14^th century

Sambocade

The ‘Sambocade’ is a form of cheese-curd tart flavoured with elderflowers. The recipe first appears in the book of the Master Cooks of King Richard II, The Forme of Cury (1390). It is called sambocade after the Latin word for elderflower, sambucus. It may be one of the earliest cheesecakes of Britain, although we know that cheesecakes have been around since Ancient Greek times.

Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler, authors of ‘Curye on Inglish’ – a scholarly essay on medieval manuscripts including The Forme of Cury – mention that sambocade does not appear in any fourteenth century French source. They believe the tart was brought to England by Anglo–Norman crusaders returning from the Middle East and was most probably from Italy.

Take and make a crust in a trap & take cruddes and wryng out þe wheyze and drawe hem þurgh a straynour and put hit in þe crust. Do þerto sugar the þridde part, & somdel whyte of ayren, & shake þerin blomes of elren; & bake it vp with eurose, & messe it forth.

The Forme of Cury c. 1390

This recipe tells us to make a crust in a ‘trap’: trap being the word for the earthenware dish that supported the pastry crust. The kind of pastry is not specified as it was assumed the chef would know. Historians have determined that the pastry for this tart should be a hot-water crust without any addition of fats such as butter, lard or suet; however, a puff pastry or shortcrust pastry could also be used. The hot-water pastry is quite hard, but I still like it.

It was the custom in medieval times to sometimes remove the sides of a pastry or pie casing, only leaving the bottom part. It was common enough that removing the sides and even the tops of pies and tarts need not be mentioned in these medieval recipes. After some time, but who knows how long, it became accepted that the pastry would be left on. Today we can’t imagine removing the pastry from our pies and tarts, as it is often the best part, but in the old times when cooking vessels weren’t plenty and ovens less precise, the pastry would provide not only a vessel for cooking, but also a protective layer for delicate foods, and it had the ability to act as a closed casserole dish. The notion, however, that the pastry was never eaten in those days is nonsense. It was eaten, it just depended on the dish.