Cooking Medieval Food From England's Oldest Cookbook | Clarissa and the King's Cookbook | Chronicle

Medieval England in the 1390s. Richard II is on the throne. He reigns as a divine monarch, and the church dictates the daily ritual of life. But one corner of this beautiful world clamors with noise, day in, day out, the kitchens of Richard's court. And I'm thrilled to tell you that the recipes cooked by the king's master chefs were recorded and compiled into England's oldest known cookbook, The Forme of Curry. I have to confess that I have never cooked from it, until now. But there's a first time for everything, isn't there? It's a forgotten chapter in our culinary history, and I'm convinced that Richard's cookbook will reveal that many of the dishes we eat today can be traced back to his kitchen. I'll find out if others agree when I feed some medieval history buffs later. But first, the tale of the king, the cook, his kitchen, and his cookbook. Richard II, the story goes, was swaddled in the skin of goats at birth. What an intimate introduction to the fruits of his land. Crowned England's king in 1377, he was meant to follow his forebears and become a bloodthirsty, plantagenet monarch. History records, however, he instead pursued the good life. I feel I can call him a gourmet king because of what he and his courtiers ate. One precious document from his reign has survived. Here, in the imposing British library, his cookbook is kept secure, and I'm now going to feast on Richard's regal cuisine with medieval archivist, Clare Bray. Well, you can see it's a little bit damaged. The very first words, a form of curry, was compiled of the chief master cooks of King Richard II. Translated from the Middle English, form means method and curry means cooking, i.e. a method of cooking. Such straightforward modern language in an ancient text. I love it. It's nearly six meters long altogether. Yeah, we'll be here some time then. So this is the index. It's a little bit faded. As you can see, it seems to have been... Well, it's been around a long time. Yeah, there's quite a few stains. Yes, stains in the kitchen. So how many recipes are there here? Because they seem to be an awful lot. Yeah, there are. There's 196 altogether. 196 is typical, isn't it? They couldn't manage the extra four to make it 200. I've written cookbooks myself, and I can tell you that 196 recipes is rather a lot. It's actually more like a compendium. Here we've got porpoise in broth. Porpoise? And how are we cooking the porpoise? It says, makers you made numbles of flesh with onions. Not a lot about how you're cooking the porpoise. Well, I admit, most of us wouldn't consider eating porpoise today, but some of the dishes have very familiar names. Blemange. Blemange? Now that's proper blemange made with capons. Capons, yeah. Yeah. And there are dozens of recipes that would feature quite happily on a modern restaurant menu. Salad. Salad, yes. So they did eat salad. Oh yes, they did, yes. So take parsley, sage, garlic. Who says the English don't eat garlic? What's that word? Raisin. Parsley. Not a lettuce leaf mentioned, but still no less a salad. Mint. And what do you think that word is? Wash them clean. Washing things. Everybody thinks they were dirty in the Middle Ages. Not a bit of it. The recipes sound modern on paper, but what will they taste like? A library is not a place for a cook. My place is here, the chef's domain. Look at this kitchen. Look at the space. Look at it with its skylight up the top. A cathedral of food. A most beautiful room. Wonderful with the light coming in, fire burning in the corner. And there, in his chair, would sit the chef. Who could smell with his eyes, taste with his nose, and hear the exact quantities of precious ingredients being added. He was in total command of those working under him. Like today, the king's master chef would have worked his way up through the kitchen before getting to the prize top job. With a vast court to feed, he led a kitchen of up to 300 staff, all of whom had clearly delineated roles. These kitchens really did swing. Sauce makers, who prepared sauces for the vast array of dishes. Mincers, who minced and ground spices all day long. Pluckers, all manner of birds featured on the king's menus. Boners, knife skills were essential as carcasses were stripped bare. Choppers, a constant supply of wood was required. Spit boys, most of the food was cooked in fireplaces, which were large enough to roast a whole ox. And roasters, teams worked in shifts in high temperatures, often with virtually no clothes on. All this activity done day in, day out under the aegis of the master chef. Overseeing, ruling his kitchen, very much as it is today, the only man in the kitchen who sat. And he would tell people what to do, point to where the meat was burning, overseeing everything in his domain. He was truly a chef, a chief of his brigade. Richard's court was obsessed with documenting everything, from household lists, to costs of goods, to the food he ate. Thank God, I say, for medieval Westminster scribes. Through that door there would be the scribe in his little vestibule, taking notes of recipes, writing them down, listening to what the chef dictated, because the chef probably couldn't write. I imagine they penned recipes throughout the year, as the form of curry reads like an almanac of seasonal food. What was a necessity for the medieval kitchen is a la mode today, of course. The land was their supermarket. Fifty years before Richard's reign, the Black Death had wiped out half the human population. The disease, however, did not affect the wild animals. They flourished. So, for Richard's court, food was plentiful, and the kingdom was a hunter's paradise. Although Richard was not a plantagenet warrior king, he loved the blood of the hunt. He dictated that his noblemen and his servants should avail themselves at every opportunity to practice with a bow and arrow. He himself often hunted with his greyhounds, as only a king could. But one of the great sports of the time that Richard loved was falconry. Richard particularly prided himself as a sportsman who went out and caught food for the table, all sorts. Everything from herons to ducks to hares, depending on the size of the animal. And there were strict rules of etiquette as to which birds you could have. Only a king could carry an eagle or a gyrfalcon. Even for a king, buying one of these birds would have meant digging deep into the royal purse. In 1399, Richard paid 260 gold florins for a gyrfalcon. That's £34,000 in today's money. They were very rare, but prized for their long-distance flying and hunting acumen. This was a bird for a king. And it knows it's being held by a commonplace cook, so it's trying to get away. No, you stay with me for a minute. The cat may look at a king and the cook may look at a gyrfalcon. But not all meats were hunted. Geese were farmed. And there's one recipe in the form of curry that for Richard and his chefs would have been the main event of any feast. It's a dish I've chosen to cook because I think it will also reveal just how contemporary the food really was. Sauce madame. Take sage, persil, isop and savoury, quinces and pears, garlic and grapes, and fill the geese therewith. And sew the hole that no grease come out, and roast him well, and keep the grease that falleth thereof. What is different about this dish is the amount of herbs and quite expensive spices that goes into it. Therefore it became a luxury dish and something that would grace the king's table. Here we have sage, which was for the digestive system. Sage was also supposed to clean the blood and to give you wisdom. And hyssop, which was supposed to cleanse you. My soul is whiter than the swan when washed with hyssop. And savoury, which was a herb that prevented flatulence. Very necessary in the medieval diet. A bit of that. And some parsley. Parsley cleans the breath. Parsley, we'll say, cleans the blood. And some garlic. Garlic, of course, burneth away the fat that groweth round the heart. Cooking and medicine were very intertwined. I suppose it's a bit like today, isn't it? When you have all these things that you're told are good for you, but each generation thinks it has the answer to eternal life. And some chopped pears. These would have been cooking pears. Warden pears, probably. Fruit with geese has always been a good idea. It's what we do today. I have a recipe where we stuff the goose with wild cherries. And that's also delicious. And then the quince. Quinces grew in this country, but they were mostly imported from the continent. And that wonderful rich smell and taste was something that the Middle Ages loved. And lastly, some grapes. Richard was very keen on his exotic fruit. The smell of that with the fruit and the herbs is quite delicious. And now we put everything into the goose. Just in handfuls as it goes. Stuff it right down. There's a lot of room in the goose. There we are. And now we say the goose up so that nothing falleth from it. And of course, the fat that is in the goose will lubricate the stuffing, which is why we put no oil or anything like that in. If I were to choose, I would cook this over the fire behind me. And some poor little scullion would have to spend the next four hours chopping wood and feeding it into the flames. However, given that we are now in a modern age, and Richard would probably have approved, I'm going to transfer it to a modern oven. The form of curry doesn't give details like cooking times or quantities. As today, the chefs were expected to know what to do. But it does document the cooking techniques and the terminology hasn't changed in 700 years. Harboil. Strain. Clarify. Toast. Bake. And roast. Next, the cooked goose is dressed with the sauce madame, a sauce fit for a king as it's full of expensive spices. And the sauce is started by using the juicy stuffing. So now I'm going to open the goose. And there inside, you see, is all our lovely stuffing, beautifully cooked. All melded together, the herbs and the fruit and the grapes and quinces and the pears. And I'm just adding it to the bread and the gelatine. And now I'm going to add my poudre de douce sweet powders or good powders, which is a combination of all sorts of different spices. And really, it was a matter for each individual chef, but there were certain things that always went in. Salt, of course. Sugar. And a bit of mace. And some ground ginger. Then I mix all this together, put it in with my gelatine and my stuffing and everything else, and mix it together. And I'm going to put it onto the fire and let it all cook together. And now we cut our goose into pieces. Smite him into pieces, as it says in the cookery book. See this lovely goose. Look at that. Only the best for the king. Just give this a little stir. And now for the sauce madame, which I'm going to put over the goose. And there we are. And now, as the book says, and serve it forth. Sauce madame was elegant, expensive and sophisticated cuisine, like food, like monarch. As Richard grew up, he became known as the dandy king. The king who brought us the pocket handkerchief. He insisted on bathing at least once a week. He was a flamboyant dresser. And interestingly to me, he took to eating in his private chambers, eager to be aloof from his court. It was all about appearances. Historians paint him as a petulant, narcissistic king seeking to create a mystique around his majesty. But he, like everyone else, had to bow to the power of the church. He left us a cookbook, but it was the church that dictated what he ate. To adhere to religious doctrine, Richard and his court needed to eat lots and lots of fish. In the Middle Ages, the church rigorously insisted that there was something like 242 days that were fasting and abstinence a year. That is, days when you couldn't eat meat. And so obviously they ate a lot of fish. This led to medieval fish farming and Richard was famous for his well-stocked fish ponds or as they called them, stew ponds. Nevertheless, having to eat fish so many days of the year led to some clever rewriting of creature classification. Of course, if you were rich and you really got bored with fish, you got all sorts of dispensations. Beaver, for instance, because it lived in the water, was considered fish. But fish it was for more than half the year, so the chefs had to be very creative. The recipes in Richard's cookbook detail a huge array of ingredients and particularly mentioned the jewels of his courtly cuisine, exotic spices. And they are central to the next recipe I've chosen to cook. It's one I've tasted many times in the markets of Spain. So I'm thrilled to find it in the form of curry. Today it's called escuabeach or sweet and sour fish. Egg a deuce of fish, take roaches, other tenches, other souls, smite them in pieces. First of all, I'm going to make a syrup and I'm going to take some vinegar, white wine vinegar, and in it, just like making a syrup today, I'm going to put some sugar. Sugar was an extreme luxury in those days. Something so expensive that liberal use of it was most unexpected. And then, of course, we have these really expensive spices. We've got here, we've got some Ethiopian pepper known happily by the name of grains of paradise. I've got some ground ginger here. Ginger, of course, came all the way from the Far East. Imagine the amount of distance it had to travel by horseback, muleback, camelback, everything else to get to England. And a bit of ground cinnamon here and some cloves all the way from the Spice Islands. Long, long way to come. Let's put a little bit of bark cinnamon in as well, just to prove that we know what we're doing. And now I'm going to add some chopped onions, finely minced, as they say in the cookery book, and some currants, just ordinary little currants. Some sultanas, which of course are much fuller and plumper and juicier and more expensive and would have come from the Isle of Cyprus, as would the currants. All of that handled by the early Venetian trading company, along with the sugar. And now I'm going to cook the fish. So some pike. There you are, a nice long fillet of pike. The soles, of course, are saltwater fish. Got a nice bit of roe in this one here. Part of the reason for using the different fishes is that they have different textures, they have different flavours, and in the case of the roach, they have an oiliness about them, which is quite different from the other two fishes, which are a white fish and rather plain. And a different colour. Then simply fry in a pan. They used olive oil, by the way. And there we are. There's our fish pieces, all nicely cooked. I'm just going to tip the sweet and sour syrup with its onions and currants all over the fish. And there it is, ready to go out to the table. Delicious. Fit for a king with those exotic spices. Look at this. Isn't this wonderful? This great medieval hall, the most brilliant space. The king's table, head table at the top, and then stretching before us, the tables and the servers would come from the kitchen, bearing the great dishes, and everything would be served. And the chefs made sure that everything was a pageant and a picture in the royal court. Richard was not only a connoisseur of good food, he was also a stickler for etiquette and manners, which included hands being thoroughly washed before a meal could begin. And in Richard's court, the use of cutlery reigned, particularly the spoon. They were such prized possessions, the royal household carried them everywhere they went. The court observed strict rules on table manners. And you may be surprised that it was not a knees up in a tavern, but more like fine dining. Whilst the courtiers ate, the kitchen worked tirelessly, cooking and cleaning as food was sent out all the time. One recipe I found in the form of curry reads like a classic modern pudding. All of us will have eaten a version of it probably, but so did Richard II. Here's his pears poached in red wine. Pears in confit. Take pears and pear them clean. Take good red wine and mulberries, other cendres, and seep the pears therein. Here are some warden pears, all beautifully peeled, which I put into a nice little dish. And here I have some mulberries. These are dried white mulberries, but they'll do for the flavour. And for the colouring, some blackberries. And into this dish I'm going to pour some red wine and put it onto the fire to cook. And now what I have to do is add various things to the wine and then reduce it down, and that'll be the sauce for the pears. Honey was one of the great sweeteners of the Middle Ages. They kept a lot of hives because not only was the honey used in cookery, but the wax was used in candles. Church candles, candles to light the king's great hall, all that sort of thing. So bees were big business. And to this I'm also going to add powdered ginger. And now I get to sit here and do nothing. There are moments in a cook's life, even a medieval cook's life, when you just have to wait. Patience is a great virtue for cooks. Not necessarily chefs, but for cooks. Mmm, sweet and beautiful. There it goes. And as it says, mess it forth, hot or cold. Richard met better than almost any English king. Food like this cost a fortune. One feast in 1383 is recorded as costing £57,000 for food and £10,000 for knapery and for spices. A staggering amount. In order to maintain this standard of living, he taxed his subjects horrendously, to the hilt. And they didn't like it. What's more, he began to lose support in his court and parliament. Richard ignored them and famously declaimed, I will not dismiss one scullion from my kitchen at parliament's request. Disillusioned noblemen soon conspired against him. Richard retaliated brutally, either killing or exiling the rebels. But the clock was ticking for England's king. Before his tale ends, however, I'm eager to discover how Richard's cuisine tastes today. So I've invited Kate Cahoon, food writer, Chris Woolgar, medieval archivist, Michelle Berriedale-Johnson, food historian and keeper of the form of curry at the British Library, Claire Bray, to dine with me. First, the king's signature dish, sauce madame. Well, we have cooked our goose for you. This is goose with sauce madame. And it does smell fantastic. It does smell good, doesn't it? Silence is always good when people are eating. Actually, it's not as rich as you normally expect goose to be. This must be partly to do with the stuffing, that it's drawn south, the richness out. Absolutely. And the pears actually taste, don't they? Often when they're cooked, they go a bit ropey, but these are quite sharp. Proper warden pear. All of those different flavours all together. It's flash cooking, actually, isn't it? I mean, it all looks very beautiful. It doesn't look flashy, but it tastes flashy. So much for bland English food, are you? Absolutely. Now for Richard's luxurious sweet and sour fish recipe. Egger deuce of fish. One of the things that interests me particularly with this is how much fish they ate, because at least half the days in the year are fish days. There's a wonderful little piece in a 14th century school book by a very young boy, where at the end of Lent, at the end of eating nothing but fish, he writes in his margin, thou will not believe how weary I am of fish. How much I desire that flesh will come in again. This is very special fish. This is fresh water fish, which carries a premium. So to have pie is really very special indeed. It's the equivalent of two days wages. Finally, a 700-year-old friend. Poached pears. Pears in confit. Now look, isn't that beautiful? Because you just got that wonderful, lovely red outside with the lovely pure pear inside. Fantastic. Pears are a very common end to the meal in upper class establishments in England. They eat them at this point because they're believed to help the digestion. Looking at all these old cookbooks and having it cooked so beautifully and talking about it actually makes you realise how similar we are in so many ways. And it's those points of connection in history that are so sparky and really make you think, you know, I understand that period a little bit more. It brings you so much closer to the people themselves. You can actually imagine yourself in the kitchen because after all, medieval cooks were just exactly like us and it just makes it all come alive. What I take from this meal is the tastes, the flavours, the things that I can't get from the manuscript. It's the imagination that brings it together and turns it into something that's really special. This brings it to life in a whole new dimension. You enjoyed it. And I think enjoyment just redoubles everything. To eat something that I've imagined in an esoteric way and find that it's not only good, but absolutely fantastic, it has been splendid. Richard's end was less glorious than his food. Henry Bolingbroke, the cousin he exiled, returned in 1399 to claim the throne. And Richard was soon captured and incarcerated. Stripped of his majesty, Richard died at the age of 33. A premature death, perhaps, but his legacy is richer. England's oldest known cookbook. Richard II is dead. Ironically, for such a hedonist, starved to death. Terrible thought. But his cookbook remains for those of us that are left to savour and taste the abundance. The king is dead. Long live the cook!