Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Eggs, 17th C Style.

Today, April 10th ...

As explained yesterday, this weeks posts will be minimalist - the recipes must speak for themselves. The first two speak strangely to us today, but the other two - minus the sugar - sound quite acceptable to the modern palate.

The manner how to make an Egge Tart with Apples.
Put into a Porrenger or Dish the bigness of two eggs, or a little more of the mellow part of a roasted Apple, adde thereunto two spoonfuls of fine flower, five or six eggs, and some salt at your own discretion, dissolve and beat all these together, until such time as the flower be well incorporated with the other ingredients, pour this mixture into a Tart-pan or Skillet, or in a Dish, in which you shall have dissolved the bignesse of an egge, or thereabouts of fresh butter; cover your Tart-pan, and put upon it some fire, and cover also the lid with a few embers, and after a quarter of an hour or a little more you must uncover your Tart-pan, to see whether your Cake be baked, and whether it be sufficiently coloured both above and below, and if you find it to bee so you may dish it up, and serve it to the Table, after you have powdered it with some sugar, and sprinkled it with some rose-water, & stuck into it some few slices of preserved Lemmon-peels.
Observe that instead of the mellow of Apples, to make a variety of the said Tarts, you may take the mellow of Pomkins, or of any other fruit you have a mind to, so you do first boyl or bake it before you make use of it to make your Tart or Cake withall, according to the former prescriptions in the foregoing Chapter.
[The Perfect Cook ( Patissier françois); Marnette; 1656]

To dress Eggs in the Spanish Fashion, called, wivos me quidos.
Take twenty eggs fresh and new, and strain them with a quarter of a pint of sack, claret, or white wine, a quartern of sugar, some grated nutmeg, and salt; beat them together with the juyce of an orange, and put to them a little musk, (or none) set them over the fire, and stir them continually till they be a little thick, (but not too much), serve them with scraping sugar being put in a clean warm dish, on fine toasts of manchet soaked in juyce of orange and sugar, or in claret, sugar, or white wine, and shake the eggs with orange comfits, or muskedines red and white.
[The accomplisht cook; Robert May; 1660]

To dress poached Eggs.
Take a dozen of new laid eggs, and the meat of four or five partridges, or any roast poultrey, mince it as small as you can, and season it with a few beaten cloves, mace, and nutmeg, put them into silver dish with a ladle full or two of pure mutton gravy, and two or three anchoves dissolved, then set it a stewing on a chafing dish of coals; being half stewed, as it boils put in the eggs one by one, and as you break them, put by most of the whites, and with one end of your egg-shell put in the yolks round in order amongst the meat, let them stew till the eggs be enough, then put in a little grated nutmeg, and the juyce of a couple of oranges, put not in the seeds, wipe the dish, and garnish it with four or five whole onions boild and broild.
[The accomplisht cook; Robert May; 1660]

To make an Amalet [omelet]
Take ten eggs, and more than half the whites, beat them very well, and put in a spoonful or two of cream, then heat some butter in your frying pan, and when it is hot, put in your eggs and stir them a little, then fry them till you find they are enough, and a little before you put them out of the pan, turn both the sides over that they may meet in the middle, and lay it the botome upwards in the dish, serve it in with verjuice, butter and sugar.
[Cook’s Guide; Hannah Wooley; 1664]

17th C egg recipes from previous posts:
Bacon Froise. (1695)
To dress Eggs called in French Ala Augenotte, or the Protestant way.(1682, Rabisha)

Last year on this Day ...

By co-incidence, the story last year was about a dinner held in the seventeenth century.

2 comments:

Hels said...

Isn't it fantastic to find Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook? He wrote it during the most exciting era in British history, I think, and we have it still today :)
Hels

The Old Foodie said...

Hels - a belated thankyou for commenting. I couldnt agree more about May, and the seventeenth century in general. Isnt it marvellous to have access to so many historic gems (thankyou,Internet!)