over on the 'Taste of History' thread mentioned the following, which I've taken the liberty (and égalité et fraternité) of re-posting here.

Trceratops wrote:

There is a fairly obvious 14th of July 1789 anniversary. Yes, Alexander MacKenzie reached the mouth of the river later named after him. MacKenzie thought it flowed to the Pacific, when, instead, it exited into the Arctic Ocean, he named it "Disappointment River".

This salmon recipe is given a Canadian twist by including Maple Syrup;

Ingredients
Serves: 4  
60g maple syrup
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
450g salmon fillets

Method
Prep:10min  ›  Cook:20min  ›  Extra time:30min marinating  ›  Ready in:1hr  
1.Preheat oven to 200 C / Gas 6.
2.In a small bowl, mix the maple syrup, soy sauce, garlic, garlic salt, and pepper.
3.Place salmon in a shallow glass baking dish, and coat with the maple syrup mixture. Cover the dish, and marinate salmon in the fridge for 30 minutes, turning once.
4.Bake salmon uncovered for 20 minutes, or until easily flaked with a fork. Remove from the oven and serve.

17 July 1917 – Three years into the First World War and with no end in sight, George V finally agreed to abandon all titles he held under the German Crown and to change all his and his family's German titles and house names to anglicised versions.

George V was a member of the German ducal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by virtue of his descent from Albert, Prince Consort, husband to Queen Victoria. During WW1 anti-German sentiment was rife and it reached a peak in March 1917, when German Gotha long-range heavy aircraft began bombing London and other British cities. Much to the chagrin of the Royal Family, their name, Gotha, thus became well-known but unfortunately associated with the enemy’s bombardment of British civilians. At the same time, on 15 March 1917, King George's first cousin, Nicholas II of Russia was forced to abdicate, which raised the spectre of the eventual abolition of all the monarchies in Europe. George V and his family were finally persuaded to abandon all titles held under the German Crown and to change their German titles and house names to anglicised versions. Hence, on 17 July 1917, a royal proclamation was issued by which George V declared:

"Now, therefore, We, out of Our Royal Will and Authority, do hereby declare and announce that as from the date of this Our Royal Proclamation Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that all the descendants in the male line of Our said Grandmother Queen Victoria who are subjects of these Realms, other than female descendants who may marry or may have married, shall bear the said Name of Windsor ..."

The name, Windsor, had a long association with monarchy in Britain through Windsor Castle, which had been a royal residence since the 12th century. Upon hearing that his cousin had changed the name of the British royal house to Windsor, and in reference to Shakespeare’s ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, the German Emperor, Wilhelm II remarked jokingly that he planned to go and see 'The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha'.


"A Good Riddance", from Punch, 27 June 1917, commenting on the King's order to relinquish all German titles held by members of his family.

Which all brings us to the topic of desserts , puddings and cakes named after various branches of the British royal family when they still had their Germanic names. Naturally, a recipe from a royal chef would be appropriate, so from 'The Modern Cook' (1846) by Charles Elmé Francatelli, chef to Queen Victoria, here is:

Pudding à la Coburg.
For this purpose it is necessary to have some ready-baked brioche. This should be cut in circular slices, about an inch less in diameter than the mould intended to be used for the pudding; the slices of brioche must be placed on a dish, and soaked in maraschino. The sides of the mould should be spread with butter, and ornamented with dried cherries and candied citron; and previously to placing the pieces of brioche in the mould, let each of them be sprinkled with apricot-jam; the mould must then be filled up with some vanilla-custard prepared for the purpose, part of which must, however, be reserved for the sauce. This pudding should be steamed in the usual way for about an hour and a quarter, and when done, turned out on its dish, and the sauce poured over it.

... and also from Francatelli's book there's, 

Brown-Bread Pudding, à la Gotha.
Get ready the following ingredients: - Twelve ounces of brown bread-crumbs, six ounces of pounded sugar, six eggs, half a pint of whipped cream, some grated lemon-rind, a little cinnamon-powder, one pound of morello cherries, and a little salt.

Mix the bread-crumbs, sugar, the yolks of eggs, and whipped cream, the lemon, the cinnamon, and the salt, together in a large basin; then add the whipped whites of six eggs, and set this aside. Next, spread a plain mould with butter, and strew it with brown bread-crumbs; then, spread a large spoonful of the preparation at the bottom of the mould, and arrange a layer of cherries (with the stones left in) upon it; cover this with some of the preparation, and upon it place more cherries, and so on until the mould is filled. The pudding must now be placed on a baking-sheet, and put in the oven (moderately heated), to be baked for about an hour; when done, turn it out of the mould on its dish, pour a puree of cherry-sauce round the base, and serve.

In Saxony, it is customary to eat this kind of pudding as a cake, when cold; in this case it should be entirely covered with sifted sugar, mixed with one-fourth part of cinnamon-powder.

Windsor Pudding long predates the royal change of name but nevertheless still was named after the Berkshire town. This recipe is from 'The Cook and Housekeeper's Dictionary' by Mary Eaton (1822),

Windsor Pudding.
Shred half a pound of suet very fine, grate into it half a pound of French roll, a little nutmeg, and the rind of a lemon. Add to these half a pound of chopped apple, half a pound of currants clean washed and fried, half a pound of jar raisins stoned and chopped, a glass of rich sweet wine, and five eggs well beaten, with a little salt. Mix all thoroughly together, and boil it in a basin or mould for three hours. Sift fine sugar over it when sent to table, and pour white wine sauce into the dish.

Several other british families with Germanic names also followed George V's lead, probably the best known being the Battenburgs who changed their name to Mountbatten. Battenberg or battenburg cake, with its distinctive, two-coloured, chequer-board construction, despite its name certainly originates in England, and cakes of that type, albeit with other names, date back to at least the early 19th century.



The Battenburg name supposedly was adopted in honour of the marriage of Princess Victoria, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, to Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1884, and certainly Cassel’s 'Dictionary of Cookery' gives a recipe for "Battenberg Cake" in the 1883 edition, but this for a more traditional iced fruit cake.

Battenburg Cake.
Crush four ounces of almonds with one egg and two table-spoonfuls of rum; then put twelve ounces of sugar with twelve yolks of eggs into a pan. Beat this until it is frothy, then add the crushed almonds, two ounces of currants, blanched and cleaned, and two ounces of mixed peel that has been passed through hot water.

Add slowly eight ounces of flour rubbed through a sieve. Mix slowly, putting in the ten whites of eggs whipped firm. Finish with six ounces of good melted butter. Cook in a plum-cake mould, buttered. Turn it out of mould to cool. Soak it in kummel, brush over with apricot jelly, and ice with fondant or syrup of kummel. Sprinkle the sides and top with chopped pistachios. Probable cost, 3s. 6d.

At the same time the distinctive two-coloured cake that we would nowadays recognise as a Battenburg cake had a variety of names such as "Domino Cake", "Neapolitan Roll"or "Church Window Cake" up until the early 1900s. For example this illustration for "Gateau à la Domino" appears in the July 1898 edition of the Victorian food and housekeeping magazine 'The Table', published and edited by Mrs Agnes Berthe Marshall,



The first modern recipe for a Battenberg Cake bearing the name seems to be this one which appears in the 'Saleable Shop Goods for Counter-Tray and Window' by Frederick T Vine (1907) which was a guide aimed at professional cake-makers:

No. 198 Battenburg Cake. Take the Genoese cake batter (Nos. 191 or 192), divide it in two; colour one half pink with carmine, and leave the other plain; spread separately over a sheet ofpaper and bake to about one inch thick. When done, take oflf the paper, and cut up into square strips; then lay them alternately chess-board fashion, sandwiching them together with any kind of preserve - for the bottom layer, say two white and one red in the centre; for the second, two red and a white in the centre; and on top of that the same as the bottom layer.
 


When you have fixed them all together so (Fig. 98), make up the Almond Paste (No. 11), roll it out in a sheet, and after spreading some preserve upon the built-up square of cake, roll it round outside of the cake. Pinch along the edges and decorate with the point of a knife or skewer, by scratching a design upon it. The almond paste must not be too thick, or it will not look nice. Then either cut the cake up into inch sections, or sell whole at 1s. per lb.

There's an interesting discussion all about Battenberg Cake on Ivan Day's Food History Jottings blog. As he says, "What is overlooked in all the Battenburg Cake myths is that there were actually two weddings between English princesses and Battenburg princes. The first was that of Princess Victoria, Queen Victoria's grandaughter, to Louis of Battenberg in 1884. The second took place the following year, when Louis's brother Henry married Queen Victoria's youngest child Beatrice. The bride cake illustrated is that presented to Henry and Beatrice at their wedding in 1885. When they cut this remarkable cake, I wonder if there was a pattern of red-white-red-white running all the way through it."

The cake for Henry of Battenberg and Princess Beatrice's wedding in 1885:

Wow - that is the best cake I've ever seen.

Excellent post, as ever, MM.

PS I once saw a rather large man in Torquay wearing a tee shirt with this emblazoned on it:

Great stuff as ever, MM.

Do you know if battenberg cakes were called that throughout WWI, during that time when 'german' biscuits became 'empire' and 'german shepherds' turned into 'alsatians'? If it did, I wonder why it escaped semantic de-germanification?

A good question, Ferval. I can find no evidence that battenberg cakes were renamed during WW1. Certainly recipe books published shortly after the war were still/again calling it battenberg ... but that doesn't mean that some people, perhaps nervous cake-shop owners who didn't want their windows smashed, didn't choose to call them something different during the war, and as I've said above, other names were in common usage at least until just a decade earlier.

Incidentally whereas modern battenberg cake is usually made as a simple 2x2 array, most old battenberg recipes suggest a 3x3 array, as in Frederick Vine's 1907 recipe given above. A 3x3 array seems to have still be de rigeur at least until the 1920s ... this photo is from Richard Bond's 'Ship's Baker' (1923):



But in the 1930s the number of squares seems to have increased rather than diminished if this photo of a 5x5 array battenburg (on the right) in the 1936 edition of Vine's book is anything to go by,



... although to be honest these are all from an exhibition of the bakers art, rather than something the average home cook might be expected to rustle up for Sunday high tea.

Caro, 'On this day in history' wrote:

28th July, 1586:  The first potatoes arrive in England, courtesy of Colombia, brought in by Sir Thomas Harriot, who was a scientist and mathematician.

So for a dish of the day here's a very early, indeed possibly the earliest, recipe for a potato dish to be published in England. It's from Thomas Dawson's 'The Good Huswifes Jewell', first published in 1594: this is from the 1596 edition. Rather than a using the Virginia potato or common spud (Solanum tuberosum) Dawson almost certainly intended his recipe to use the Carribean sweet potato (Ipomea batata) which was then the more common and preferred tuber, although that is rather over-stating it as both types of potato were still very rare exotics and the humble spud would not become a common field crop in England for nearly another two hundred years. However given all the other ingredients (wine, dates, quinces, eggs, sugar, spices, butter and "the braynes of three or foure cocke Sparrowes", I doubt it makes much difference what type of potato you use.

To make a tarte that is a courage to a man or woman.
Take twoo Quinces, and twoo or three Burre rootes [borage root], and a potaton, and pare your Potaton, and scrape your rootes and put them into a quart of wine, and let them boyle till they bee tender, & put in an ounce of Dates, and when they be boyled tender, Drawe them through a strainer, wine and all, and then put in the yolkes of eight Egges, and the braynes of three or foure cocke Sparrowes, and straine them into the  other, and a little Rose Water, and seeth them all with suger, Cinamon and Gynger, and Cloues and mace, and put in a little sweet butter, and set it vpon a chafingdish of coles betweene two platters, and so let it boyle till it be something bigge.

Yuk, that sounds unutterably vile. I'm trying to visualise what you would end up with, does the 'something bigge' suggest it would rise? Or set into something cakey? If the whites of the eggs were whisked and added, would it be a souffle? The method isn't that dissimilar.
I'm surprised Heston hasn't got sparrow brain and potato pudding on his menu yet, he either can't have seen this dish or is having a problem sourcing free range speugs.

Yup, how to ruin some tatties. I'm not sure exactly what he meant when he says it is "To make a tarte that is a courage to a man or woman", but once I'd read that my hopes weren't high. It could have come out something like a sweet and fruity Spanish omelette, which might actually have been quite nice (having omitted the sparrow brains), except the instructions say to sieve out all the pieces of fruit and potato, to leave what ...  just an eggy, spicy, sweet, liquid mush, to be then cooked, as you say, a bit like a souffle or omelette?

Incidentally the savoury, potato-based, Spanish omelette, the tortilla de papas, only seems to date from the beginning of the 19th century ... though probably that is because it was only then that potatoes were starting to be widely cultivated and eaten in Spain. The Spanish torta or batter cake/tart, whether filled with chopped/minced meat, fish, vegetables or fruit, certainly goes back to the 16th century. Charles V of Spain died after eating one in 1558.

Meles meles,

"tatties" Potatoes? In are dialect we have something similar: "toaten" (hmm not "oa") How difficult to let hear the sound of a vowel...especially the dialect one...a bit like the "au" of sauce?

"Charles V of Spain died after eating one in 1558."

Yes, our Charles V from Ghent (Carlos I for the Spaniards). You will not believe it but on the French messageboard Passion Histoire there was a Spaniard, who said to be the descendant of one accompagning Charles from The Netherlands. (to San Just?) As there were not that much, I was able by the similarity of the name to find out that it was the Doctor (medical) of Charles from Bruges. It is still somewhere on Passion Histoire and if necessary I can find it again.

Kind regards from Paul.

I read the instructions as push through a sieve to make a puree rather than strain out the lumps.

There has been a bit of a sooshie in the press recently about the correct ingredients of a Spanish omelette. Someone, possibly Jamie Oliver, had published a recipe containing chorizo which prompted shrieks of horror from the culinary establishment who pronounced that only potatoes could be used: even a little bit of onion was decreed heretical. I can't immediately think of any British dishes which are so immune from any kind of variation as Spanish or Italian often ones seem to be, I wonder why? Is it because we have such a well developed tradition of adopting - nicking - and then adapting any other cuisines that we fancy? And since we're British, and therefore must be right, ignore any complaints from the originators? Spag bol, chicken tika masala, almost anything from the local Chinese restaurant, all are bastardised versions developed away from their homelands to meet British tastes but are there any 'foreinignified' British dishes served anywhere apart from in the old colonial countries, afternoon tea with cake for instance?

I don't know if this counts but when I worked in Hong Kong I usually ate most meals out which obviously meant eating mainly Cantonese food. This included, for example, having a bowl of congee (savoury rice porridge) for breakfast from a small corner place near my flat. Like many ex-pats, however, once in a while one's palate would tire of the local cuisine and one would long to dine à l'européen for a change. On one such evening I tried a 'pub' which promised British fare. I ordered a pint of ale from the bar and then steak and chips from the menu. How would I like my steak? Medium rare of course.

I happily took my seat and sipped my beer in anticipation and shortly afterwards my supper arrived and looked super. There was a small bowl of chips (well they were French fries) but they were hot and fresh. And there was a big plate with an huge rib-eye on it covered in pepper sauce with perfectly grilled tomatoes and plump sauteed mushrooms on the side. The waiter even provided me with a fork and a serrated steak knife. After joyfully savouring a couple of fries and a mushroom I cut into the steak. The black streaks from the griddle on the outside gave way to reveal a luscious pink interior. An exquisitely chargrilled piece of Scotch fillet.

It was only when the first forkful entered my mouth, however, that the ugly truth suddenly revealed itself. The 'pepper sauce' covering the entire steak was in fact a very sweet and sticky plum and soy sauce but with a few green peppercorns stirred through it. Just ruined!

Vizzer,

"The black streaks from the griddle on the outside gave way to reveal a luscious pink interior. An exquisitely chargrilled piece of Scotch fillet.
It was only when the first forkful entered my mouth, however, that the ugly truth suddenly revealed itself. The 'pepper sauce' covering the entire steak was in fact a very sweet and sticky plum and soy sauce but with a few green peppercorns stirred through it. Just ruined!"

Yes Vizzer ruining such a steak is a capital sin...

"How would I like my steak? Medium rare of course."

I personally would say rather between medium and rare, even more to the rare side. (in my Collins paperback: they explain the word as: very lighty cooked....cooked for God's sake...)
I have not that much experience with the eat customs of the English, but due to my work and holidays the more with the Germans and I saw that most of them wanted the steak (ruined , my opinion) "well-done" (they say in the same Collins: cooked thoroughly) as I experienced from the Dutch. No give me the French/Belgian way anytime...

About cooking meat, we would rather say roast (braden) (cook (koken))?

Kind regards, Paul.

PS: about Hong Kong...we had a factory in Curitiba near Sao Paulo Bresil...but I never made it to there, while there were higher level guys, who wanted to have priority...

24 August 1572 – The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

The Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye had put an end to three years of terrible civil war in France between Catholics and Protestants. The peace, however, was precarious since the more intransigent Catholics refused to accept it while many Hugenots still thought it hadn't gone far enough in respecting their position. In particular staunch Catholics opposed the return of the prominent Protestant families to court and were especially incensed by the re-admittance of the Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, to the king's privy council. But while the queen mother, Catherine de Medici, and her son, Charles IX, were both Catholic, they were also practical in their support of peace and of Coligny. Both were very conscious of the kingdom's financial difficulties and the Huguenots' strong defensive position in their control of the key fortified towns of La Rochelle, La Charité-sur-Loire, Cognac and Montauban. To cement the peace between the two religious parties, Catherine planned to marry her daughter Margaret to the Protestant prince, Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV), son of Queen Jeanne d’Albert of Navarre, the treaty’s principal broker. The royal marriage was arranged for 18 August 1572.

The impending marriage led to the gathering of a large number of well-born Protestants in Paris, who had come to escort their prince. But Paris was a violently anti-Huguenot city and, encouraged by Catholic preachers, Parisians were vocal in their outrage at the forthcoming marriage of a princess of France with a Protestant. Compounding this bad feeling was the fact that the harvest had been poor and so both food prices and taxes had risen. The luxury displayed on the occasion of the royal wedding further increased tensions among the common people.

The court itself was extremely divided. Catherine had not obtained Pope Gregory XIII's permission to celebrate this irregular marriage (the Pope was understandably against it) and consequently the French prelates hesitated over what attitude to adopt. In the end it took all the queen mother's skill to convince the Cardinal de Bourbon (paternal uncle of the Protestant groom, but himself a Catholic clergyman) to marry the couple. Beside this, long-standing rivalries between the leading families re-emerged and the Guises were not prepared to make way for their rivals, the House of Montmorency.  François, Duke de Montmorency and governor of Paris, was unable to control the disturbances in the city and, faced with a dangerous developing situation, he simply elected to leave Paris a few days before the wedding.

The wedding itself however passed off without major incident on 18 August 1572. The Hugenot leader, Coligny and other prominent Huguenots then intended to remain in Paris for a few days to discuss some outstanding grievances about the Peace of Saint-Germain with the king. But on 22 August, an attempt was made on Coligny's life as he made his way back to his house from the Louvre Palace. He was shot from an upstairs window and seriously wounded. The would-be assassin escaped in the ensuing confusion and, though there was no shortage of staunchly Catholic candidates, it is still not certain who was ultimately responsible for the attack.

The attempted assassination of Coligny was the trigger that led to the massacre. Admiral de Coligny was the most respected Huguenot leader and enjoyed a close relationship with the king, although he was distrusted by the king's mother. Aware of the danger of reprisals from the Protestants, the king and his court visited Coligny on his sickbed and promised him that the culprits would be found and punished. That evening while the queen mother was eating dinner, Protestants burst in to demand justice, some talking in menacing terms. Fears of Huguenot reprisals grew. Coligny's brother-in-law was camped just outside Paris with a 4,000-strong army and although there is no evidence he was planning to attack, Catholics in the city understandably feared that this force might take revenge on the Guises or the city populace itself.

On the following evening (23 August, St. Bartholomew’s eve) Catherine de Medici went to see the king to discuss the crisis. Though no details of the meeting survive, Charles IX and his mother apparently made the decision to eliminate the principal Protestant leaders. Shortly after this decision, the municipal authorities of Paris were summoned. They were ordered to shut the city gates and arm the citizenry to prevent any attempt at a Protestant uprising. The king's Swiss Guard was given a list of leading Protestants to be killed and it seems that their signal was given by the bells for matins (between midnight and dawn) at the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, near the Louvre, which was the parish church of the kings of France. The Swiss guards promptly dragged the Protestant nobles from the Louvre castle and then slaughtered them in the streets outside. A group led by Guise in person dragged Admiral Coligny from his bed, killed him, and threw his body out of the window.

From a contemporary and widely circulated print by Franz Hogenberg - Coligny's attempted assasination is at left while his ultimate murder and defenestration are at right, meanwhile there is general bloody violence in the streets:



The tension that had been building now exploded in a wave of popular violence. The common people began to hunt Protestants, including women and children, throughout the city. The bodies of the dead were collected in carts and thrown into the Seine. The massacre in Paris lasted three days despite the king's attempts to stop it. The two leading Huguenot princes, Henry of Navarre and his cousin the Prince of Condé (respectively aged 19 and 20) were spared as they pledged to convert to Catholicism, but both renounced their conversions after they escaped Paris.

On August 26 the king and his council established the official version of events by declaring before the Parlement de Paris that he had “ordered the massacre in order to thwart a Huguenot plot against the royal family.” A thanksgiving celebration and procession were then held … meanwhile elsewhere in the city the killings continued. The slaughter spread outward from Paris to other urban centres and the countryside, and continued sporadically for several weeks. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000. The massacre also marked a turning point in the French Wars of Religion. The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, as well as many re-conversions by the rank and file, while those who remained were increasingly radicalized. Though by no means unique it was the worst of the century's religious massacres. Throughout Europe it printed on Protestant minds the indelible conviction that Catholicism was a bloody and treacherous religion.

Given the scale and savagery of the slaughter it is perhaps gruesomely apt that St Bartholomew, Bartholomew the Apostle, is the patron saint (amongst several other saints) of butchers and slaughter-house workers, and his supposed martyrdom by being flayed alive means he is also the patron saint of leather workers. Here’s St Bartholomew as depicted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, clutching his own skin but otherwise looking none the worse for having been flayed alive.



In London St Bartholomew is probably best known for the long-established hospital, St Barts, that bears his name. Barts traces its history to the foundation of an Augustianian Priory in 1123 by the cleric and courtier at Henry I’s court, Rahere, in gratitude for his recovery from fever. His fabled miraculous return to good health contributed to the priory gaining a reputation for curative powers and as a centre for healing. The priory church was dedicated to St Bartholomew, and the fabric of the original structure still exists in part, as the parish church of St Bartholomew-the-Great at Smithfield (St Bartholomew-the-Less is close by and was the hospital chapel). The Priory exercised its right to enclose land between Aldersgate (to the east), Long Lane (to the north) and modern-day Newgate Street (to the south), erecting its main western gate as an opening onto Smithfield. The Priory thereafter held the manorial rights to hold weekly fairs which initially took place in its outer court. An additional annual celebration, the Bartholomew Fair, was established by royal charter in 1133 and this over time became one of London's pre-eminent summer fairs, opening each year on 24 August, St Bartholomew's Feast Day. The fair was originally chartered to be a three-day event but by the 17th century it had developed to last a full two weeks, until being shortened again to only four days in 1691. As well as being a trading event, originally mostly for cloth and luxury goods, it was also a pleasure fair, the event drawing vast crowds from all classes of English society. Inevitably it became notorious as a magnet for all types of vice, debauchery, crime and public disorder. The fair was finally suppressed in 1855 by the City authorities.

Since the Middle Ages, adjacent to these priory lands there was a broad grassy area running along the outside of London Wall from Aldersgate, where the Great North Road entered the city, and stretching to the eastern bank of the River Fleet. Given its ease of access to grazing and water, Smooth Field, or Smithfield as it became known, became established as London's principal livestock market. As early as 1174 the site was described by William Fitzstephen as: "a smooth field where every Friday there is a celebrated rendezvous of fine horses to be traded, and in another quarter are placed vendibles of the peasant, swine with their deep flanks, and cows and oxen of immense bulk.”

Between 1740 and 1750 the average yearly sales at Smithfield were reported to be around 74,000 cattle and 570,000 sheep. By the middle of the 19th century, in the course of a single year 220,000 head of cattle and 1,500,000 sheep would be, "violently forced into an area of five acres, in the very heart of London, through its narrowest and most crowded thoroughfares". The volume of cattle driven daily to Smithfield started to raise major concerns and in the mid 19th century there was a move to relocate the livestock market well outside of the expanding city due to its extremely poor hygienic conditions as well as the brutal treatment of the animals.

“Of all the horrid abominations with which London has been cursed, there is not one that can come up to that disgusting place, West Smithfield Market, for cruelty, filth, effluvia, pestilence, impiety, horrid language, danger, disgusting and shuddering sights, and every obnoxious item that can be imagined; and this abomination is suffered to continue year after year, from generation to generation, in the very heart of the most Christian and most polished city in the world.” Thomas Maslen 'Suggestions for the Improvement of Our Towns and Houses' (1843).

The old open air Smithfield Market in 1855, from the 'Illustrated London News' (1855).



Yet despite all the pressure to relocate, as well as the attractions of cheaper land, better transport links and more modern facilities outside of central London, Smithfield market, albeit now in a covered building complex, is still primarily a wholesale meat market supplying inner city butchers, shops and restaurants. Although The Worshipful Company of Butchers has moved its premises several times over the centuries (most notably in 1666 when they were burned out of their location in Pudding Lane) they currently have their guildhall adjacent to the church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in Smithfield, and this functions as the guild church. Their annual guild dinner, held on Bartlemass, that is St Bartholomew’s Day, traditionally features amongst other suitably meaty fare, a great roast of British beef.

So for Dish of the Day here’s Hannah Wolley’s recipe for "Bartlemas beef", from her 'Cook’s Guide' (1664). Note that she uses "rare" in its sense of being of uncommonly good quality, rather than being lightly cooked, and presumably from the instructions she intends it to be for salted beef.

To make rare Bartlemas beef.
Take a fat Brisket piece of beef and bone it, put it into so much water as will cover it, shifting it three times a day for three dayes together, then put it into as much white wine and vinegar as will cover it,and when it hath lyen twenty-four hours take it out and drye it in a cloth, then take nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and mace, of each a like quantity, beaten small and mingled with a good handful of salt, strew both sides of the Beef with this, and roul it up as you do Brawn, tye it as close as you can; then put it into an earthen pot, and cover it with some paste; set it in the Oven with household bread, and when it is cold, eat it with mustard and sugar.

Meles meles,

thank you very much for this splendid narration about the context and it is the best that I read about the event and I read many, when studying the religious wars in France, even from the time of the old BBC board.
If it is completely yours, congratulations for the text and the good English language

And, when one speaks about religious wars one thinks always at the German speaking part of Europe and the Low Countries, but even in the time of the old BBC board I found out, although nowadays with that more information on the internet it is much more easier, that there were even 8 wars of religion in France:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion

And specifically on the Bartholomeus night I read some months ago a novel about the period:
https://www.amazon.fr/Rapines-Guise-Guerre-trois-Henri/dp/2253128562
from
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_d%27Aillon 

And also about Catherina de Medicis:
https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/2262030715/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=infohistoire-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1642&creative=19458&creativeASIN=2262030715

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

..... congratulations for the text and the good English language.

Well Paul, L'Anglais étais ma langue maternelle ... although now I do find it increasingly hard to remember certain English words and expressions (and how to spell them), but maybe that's just old age.

And I'll own up, before I'm found out, and state that while I knew the basic history of La Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy, I did actually copy a lot of the above narrative direct from wiki.

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

..... congratulations for the text and the good English language.

Well Paul, Anglais étais ma langue maternelle ... although now I do find it increasingly hard to remember certain English words and expressions (and how to spell them), but maybe that's just old age.

And I'll own up, before I'm found out, and state that while I knew the basic history of La Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy, I did in actually copy a lot of the above narrative direct from wiki.

Thank you very much for your honest answer and to be fair I collect it nowadays nearly all from the internet too, just select my choice to avoid all the crab of the nowadays internet and try to "compose" my narration as logical as possible, adding some own comments.

Nevertheless with esteem for all what I read from you on this forum.

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

11 September 1714. After a 14-month-long siege the city of Barcelona surrendered to a combined Spanish and French army in the War of the Spanish Succession. The defeat marked the end of the Principality of Catalonia as a political entity and the event is now commemorated as the National Day of Catalonia (Diada Nacional de Catalunya), although obviously not as a day of celebration but rather as a day of remembrance.

The War of the Spanish Succession pitted the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria (backed by Britain and the Netherlands: the so-called the Grand Alliance), against the Bourbon claimant Philip of Spain (backed by France) in a contest for the Spanish crown. In 1705 during the early part of the war Barcelona, the capital of the Pricipality of Catalonia, had fallen to the forces of Archduke Charles. The Principality, as well as the other States of the Kingdom of Aragon, quickly accepted Charles as their new king. Charles (as Charles III) summoned the Catalan Corts, the Catalan Parliament, and it voted to defend the city (and Catalan independence) against the Franco-Spanish forces of Philip V of Spain.

With Charles’s army now bolstered by Catalan soldiers, Philip’s forces were not strong enough to attempt a recapture of the city until July 1713 when the Treaty of Utrecht meant that Catalonia (alongside Majorca) were the only countries still fighting for Charles. By the end of July 1713 Barcelona was completely surrounded by Bourbon forces, but lacking artillery they still could not attempt a direct assault until May 1714 when a 20,000 man reinforcement force arrived.


"The Assault on the main body of the place", on 11 September 1714. Engraving by Jacques Rigaud.

The final assault started before dawn on 11 September with an artillery barrage which breached the city walls in several places. During bitter street fighting, Antoni de Villarroel, the commander of the Army of Catalonia, as well as Rafael Casanova, the commander of the Coronela (the urban militia) were both seriously wounded. To prevent further bloodshed the civic and military leaders initiated surrender negociations mindful that Philip, fearing prolonged resistance, was keen to exact harsh revenge on the civilian population. The city formally capitulated on the 12 September with Philip finally accepting to respect the lives of the city’s inhabitants.

The defeat marked the end of the Principality of Catalonia as a political entity, as its independent institutions and legislation were subsequently suppressed and replaced by Castilian ones. The event is commemorated as the National Day of Catalonia, although obviously not as a day of celebration but as a day of remembrance and for continued action to regain Catalan independence from Spain. Throughout the day there are political marches, patriotic demonstrations, and wreaths are laid at monuments to those who defended the city, particularly at the Fossar de les Moreres, a plaza in Barcelona built over one of the mass-graves from 1714. There are also fireworks, concerts, sardanes (a traditional dance), processions of gégants (giant figures), and competitions of castelliers (human towers). Red and gold are the colours of the day and there is much waving of the senyeres or estelades (Catalan flags).

As far as I am aware there is no particular dish or meal traditionally associated with the Diada Nacional de Catalunya. Nevertheless Catalonia does have a very distinctive cuisine. A popular meal, indeed it's almost a Catalan staple, is the simple snack pa amb tomàquet  ('bread with tomato') which is just bread, which may or not be toasted, rubbed with tomato and seasoned with olive oil and salt. Two dishes that often feature at simple outdoor barbeque parties are calçots and cargols. Calçots are a local variety of onion, a bit like a particularly plump spring onion or leek, which are harvested green in spring and early summer. At a calçotada (a communal calçot barbeque) they are put on a giddle and roasted over a wood fire (preferably made of sarments de vigne – the woody trimmings from pruned grape vines) to char the outer leaves and roast the flesh. The charred layer is then removed and the tender part of the onion is dipped into a salvitxada sauce. Salvitxada is a sauce of red-pepper, tomato and ground nuts (typically any mixture of roasted or raw almonds, pine nuts and/or hazelnuts), roasted garlic, vinegar and olive oil, and thickened with bread crumbs. Cargols, eaten at a cargolada, are snails (typically ordinary garden snails rather than the bigger Bourgundian ones), cooked in their shells over charcoal, and again eaten with just bread and salvitxada, or possibly accompanied with esclivada, that is a dish of baked red peppers, aubergines and onions, seasoned with parsley and chives, and dressed with a red wine vinegar and olive oil.

And to follow how about crema Catalana? that is a local variation of the French crème brullée, usually flavoured with vanilla and orange but sometimes around here lightly flavoured with anise.

Crema Catalana (for 6-8 dishes).
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons (15 g) of cornstarch
2¼ cups of whole milk
A big slice of peel from a lemon and an orange (not the zest, but rather big slices of the peel)
½ a cinnamon stick
4 large egg yolks
¼ cup + 2 tablespoons superfine sugar
Additional sugar to caramelize on top

Method:
Put the milk on the stove in a small saucepan, along with the citrus peels and the cinnamon stick. Slowly bring to a boil.
Dissolve the cornstarch in a splash of water and set aside.
While the milk is slowly heating, beat the egg yolks with the sugar, until the mixture turns pale yellow. Beat in the dissolved cornstarch and a spoonful of the hot milk.
Remove the citrus peels and cinnamon stick from the hot milk, and lower the heat.
Slowly add the egg yolk mixture to the milk, making sure to keep stirring so that the eggs don't scramble!
Stir constantly over a low heat, until the mixture has thickened.
Remove from the heat and pour the mixture into traditional clay dishes or ramekins.
Allow the custard to cool, and then chill the crema catalanas for about four hours (preferably overnight).
Before serving, let it come to room temperature, then sprinkle a thin, evenly spread, layer of sugar on top of each ramekin. Caramelize with a small kitchen blowtorch (or to be truly authentic use a 'salamandre' ie hot iron disk.

I was rather rushed when I wrote that bit about the Siege of Barcelona and the Diada de Catalunya (11 September), and my comments about Catalan cuisine in particular were rather perfunctory, especially so as I live in north Catalonia (the French bit). So here's a wee bit more.

The heyday of independent Catalonia was roughly from the 12th to 14th centuries and particularly after 1137 when it became unified under a single dynasty with the neighbouring kingdom of Aragon. However, while politically unified, Aragon and Catalonia retained their own governments, legal traditions and languages. By the end of the 13th century the Kingdom of Aragon had grown to become a confederation of essentially autonomous states: the kingdoms/principalities of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca (including all the Balearic islands), Sardinia and Corsica. Sat strategically between France to the north, Italy to east, Castile to the west and Islamic Spain and North Africa to the south, the empire controlled trade in the western Mediterranean. Inevitably the cuisine was affected by all these influences.

One of the first printed cookery books in Europe was 'Libre del Coch' which was first published in 1520 in Barcelona, and was written in Catalan. The author was given only as "Maestre Robert", who identified himself as the cook to "Ferrando, King of Naples". The book was extremely successful: in the 16th century it was republished four more times in Catalan, and ten times in Spanish. The first Spanish edition, in 1525, entitled 'Libro de Cozina', called the author Ruperto de Nola, and he has been referred to by that name ever since. However the author's identity and nationality are still matters of speculation. He may well have been Catalan since he wrote in that language, but if "de Nola" was truly his surname then he may have been an Italian, from the city of Nola in the province of Naples. The king "Ferrando" that he claimed to have served was probably Ferrante I, King of Naples from 1458-1494.

An English translation of 'Libre del Coch' is available here.

A quick glance through it shows that many of the sauce recipes are based on nuts ground with herbs and vegetables, and sometimes further thickened with breadcrumbs. So rather like Italian pesto sauces, and indeed very much in the same way that Catalan salvitxada sauce, mentioned above, is made (although of course unlike salvitxada none of the recipes in 'Libre del Coch' use red peppers or tomatoes as these were unknown until the discovery of the New World).

A characteristic of Catalan cuisine - although of course not uniquely so - is what is know as munt i mar (‘mountain and sea’) meaning the combination of ingredients from the mountainous interior with seafood from both the coast and wider sea. Hence a Catalan or Valencia paella-type dish, rather than being principally of chicken, fish, prawns and mussels, traditionally contains rabbit and snails along with the seafood. As it is often, quite correctly, said (especially in tourist brochures) that here one can go skiing in the morning and then swimming in the Mediterranean after lunch, a 'munt y mar' dish might perhaps have been more representative of the region.

So here’s a recipe from the latest edition (no.88, June 2017) of the local glossy cultural magazine 'Terres Catalanes', (my translation from the French). The ingredients clearly demonstrate the concept of mixing diverse ingredients from throughout the region, as well as the medieval-like method of thickening the sauce with a 'picada' based on ground nuts.

Munt i Mar (for 6 people)

Ingredients:
150 snails (the so-called 'petits gris', ie ordinary garden snails, cleaned and par-boiled but still in their shells)
250g squid, cut into rings
1 rabbit, cut into 6 pieces
12 langoustines (or big prawns) whole
200g fresh pork sausage (not dried or smoked saucisse)
3 onions
1 pepper, red or green
4 or 5 tomatoes, well ripe
1 bouquet garni with a whole clove of garlic
1 small glass of Pastis
1 glass of Banyuls wine (or port or sherry)
Half glass cognac (or any local marc)

For the 'picada'
50g split almonds
1 clove garlic

In a small pan simmer the onions, pepper and tomatoes for about 30 mins until soft.
In a large pan heat some olive oil and fry the snails for several minutes then flame with Pastis. Remove the snails and put aside.
To the pan add first the squid, then the sausage then the rabbit and fry until lightly browned. Deglace with the Banyuls.
Add the reserved snails and cooked vegetables, and simmer gentle for about an hour.
Meanwhile prepare the picada: peel the almonds and garlic, add a little of the juice from the cooking meat/veg, and grind together to a coarse paste.
Just before serving quickly cook the langustines for a few minutes in a oiled pan and finally flame them with cognac.
Stir in the picada and add the langustines to the top of the dish.

It is of course a meal to be essentially eaten with the fingers (and a snail pin) and so although the recipe in 'Terres Catalanes' gives no suggestions, I would serve it very simply with a crusty pain de compagne, and of course a bottle of local wine.

Meles meles,

I always enjoy your combined historical recepts...I then quickly do the research about all what you said ...I mean about the historical part...sometimes I study again the whole period...
And especially this one as we had connections with Spain via the Habsburgs: our Charles V and later the Philip II
I wanted to ask if the Spanish recept was similar to "Crème brûlée" and see now when I read it completely that you already mentioned it in your message.
Our "créme brûlée"
http://cuisine.journaldesfemmes.com/recette/314157-creme-brulee

But we mostly caramelize it with a "kitchenburner?"

About Catalonia...two years ago I was in Barcelona with the grand-children....yes walked in "that" street...we were with a (female) friend of the grand-daughter, who lived there in function of her work (yes with "her" you could have seen too that she was female ).
She said that many made such a fuss about the independence, but that generally many laughed with the extremists...perhaps a bit the Belgian way...

Kind regards, Paul.

15 September 1830 – the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The L.M.R. was the first railway to rely exclusively on steam power, with no horse-drawn traffic permitted at any time; the first to be entirely double-track throughout its length, and the first to have a signalling system (both major safety features); the first to provide a regular scheduled service with a printed timetable; and the first to carry mail.


The Duke of Wellington's train prepares to depart from Liverpool station.

The opening day was a major public event. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the Prime Minister, rode on one of the eight inaugural trains, along with many other dignitaries and notable figures of the day, while huge crowds lined the track at Liverpool to watch the trains depart for Manchester. The trains left Liverpool on time and without any technical problems. The Duke of Wellington's special train, with George Stephenson himself in the driving seat, ran on one track, and the other seven trains ran on an adjacent and parallel track, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind the Duke's train.

Around 13 miles out of Liverpool the first of many problems occurred, when one of the trains derailed and the following train collided with it. But with no reported injuries or damage, the derailed locomotive was lifted back onto the track and the journey continued. At Parkside railway station, near the midpoint of the line, the locomotives made a scheduled stop to take on water. Although the railway staff advised passengers to remain on the trains while this took place, around 50 of the dignitaries on board alighted when the Duke of Wellington's special train stopped. One of those who got off was William Husskisson MP who approached the Duke's railway carriage to shake his hand. Distracted by the Duke, he did not notice an approaching locomotive, Rocket, on the adjacent track. On realising it was approaching he panicked and tried to clamber into the Duke's carriage, but the door of the carriage swung open outwards leaving him hanging directly in the path of the oncoming Rocket. He fell onto the tracks in front of the train, suffering serious leg injuries and dying later that night.

The Duke of Wellington felt that the remainder of the day's events should be cancelled following the accident at Parkside, and proposed to return to Liverpool. However, a large crowds had gathered in Manchester to see the trains arrive, and was beginning to become unruly. Wellington was persuaded to continue to Manchester. By the time the trains reached the outskirts of Manchester the crowd had become hostile and was spilling onto the tracks. With local authorities unable to clear the tracks, the trains were obliged to drive at low speed and push their way through the crowd. Eventually they arrived at the terminus in Manchester to be met by a hostile crowd, who waved banners and flags against the Duke and pelted him with vegetables. Wellington refused to get off the train, and ordered that the trains return to Liverpool. Mechanical failures and an inability to turn the locomotives meant that some of the trains were unable to leave Manchester. While the Duke of Wellington's train left successfully, only three of the remaining seven locomotives were usable. These three locomotives slowly hauled a single long train of 24 carriages back to Liverpool, eventually arriving 6 ½ hours late after having been pelted with objects by the drunken crowds lining the track.

Although the opening certainly wasn’t an unqualified success, the hostle crowds, demonstrations and the death of Husskisson certainly drew attention to the event and to the possibilities for rapid mass transport that railways offered. Within a few decades railway lines criss-crossed the country and rail travel was becoming commonplace even amongst the lower classes.

As the rail network enlarged and journeys became longer, facilities offering food and drink to passengers duly appeared at stations. But such catering establishments were usually viewed by the railway companies as a inconvenience, hampering their drive for greater speed and tight schedules. Stops at stations were usually very short with sometimes just sixty seconds being allowed for passengers to board or disembark, and for the hungry to alight, rush to the kiosk, select, buy and pay for their snack, and then scramble back on their train. Understandably the food available at stations was unlikely to be of the highest gastronomic standard. And so the infamous British railway sandwich was born, still much the same today as when it was described in 1866 by the novelist Anthony Trollope in 'Travelling Sketches':

"The real disgrace of England is the railway sandwich - that whited sepulchre, fair enough outside, but so meagre, poor, and spiritless within, such a thing of shreds and parings, with a dab of food."

Accordingly mid 19th century tourist guide-books gave travellers almost as much advice about coping with the voyage as suggestions of what to visit when they got to their destination. 'Hints to Railway Travellers, and country visitors to London, by an Old Stager' (1852), advises,

“Carry your own provisions, by which means you can dine when you are hungry instead of when the railway directors think you ought to be. Chickens cut up, and tongue sliced, with bread,biscuits, cakes and so on are most convenient. Don’t forget the salt. Buy sandwiches if you do buy. The quickest Express generally gives time for drinking, but if you don t like getting out of the carriage, you can add sherry and water, or brandy and water, to the stock. Ask how long the train stops before you alight and on no account attempt to do so before it stops.”

So for today’s Dish of the Day I advise you to make your own sandwiches … or maybe make a Railway Pudding. This, I assume, rather than being an item to be purchased at a railway station cafe, was a small pudding made at home in preparation for the journey, to enable the ordeal of the railway buffet to be avoided. The recipe is from 'Pot-luck; or, The British home cookery book', by May Byron (1914).

Railway Puddings - Required, two ounces of butter beaten with a teacupful of flour; add a teacupful of castor sugar, a small tablespoonful of baking powder, half a teacupful of milk, and one egg. Bake fifteen to twenty minutes on two flat tins. Spread with jam and fold over.

It's two days late but after 700 years I don’t think it really matters.

13 October 1307 -  The suppression of the Templars.

Founded in 1119 'The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon', or simply the Knights Templar, were a monastic order of knights formed to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land. They guarded the roads, fought Saracens and robbers alike, established a chain of fortified bases and stopping points, and developed an international banking system which allowed pilgrims to travel without the need to carry quantities of coin with them. From its business dealings, charitable donations and bequests, and tax exemption, the order became powerful and very wealthy. Individual members however were sworn to poverty, as was emphasised by the order's emblem of two knights riding a single horse.



In 1307 King Philippe IV of France – deeply in debt to the order – took advantage of rumours about heretical initiation ceremonies and of financial malpractice to try and discredit the order and gain control over them. At dawn on Friday 13 October 1307 the king ordered the Order’s Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and many other leading French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The Templars were charged with heresy, idolatry, devil worship and homosexual practices, as well as numerous other secular offences such as financial corruption and fraud. Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture, and their confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal that discredited the integrity on which their entire banking system was based.

Relenting to Philippe’s threats and demands, Pope Clement issued a bull on 22 November 1307 which instructed Christian monarchs throughout Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Pope Clement did call for papal hearings to determine the Templar’s guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitor’s torture, many Templars recanted their confessions, but in France Philippe blocked this attempt and using the previously forced confessions, managed to get many dozens of Templars burned at the stake. Under continued pressure from Phillipe the Pope eventually complied with the French king’s wishes and agreed to disband the order. The Templar order was officially dissolved by papal bull in 1312. Most of their assets were handed over to the Knights Hospitallers and all King Philippe’s debts were cancelled.

So for today I propose the dish known in English as ‘Poor Knights’.

The origin of the name is unknown although it likely reflects the simple and economic nature of the dish, and it is certainly not unique to England: in Germany it is known as 'Armer Ritter' and in Finland as 'Koyhat Ritarit' – both meaning exactly the same as the English. The common English addition of '… of Windsor' is probably a reference to the 'Alms Knights of St Georges Chapel' who were a chantry or religious foundation formed by Edward III to give pensions and lodging at Windsor castle for gentlemen who had been ruined financially by having to ransom themselves after capture by the French at the battle of Crecy (1346). They still exist today and although no longer necessarily poor, they are all still military pensioners. They participate in the daily services in St George’s Chapel and in the processions of the Order of the Garter, although they are not knights of the Order itself.



The earlist recipe I can find under the name ‘Poor Knights’ is this one in 'The Compleat Cook' by ‘WM’ (1658):

To make poore knights.
Cut two penny loaves in round slices, dip them in half a pint of Cream or faire water, then lay them abroad in a dish, and beat three Eggs and grated Nutmegs and sugar, beat them with the Cream then melt some butter in a frying pan, and wet the sides of the toasts and lay them in on the wet side, then pour in the rest upon them, and so fry them, serve them in with Rosewater, sugar and butter.

For an 18th century one there's this, from 'A New and Easy Method of Cookery' by Elizabeth Cleland (1755).

Poor Knights of Windsor.
Take a Roll, and cut it into Slices; soke them in Sack [a fortified white wine], then dip them in Yolks of Eggs, and fry them; serve them up with beat Butter, Sack, and Sugar.

And here’s a very economic one from the days of wartime austerity. It appears along with several other recipes in an article in 'The Times' (1941) entitled 'COOKERY FOR CANTEENS -  AN ORGANIZERS RECIPES' It is a real loaves-and-fishes triumph – a sweet treat for 25 people using only 2 eggs, a pint of milk, a pot of jam and a large loaf of bread:

Poor Knights of Windsor - For 25 people
Two eggs, 1 quartern loaf, 2 lb. jam, 1 pint milk. Cut crust away from loaf, then cut slices of even size. Cut these again into fingers. Soak them in mixture of milk and eggs without allowing them to absorb too much. Drain and fry them in deep fat, golden brown. Spread them with hot jam and pile up in a hot dish. Good with hot treacle.

This is basically what these days would usually be known by the French name, pain perdu, ie 'lost bread’, a name that has been in use since at least the 14th century. Pain perdu may indicate that it is a way of using up stale bread that might otherwise be lost, alternatively it might be a corruption of pain pour Dieu , ie God’s bread, or even a corruption of pain fondu, ie 'melted bread', or pain foundue (Middle English) ie 'founded' or 'drowned' bread. Either way all these old recipes seem to be variations of eggy bread made by frying bread and then pouring on a mixture of egg and sweetened spices.

For example, from 'Forme of Cury' (circa 1380) there’s this one:

Paynfoundew -  Take brede and frye it in grece oþer in oyle. Take it vp and lay in rede wyne; grynde it with raisouns. Take hony and do it in a pot, and cast þerein gleyre of ayren [ white of eggs] wiþ a litel water, and bete it wele togider with a sklyse [a spatula or similar flat utensil]. Set it oure the fire and boile it, and whan the hatte arisith to goon oure [when it starts to foam over], take it adoun and kele [cool] it; when hit is almost colde, take of þe wyte wyt a sclyse [the egg whites with a spatula]. And whan it is þes clarified, do it to the oþere, with sugur and spices; salt it and loke it be stondyng [standing, ie firm/set]. Florissh [decorate] it with white coliaundre in confyt [coriander confits ie coriander seeds enrobed in sugar].

.... and from 'Countrey Contentments, or, The English Hus-wife' by Gervase Markham (1615) there’s this:

To make the best Pamperdy, Take a dozen Eggs, and break them, and beat them very well; then put unto them Cloves, Mace, Cinnamon, Nutmeg and good store of Sugar, with as much Salt as shall season it: then take a Manchet, and cut it into thick slices like Toasts; which done, take your Frying-pan, and put into it good store of sweet butter, and being mlted, lay in your slices of bread, then pour upon them one half of your Eggs, then when it is fryed, with a dish turn your slices of bread upward, and then pour on them the other half of your Eggs, and so turn them till both sides be brown; then dish it up, and serve it with Sugar strewed upon it.

Another name, perhaps in turn originating from the French name, pain perdue, is ‘French toast’. Here’s one of the earliest usages of the term French toast, in a recipe from 'The Accomplist Cook' by Robert May (1660):

French Toasts. Cut French bread, and toast it in pretty thick toasts on a clean gridiron, and serve them steeped in claret, sack, or any wine, with sugar and juyce of orange.

… which interestingly has no egg at all and so is just soggy bread soaked in wine and sweetened orange juice. Did he, or the printer, perhaps accidentally miss out the eggs?

Here’s an early US recipe taken from  'Godey's Magazine', Philadelphia, Volumes 72-73 (1866), edited by Louis Antoine Godey:

French Toast
Beat four eggs very light and stir with them a pint of milk, slice some baker's bread, dip the pieces into the egg, then lay them in a pan of hot lard and fry brown, sprinkle a little powdered sugar and cinnamon on each piece and serve hot. If nicely prepared this is an excellent dish for breakfast or tea quite equal to waffles.

And another from the 'Yorkshire Gazette' (16 April 1892):

A New Way to Cook Eggs - Prepare French toast by toasting piece of bread on one side only, and buttering while hot on the side that is not toasted. Over this spread a well beaten egg, seasoned with pepper and salt. Heat this gently before the fire.

But just to confuse things even more May Byron in 'Pot-luck; or, The British home cookery book' (1914) gives the name as a form of meat loaf:

361. FRENCH TOAST (Lancashire) One pound of beef, half a pint white bread-crumbs, half a pound of tomatoes. Mince the beef, mix with the bread crumbs and tomatoes chopped up (previously scalded to remove skins); bind with one beaten egg. Press into pillow form, place in a baking tin, cover, and bake one hour. Remove cover, put a little butter on the top, and let it bake until brown. Make a nice gravy.

But whatever recipe you choose to follow, today’s dish, Poor Knights, is basically just eggy bread.

Having just read the above, and as usual with interest MM, I checked and discovered that this very much looks like what in Denmark used to be called 'Arme Riddere' - the same words as the German version.
I may have had it in connection with a l brunch or so, but never as a child or in my youth. In one  description it is called a 'forgotten dish'.

18 October 1867 – The formal transfer of the Territory of Alaska from Russia to the United States.

The Russians had been looking to sell Alaska for some years as they considered it a drain on resources and didn't feel they could defend it adequately from the British should they be at war with them again. Additionally, although the Russians were aware that there was some gold in Alaska, this may only have given them all the more desire to sell it as they probably felt that hordes of Americans might just descend on the territory and take it anyway, as had happened in California. The Russians offered Alaska first to the British but they turned it down. The US government led by William H Seward, the Secretary of State, was more willing to make a deal, although many Americans thought it was a foolish idea.



On 30th March 1867 the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire for the sum of $7.2 million (2cents/acre), however it was not until October of that year that the commissioners arrived in Alaska and the formal transfer could take place. The flag-raising ceremony took place at Fort Sitka on 18th October 1867. The official account of the affair, as presented by General Lovell Rousseau to Secretary of State William H Seward, described the ceremony as follows:

"... The troops being promptly formed, were, at precisely half past three o'clock, brought to a 'present arms', the signal given to the [USS] Ossipee  ... which was to fire the salute, and the ceremony was begun by lowering the Russian flag ... The United States flag ... was properly attached and began its ascent, hoisted by my private secretary [and son], George Lovell Rousseau, and again salutes were fired as before, the Russian water battery leading off. The flag was so hoisted that in the instant it reached its place the report of the big gun of the Ossipee reverberated from the mountains around ... Captain Pestchouroff stepped up to me and said, 'General Rousseau, by authority from his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the Territory of Alaska' and in a few words I acknowledged the acceptance of the transfer, and the ceremony was at an end."

So, 'baked Alaska' would seem to be a suitable commemorative dish.

The most common claim about the name, baked Alaska, is that it was coined at Antoine's, a restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana, by its chef de cuisine Antoine Alciatore in 1867 to honour the United States’ acquisition of Alaska  However, no contemporary account exists of this fact, and the name does not seem to have been used until some years after the Alaska Purchase. The American chef Charles Ranhofer (of the celebrated Delmoncio's Restaurant in New York) named a similar dish an "Alaska, Florida" in 1894, apparently referring to the contrast between its cold and hot elements, which seems oddly named if it was indeed intended to celebrate the Alaska Purchase. Moreover Ranhofer’s recipe contains apricot jam, biscuit and both banana and vanilla ice-creams so is rather more involved than a usual baked Alaska.

Here’s Ranhofer's recipe from his book 'The Epicurean' (New York, 1894):

(3538) Alaska, Florida.
Prepare a very fine vanilla-flavoured Savoy biscuit paste (No.3231). Butter some plain molds two and three-quarters inches in diameter by one and a half inches in depth; dip them in fecula or flour, and fill two-thirds full with the paste. Cool, turn them out and make an incision all around the bottom; hollow out the cakes, and mask the empty space with apricot marmalade (No.3675). Have some ice cream molds shaped as shown in Fig 667, [ie cone-shaped] fill them half with uncooked banana ice cream (No.3541), and half with uncooked vanilla ice cream (No.3466); freeze, un-mold and lay them in the hollow of the prepared biscuits; keep in a feezing box or cave; Prepare also a meringue with twelve egg whites and one pound of sugar. A few moments before serving place each biscuit with its ice on a small lace paper, and cover one after the other with the meringue pushed through a pocket furnished with a channeled socket, beginning at the bottom and diminishing the thickness until the top is reached; color this meringue for two minutes in a hot oven, and when a light golden brown remove and serve at once.

Nevertheless so-called baked ices were already all the rage in the 1860s, having become commercially feasible with recent advances in refrigeration technology. Here’s a more minimalist baked-Alaska-type recipe from '366 menus and 1200 recipes' published in 1868 (just one year after the Alsaka Purchase) by the French food-journalist Baron Brisse:

Baked Ices.
Make your ice very firm, roll out some light paste thin, and cut it into small squares, place a spoonful of ice in the centure of each piece of paste, and fold it up carefully so that no air may get in, and bake. The paste will be cooked before the ice can melt. In this dish gourmands have the pleasure of eating hot light paste, whilst their palates are cooled by the refreshing ice.

Meles meles wrote:

The Russians had been looking to sell Alaska for some years as they considered it a drain on resources and didn't feel they could defend it adequately from the British should they be at war with them again.

I've never really thought about that before - the idea that the Russian Empire and the British Empire once shared a land border in North America. It conjures up a whole plethora of historical 'what ifs'. The most obvious being what if the British had either deprived Russia of Alaska during the Crimean War or else had merely purchased the territory when offered. That could have resulted in a whole host of geopolitical factors generating no end of unforeseen consequences.

For instance the Monroe Doctrine would almost certainly have meant that British/U.S. relations would have then become severely and also chronically strained. And an increased British interest in the North Pacific would also have had implications for Britain's dealings with Hawaii, Japan and China. With Britain experiencing imperial overstretch in that far-flung theatre, its ability to then demand 'the Lion's share' when the Scramble for Africa took place later that century is likely to have been significantly curtailed. France and Germany would have been the main beneficiaries of a reduced British role in Africa. And with London having major rivals in both Washington and St Petersburg one wonders just how long the British Empire would have lasted under those circumstances.

P.S. The first time I was served Baked Alaska it was called 'une bombe norvégienne' and was presented at a dinner party given by friends of ours (American expats living in Lyons) who nobly insisted upon giving it its French name. For years I believed that that was indeed the French name for it but have subsequently discovered that it's more commonly known as 'une omelette norvégienne' and I think it's sometimes also called 'une bombe bavaroise'.

Vizzer wrote:

Meles meles wrote:

The Russians had been looking to sell Alaska for some years as they considered it a drain on resources and didn't feel they could defend it adequately from the British should they be at war with them again.

I've never really thought about that before - the idea that the Russian Empire and the British Empire once shared a land border in North America. It conjures up a whole plethora of historical 'what ifs'. The most obvious being what if the British had either deprived Russia of Alaska during the Crimean War or else had merely purchased the territory when offered. That could have resulted in a whole host of geopolitical factors generating no end of unforeseen consequences.

For instance the Monroe Doctrine would almost certainly have meant that British/U.S. relations would have then become severely and also chronically strained. And an increased British interest in the North Pacific would also have had implications for Britain's dealings with Hawaii, Japan and China. With Britain experiencing imperial overstretch in that far-flung theatre, its ability to then demand 'the Lion's share' when the Scramble for Africa took place later that century is likely to have been significantly curtailed. France and Germany would have been the main beneficiaries of a reduced British role in Africa. And with London having major rivals in both Washington and St Petersburg one wonders just how long the British Empire would have lasted under those circumstances.

...

You mention " .. a plethora of historical 'what ifs'. ..."


One such novel, which I encountered some 25-30 years ago, is "Sitka" written by then famous western writer, Louis L'Amour.


If you care for this style of western with a touch of romance, this book comes with my recommendations, for what they are worth. I shall spend some hours this winter re-reading it.

Vizzer wrote:

Quote :

P.S. The first time I was served Baked Alaska it was called 'une bombe norvégienne' and was presented at a dinner party given by friends of ours (American expats living in Lyons) who nobly insisted upon giving it its French name. For years I believed that that was indeed the French name for it but have subsequently discovered that it's more commonly known as 'une omelette norvégienne' and I think it's sometimes also called 'une bombe bavaroise'.

 Vizzer,

thanks to Meles meles I just discovered this. Thank you MM. And you added other names, thank you also.

I will give it a try if it exist overhere...

We know overhere "crêpe sibérienne" or crêpe comédie française" a ball of ice with a pancake on it and then covered with cognac and emflamed...

Have urgently to leave now

Kind regards, Paul.

Viz ... Interesting what-ifs.

In 1867 the idea of a railway link from western Russia (Moscow/St Petersburg) to the North Pacific coast was still only a dream - the far eastern leg of the Trans-Siberian railway wasn't even started until 1900 - and the sea voyage from the Baltic was very long with no handy Russian colonies or coaling stations en route. (Consider the Russian fleet 'hastily' sent from the Baltic during the Russo-Japanese war - it took 6 months to get there). So lands east of Siberia, like the island of Sakhalin (then a penal colony) and even more so Alaska, were very much remote from any real Russian control.
 
Had Alaska been sold to Britain I guess it would have been almost immediately absorbed into the Dominion of Canada. Interestingly the Confederation of Canada was formed in 1867 - the same year that the US purchased Alaska - albeit initially it only comprised Ontario, Nova Scotia, Quebec and New Brunswick. But the vast sparcely-inhabited area of the North-West Territories, immediately neighbouring Alaska, joined the confederation only a few years later in 1870, although I think any real development only started with the Klondike gold rush in 1897.

Lamb Navarin
Although sometimes described as commemorating the Battle of Navarino, the name more likely comes from navet, the French for turnip.

Ingredients
3 to 4 lbs of lamb (shoulder, neck and breast)
2 tb flour
3 cups lamb or beef stock
4 tomatoes, ripe, peeled, seeded and chopped
5 carrots, peeled
5 turnips, peeled
12 spring onions
1 lb green peas or snow peas
2 garlic gloves, mashed
Herbs: 1 bay leaf, 1/4 tsp thyme
Salt and pepper
Cooking oil


Lamb Navarin Recipe

Step 1: Cut the lamb into 2-inch pieces.

Step 2: In a large saucepan or casserole, heat 1 tablespoon of oil. Brown over medium heat a few pieces of lamb at a time. Sauté until brown on all sides.

Step 3: Put all pieces of meat in the casserole, add garlic gloves and cook over high heat for 1 minute.

Step 4: Remove half of the fat. Toss the meat with flour, salt and pepper. Cook over high heat for two minutes.

Step 5: Warm the stock in a different saucepan. Add to the meat. Boil. Stir. Add the tomatoes and herbs. Boil and simmer for 30 minutes over medium to low heat.

Step 6: Add the carrots, onions and turnips. Simmer for 30 minutes again over medium to low heat.

Step 7: Cook the peas in a saucepan with salted water for 5 minutes. Add to the lamb just 5 minutes before serving. Remove the herbs.

Wine suggestion: Red Bordeaux, Cotes du Rhone Villages, Cahors.

I wonder when the idea that the dish was named after the battle, or indeed it was renamed in honour of the battle, first occurred. The Greek port known in English as Navarino, is, in French, written Navarin … so exactly like the dish.

I did find one cooking website (in French) which specifically says (my translation):

" .... To celebrate the victory on the next day, Admiral de Rigny, the fleet commander, ordered the meal to be improved over the ordinary fare. The chief cook had the idea to replace the rice ration with a variety of vegetables in different colours, thus inventing a new recipe which took the name of the Greek port, Navarin."

… but there’s no citation for this bold statement and as you say the general consensus seems to favour the navet/turnip origin.

The French culinary bible, the 'Larouse Gastronomique', states that a navarin is a ragout (stew) of mutton, and explains it is made with small onions and potatoes - it doesn't mention turnips up front - only when it says "or with different vegetables … that can include carrots, turnips, small onions, new potatoes and green peas .... in which case it should be described as à la printanière", (in the fashion of spring). Thus it need not be made only in springtime (just as well if it's to commemorate a battle in October), but does need to be made with fresh, young, small vegetables, which is also just as well because you’d be lucky to get fresh turnips much before the end of May, even in southern France. Larousse says a navarin should strictly be made with mutton, but does allow the use of lamb "in exceptional cases". It also notes, but deplores, the use of the word navarin for dishes made with poultry or shellfish.

Mrs Beeton, in her 1861 'Book of Household Management', adds this: