Historical Recipe Reconstruction

Name: Ana & Cindy
Date and Time:

2015.09.20

Location:
Subject: French Puffs

Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook, London 1671

RECIPE INSTRUCTIONS:
Take spinage, tyme, parsley, endive, savory, and marjoram, chop or mince them small; then have twenty eggs beaten with the herbs, that the eggs may be green, some nutmeg, ginger, cinamon, and salt; then cut a lemon in slices, and dip it in batter, fry it, and put a spoonful on every slice of lemon, fry it finely in clarified butter, and being fried, strow on sack, or claret, and sugar.

INITIAL QUESTIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS:

• What were "French Puffs"? In our contemporary minds, we assumed this meant SWEET puff pastries (in fact, modern "vintage french puffs" are just sweet (see source link below) Also, we did not find a similar recipe in any contemporary book, though there are English recipes to make pies in the 17th century that used same herbs and ingredients, but no lemons. 17th English recipe, similar ingredients pie
• The author Robert May was a cook for the nobility and had 55 years of experience- thus “the accomplisht cook.” This might explain the lack of detailed quantities and directions in the recipe (though not uncommon in contemporary recipe books, as seen in class presentations) Thus, we had issues on how generous should we be in our use of spices and how to interpret vague instructions.
  
• How would this dish be served in a meal? Appetizer, side dish, other? It is not specified in May's book

BUYING INGREDIENTS: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

• Bought ingredients at Whole Foods, most listed ingredients are herbs/spices that are currently still being used today
• Based on how the ingredients were grouped in the recipe, we believed the spinach, thyme, parsley, endive, savory, and marjoram were to be used fresh herbs and the nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon dried, as spices
• Interesting to note that dried and powdered nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon are still from Sri Lanka and Indonesia, a similar area of the world that was exporting these spices to England around 1671 (referenced in Keay, John. The spice route: a history. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.)
• We bought ghee, because we only learned after buying how to easily make our own ghee by heating and then filtering regular butter
• The only quantity given, 20 eggs, was rather large, so we decided to half it. This quantity though is again key to May's cooking for a wealthy household.
• While we bought an inexpensive wine, given the little quantity needed, we spent some time discussing with the wine vendor the aprox. kind of wine we needed. Claret is a red wine from the Bordeaux region (Echikson, William. Noble Rot: A Bordeaux Wine Revolution. NY: Norton, 2004.)

RECREATING RECIPE: 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm

• 70 degrees Fahrenheit air-conditioned apartment, little natural light, ingredients not refrigerated (directly from store) --> room temperature
• FRESH HERBS: spinach, marjoram, thyme, savory, parsley, endive
• DRIED SPICES: nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon
• OTHER INGREDIENTS: salt, 10 eggs, 3 lemons--sliced (for approximated proportions, please see modern rewriting of recipe)
• used metal pot with teflon coating on electric stove, prepared egg batter in glass bowl, cut herbs and lemons with metal and ceramic knives on plastic cutting boards (modern day equipment, but we made sure to use wooden spoons to fry)
• chopped herbs together and added to eggs beaten. Here it was useful to follow the only direction: “eggs may be green,” which meant for us to add a large amount of herbs to the eggs) Added powdered spices to mixture
• dipped lemon slices into mixture and put in melted and heated ghee
• electric range helped keep temperature even, realized that heat needed to be kept very even and high
• difficult to make egg and herb mixture stick to lemon slice, needed to hold it in place until the outside fried quickly

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

• Time consuming recipe: fresh herbs that needed to be cleaned and chopped; especially frying was time consuming, difficulty of getting batter to stick to lemons
• More directions and quantities were needed: First time using clarified butter (right heat?), the lemon rinds cooked much more quickly than expected
• Unexpected taste: lemon was dominant flavor; not strongly sweet or savory and no single spice or herb dominates. Based on this flavor, it is difficult for us to discern the type of dish it would have been at the time. We certainly learned that taste in the 17th century was very different to ours today

Other sources:
vintage french breakfast puffs
Markets and foods in Shakespeare's England

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ASPECTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN MAKING FIELD NOTES

• note time
• note (changing) conditions in the room
• note temperature of ingredients to be processed (e.g. cold from fridge, room temperature etc.)
• document materials, equipment, and processes in writing and with photographs
• notes on ingredients and equipment (where did you get them? issues of authenticity)
• note precisely the scales and temperatures you used (please indicate how you interpreted imprecise recipe instruction)
• see also our informal template for recipe reconstructions

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