Glossary

Albae michiae: white bread eaten by the abbot and gentry in the monastery.

Albus panis: another type of white bread as above.

Almond milk/butter: the nuts are blanched, peeled then ground to a fine powder; water is added to make milk, but only a little water to make a thick, spreadable paste referred to as butter.

Angelot: by the eleventh century the Augelot or Angelon cheeses, products of the ancient Pays d’Auge, existed, probably created in a monastery or with monastic guidance. By the thirteenth century they were called Angelot, the name of a coin which pictured a young angel defeating a dragon. The cheese is mentioned in the first part of Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris published around 1236.The Normans brought the cheese to England where it remained immensely popular.

Arancina: saffron-coloured rice moulded into a ball with meat or cheese at its centre, made purposely to look like oranges. The Italian rice croquette Suppli is obviously derived from it.

Aundulyes: an Anglo-Norman sausage made from the large guts and stuffed with chopped entrails highly seasoned, then smoked.

Bain-marie: literally ‘Maria’s bath’ is a method of baking delicate dishes like moulded egg custards, heating them slowly in a pan filled with hot water inside the oven. The method was invented by an alchemist of the first century AD who lived in Alexandria, Maria the Jewess, who wrote under the name of Miriam the Prophetess, sister of Moses. She is considered the most practical of all the early alchemists. Maria invented other laboratory equipment including a still called a tribikos, but it is her water bath that forever carries her name. Mrs Beeton never uses the bain-marie for cooking, but only as a receptacle for keeping food hot. Patrick Lamb gives this title to a beef consommé recipe.

Banquet: in the Tudor and Stuart age the word had two meanings, one which we are now familiar with, to mean a great and important feast; the second meaning was to denote the special final course of such a meal, made up of a wide variety of sweetmeats washed down with sweet herbal fermented drinks; recipes for the last appear in The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby.

Barbel (Barbus barbus): a large river fish can weigh up to 10 lb, not now considered edible as its eggs are thought to be poisonous.

Baulks: Anglo-Saxon term for narrow strips of raised turf that divided individual acres. They are still visible as ridges where fields have become pasture for the last few hundred years.

Beistyn: The first milking of the cow after calving. Dorothy Hartley in Food in England writes: ‘Bestys’, or ‘Beastlyns’ or ‘Firstings’ is golden yellow, and thick as double cream; it should be thinned down with four times its quantity of plain milk, sweetened, and set in a cool oven with some simple flavouring – a vanilla pod, or cinnamon stick. It will set exactly like the richest egg custard. A good finish is to cover the top with damp sugar, and crisp it under the grill or before the fire; the sweet caramel crust, in contrast to the smooth custard, is pleasant.’

Bisae michiae: brown or black bread eaten by monks in the monastery.

Blanch Powder: a flavouring condiment made from refined sugar, powdered ginger and other spices like cinnamon.

Blaunche de sorre: white dish of Syria.

Blaunche doucet: medieval term for a sweet white dish.

Blaw maungere: dish of white meat or fish and rice.

Botargo: salted, pressed roe of the grey mullet which was served sliced thinly with lemon juice.

Bragot: a seventeenth-century drink made with ale, honey, spices and herbs.

Brant (Branta bernicla): Brent goose, winter visitors to Britain from the Arctic tundra, all but died out in the 1930s. Rich, lean, dark flesh, much favoured for eating.

Bruet: meat or game cooked in a broth, the liquid always well spiced often thickened with breadcrumbs and egg yolks as well as coloured with parsley juice or red sanders.

Chardequynce: similar to the Spanish quince paste available today and the forerunner of marmalade. Quinces and warden pears were cooked with honey, wine,ginger and cinnamon to a dark rich pulp. A preserve which lasted.

Chewettes: small pastries with a filling of pork, onion, chicken and spices or for fish days, a filling of haddock, cod, cream and herbs. The pasties were sometimes friedinstead of baked. By the latter part of the fifteenth century these pasties, filled withminced pork or veal, spices and herbs, were given the name of ‘hats’.

Cobbi: another word for a small brown loaf eaten by the working monks, likely to be small and round, baked at the bottom of the oven where they developed a good crust.The word Cob is still used to describe such a loaf.

Cock-ale: a seventeenth-century recipe whereby a cock is boiled in 8 gallons of ale with 4 lb raisins, three nutmegs, mace, dates and 2 quarts of sack. It is then bottledand can be drunk after a month.

Cockatrice: a conceit of the banquet table where a cock and a suckling pig are cut in half, stuffed with forcemeat, then sewn together, boiled, roasted and gilded.

Collup/collop: a slice of meat.

Comfit: a sweetmeat made from a fruit or root preserved in sugar.

Coney: rabbit, the Normans reintroduced them into England and very soon in the game parks there were huge warrens.

Conversi: a better class of corrodian.

Corrodian: a rich gentleman who chooses to spend his declining years in a monastery.

Costmary or alecost (Tanacetum balsamina): a herb from the Mediterranean used to flavour food and in Gerard’s time ale. It got its name because the aroma remindedthe English of the very expensive putchuk or costus which grew in the highlandsof Kashmir.

Coulis/cullis: a term for a sauce of any kind, the name stemmed from the funnel used for straining the sauce, called a couloir.

Cubeb (Piper cubeba): a berry belonging to the pepper family in common use until the end of the seventeenth century.

Curfew: a large brass or copper cover which covered the embers at night. The word came from the French couvre-feu. At a fixed hour in the evening a bell was rung as a signal that all fires were to be extinguished. The word came to mean the hour of ringing, as well as the actual bell.

Darioles: small tarts, one recipe was for eggs and cream with chopped dates, figs, prunes and sugar. Another recipe specifies a quart of cream and forty egg yolks to make twenty custard tarts.

Dillegrout: a white soup made from almond milk and dill leaves, it was served traditionally at Coronations because it was thought that William the Conqueror gave to his cook, Tezelin, the lordship of the manor of Addington, as a reward for creating the soup. The lord of the manor always brought the soup to the newly crowned king.

Dominicus panis canonicorum: white bread that is blessed eaten in the monastery.

Drage: another term for dredge-corn, which is generally a mixture of barley and oats, but can be any mixture for sowing and used in the making of ale.

Electuaries: a herbal remedy mixed with sugar or honey made up like a sweet or pastille. Endored: gilded, painted with egg yolk then roasted for a moment or covered in gold leaf.

Entremets: means literally between dishes, can be applied to all the dishes that come after the roast, but is generally applied to the vegetable dishes which accompany the main course.

Eringo (Eryngium maritimum): grows on the seashore and has massively long phallic-shaped roots which bequeathed a mythical aphrodisiac quality; the roots were candied and eaten. Also the young tender shoots when blanched can be eaten like asparagus. A candied eringo industry grew up around Colchester but declined in the nineteenth century.

Fleur frite: a term used by La Varenne for what was to become the ‘roux’ where the flour soaks up the fat and makes a paste which is cooked slightly before adding stock as a basis for a sauce.

Floated water meadows: an agricultural technique used in the seventeenth century.

Flummery: a flavoured cream set with calves’ foot, isinglass or hartshorn, made with almonds for Lent. The earlier traditional flummery came from Wales and was set with thoroughly boiled oatmeal.

Frumenty: boiled wheat grains mixed with almond milk or cows’ milk, thickened with well beaten egg yolks, flavoured then coloured.

Galingale: now galingal (Kaempferia galinga) but also in medieval England the roots of the plant (Cyperus Longus), a member of the ginger family, were a popular flavouring in foods and sauces.

Garfish (Belone belone): a long thin sea fish with a brilliantly coloured green back.

Gastel: the Norman French word for cake which became ‘wastel’ meaning fine white bread.

Gaufres: the Norman version of waffles made from a flavoured batter which would have been very similar to our own.

Gauncil: garlic sauce made with garlic, saffron, milk and wheat flour always eaten with roast goose.

Gitte: Anglo-Saxon word for black cumin made into a relish.

Grains of Paradise (Amomum melegueta): a spice related to cardamom, with a hot peppery taste.

Haburdens: summer-cured dried cod, also called ‘Poor John’. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Trinculo says of Caliban: ‘He smells like a fish – a very ancient and fish-like smell – a kind of, not of the newest, poor john.’

Hauseleamye: chicken in a green sauce coloured by parsley.

Hausgeme: minced veal in a sauce coloured red.

Hippocras: red wine with spices added, generally ginger, cinnamon and grains of paradise, sweetened with honey. It took its name from the bag through which it was strained, said to resemble Hippocrates’ sleeve.

Hydromel: another fermented honey drink popular in the seventeenth century. (See Mead and Metheglin.)

Jelly of Flesh: a speciality of Norman cookery. In the fourteenth century it comprised ‘swine’s feet, and snouts, and the ears, capons, coneys, calves feet’ boiled in wine, vinegar and water. The liquor was then strained, spiced and coloured and when set it was decorated. There are intricate directions for colouring the dish in several shades.

Kickshaws: derived from quelques choses which meant in the sixteenth century an elegant and dainty dish, but came to be derogatory in the following two centuries to mean all that was pretentious in French cooking.

Lac de matutino: the milk from that morning given to harvest workers. In the summer it would not have kept any longer than a few hours after milking.

Lampern (Lampetra fluviatilis): the river lamprey, after five years in the river the lamprey migrates to the sea becoming the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) for two years; it then attaches itself to a migrating trout or salmon (they are parasites sucking blood) and hitches a free ride back to rivers where it will spawn.

Lechemeat: cold set dishes that need to be sliced. The slices were called leaches and were eaten with a wine sauce. They were often made from almond milk as a Lenten dish.

Leechdoms: Anglo-Saxon books of herbal remedies.

Ling: used to describe dried cod in general, specifying a better quality of fish than stockfish itself.

Lozenges: this was a dough made from flour, water, sugar and spices, cut in a lozenge pattern and fried in oil; these were served in a wine syrup with added dried fruit and spices. Polenta, of course, can be made in exactly the same way now, as can other flour pastes, made for example from chick pea flour.

Lucanian sausage: a smoked and heavily spiced sausage made with minced pork and pine kernels, popular in the ancient world and still surviving in many forms today.

Macerouns: early form of macaroni where the pasta is in flat ribbons and not tubes.

Macrows: another form of pasta – a flat noodle.

Manchet: white bread of the finest quality made from flour which had been two or three times sieved. Manchets were small loaves weighing no more than 6 ounces.

Marmalada: see chardequince above, the Tudor name for the preserve made from quinces and then other fruits – pears, apples, damsons and medlars.

Maslin: mixed grain, rye, barley and wheat, applicable to the flour and the bread made from it.

Mawmenny: a favourite medieval dish which changed over the 500 years it was prepared. Inspired by an Arabic recipe it began as spiced minced chicken in almond milk mixed with breadcrumbs, egg yolks and a setting agent. The forerunner of the dessert we know as blancmange.

Meath: a fermented honey, rosemary and ginger drink. Sir Kenelm Digby gives several recipes of various types.

Methegelin: a spiced honey fermented drink which Sir Kenelm Digby gives recipes for.

Milfoil (Achillea Millefolium): the common yarrow, the leaves are many and finely divided (literally thousand leaved).

Mortrews: a boiled dish of finely ground food in a broth. Other spellings are ‘morterel’ or ‘mortrellus’.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus): commonly called Aaron’s Rod, can grow to 2 metres or more, has grey woolly leaves and yellow flowers, seeds itself in most country gardens and allotments; some love its effect in the herbaceous border. The Anglo-Saxons believed that Mercury had given Mullein to Ulysses when he came to Circe to ward off her evil. It was used medicinally to cure coughs, gripes and piles.

Murrain: cattle plague from mori, to die. Chroniclers were not specific in noting characteristics of diseases in livestock. All pestilence was termed a murrain.

Neat’s tongue: the tongue of an ox, bullock, cow or heifer.

Noonings/nuncheon/noonshine: various names for lunch or luncheon as the concept of such a meal appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Oleo/olio/oglia: a fashionable dish in the seventeenth century which could include almost anything, but essentially had meat, fowl, game, a variety of vegetables, herbs and spices simmered for some hours in wine and stock. All the cooks gave different recipes, including Robert May, Patrick Lamb and La Varenne. Its origin was the peasant fare of the Basque country where anything brought back by the hunter was cooked in the pot; it survived in Spain, not only as a dish but as a phrase – olla podrida, a mish-mash.

Orach (Atriplex hortensis): a tall plant comes in red or gold with small heart-shaped leaves, used for salads.

Pandemain: a high class white bread, very similar to wastel (see below) the name derives from panis domini, the sacramental bread.

Peasecods: pea pods cooked whole and sold as street food, dipped in butter the peas are sucked out and the cods thrown away.

Pellitory (Parietaria diffusa): Grows out of walls and used for kidney stones, troubles of the bladder, coughs, burns and inflammation.

Penidia: twisted sticks of sugar like barley-sugar sticks, thought to cure the common cold.

Periwinkle (Littorina littorea): a tiny shellfish sold already boiled and eaten with vinegar and pepper with the aid of a pin.

Pottage: this term covers a range of dishes from the thick cereal and vegetable soup, the mainstay of the peasants’ diet, to soup/stews of meat, game and fish, subtly spiced, in a royal banquet.

Powder Fort: a flavouring spice mixture which was hot, so pepper and ginger predominated.

Principal Pudding: a boiled suet pudding stuffed inside a sheep’s stomach, flavoured with mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, every kind of dried fruit and ground almonds with sometimes rose water, orangeflower water, musk and ambergris to intensify the perfume. Eaten on Festival days at the monastery.

Puddingis: an Anglo-Norman sausage made from minced pork and pig’s blood highly seasoned.

Pyonada: a medieval sweetmeat, made from sugar and pine nuts. See electuaries above.

Ramsons (Allium ursinum): wild garlic, place names like Ramsbottom derive from where they grew. John Gerard (1545-1612) wrote in his Herbal that in the Low Country fish sauce was made from the leaves which ‘maye very well be eaten in April and Maie with butter, of such was are a strong constitution, and labouring men’.

Raysons of Corinth: currants because they came to be referred to simply as ‘corinth’.

Rennet: anything used to curdle milk in the making of cheese. The active substance is a single enzyme rennin which disables casein. Traditionally made from the stomach of a young animal and surrounded by rituals and folklore. There are many recipes which are all variations on much the same process. The lamb, kid or calf must be a suckling, after slaughter the stomach with its contents must be hung to dry for several weeks, then it is sealed in a jar where it can keep dry for a year. One litre of water is then needed to soak a half-vell (the lining of the stomach) of lamb or goat, 4 litres are needed for a calf ’s vell. One soup spoon of rennet serves for 10 litres of milk. Vegetable rennet is found in thistle, fig and Ladies’ Bedstraw (Galium verum).

Rockling (Ciliata mustela): a small fish; the adult reaches 25 cm (10 in), found in the North Sea inshore in early summer, a bottom feeder can sometimes be seen in tidal pools.

Rubia (Rubia peregrina):Wild Madder, used for colouring. The roots do not give the same brilliant red as the true madder (Rubia Tinctorum) but a rosy pink.

Salmagundy: an intricate seventeenth-century salad of herbs, eggs, roast capon, anchovies and other cold meats and fish. The name was derived from the old French salmigondis but was subsequently corrupted into Solomon Gundy which has still survived in North America.

Salpicon: a stuffing for veal, beef or mutton. Patrick Lamb gives a recipe with over ten main ingredients and herbs.

Sanap: an embroidered and decorated overcloth which covered the plain white cloth upon the top table; upon it would be placed other decorative pieces, like an ornate salt cellar made out of silver or gold and often jewel encrusted.

Saucistres: an Anglo-Norman sausage made from lean pork, spices and herbs.

Sawsedges: Tudor spelling of sausages.

Skirret (sisum sisarum): a species of water parsnip, a popular root vegetable grown all over Europe until the end of the eighteenth century.

Snoek (Thyrsites atun): a fish of the southern hemisphere canned, then imported to Britain in great quantities after the Second World War to help feed the nation in the worst years of rationing. But the British nation was suspicious, hated the name and disliked the taste. It is thought that the unused stock was relabelled as cat food.

Souse: parts of the slaughtered pig not used for anything else; the ears, cheeks, snout and trotters were boiled with water, wine and spices, often ginger, mace, cloves, pepper and coriander seed, until tender, left to cool then the fat skimmed off. More salt,wine and spices were added, and it was barrelled in its jelly. One of the Christmas foods, Jane Austen writes of eating it with relish.

Spikenard: used as an oil and a perfume and occasionally in cooking; the leaves, root and the ‘spike’, an ear that grows from the rhizome, were used.

Squails: short weighted sticks used for bringing down small prey, squirrels, small game and even apples.

Stepponi: a seventeenth-century drink made from raisins, sugar, lemons and water.

Stockfish: dried fish of the cod family like pollack and whiting, which has to be soaked before cooking. Sir Kenelm Digby gives two recipes for preparing stockfish; it is a long process which begins with the dried fish being thoroughly beaten, then soaked in water for 14 hours, then boiled in the water for 6 or 7 hours at least. Then the water is pressed out; it is seasoned with pepper and mustard, and boiled again for an hour in milk, then placed in a dish with melted butter, seasoned and stewed again before it is ready.

Subtleties/sotelties: elaborate sugar sculptures which ended each course at a medieval banquet. Allegorical figures, castles, trees and animals were all vividly depicted and brightly coloured. After being admired they were eaten. There is a description of the feast given by Cardinal Wolsey to the French ambassadors in 1527 in which there is a realistic depiction of St Paul’s Church with its tall steeple. ‘There were beasts, birds, fowls of divers kinds and personages, most lively made counterfeit in dishes, some fighting, as it were with swords, some with guns and crossbows, some vaulting and leaping, some dancing with ladies, some in complete harness, jousting with spears.’

Succory (Cichorium intybus): chicory, the root was used medicinally as well as the leaves and flowers in salads. For a salad it was earthed up like endive to blanch it and became fashionable in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Sucket/Succade: fruit conserves eaten in the banquet course. These were citrus fruits, bitter oranges, lemons and pomegranates conserved in a sugar syrup.

Sumac: powdered berries from the sumac shrub used extensively for flavouring food in the Middle East, tastes both sour and fruity rather like tamarind.

Surae michiae: a different type of black or brown bread eaten by monks in the monastery.

Swinecress (Apium nodiflorum): more commonly called Fool’s Watercress as it grows with the watercress, which is cooked in pies and pastries. But in some parts of the country Coronopus squamatus or Wart’s Cress is also called swinecress, and the seeds are used for flavouring.

Talbotays: dishes where the blood is used in the cooking broth as in many of the hare recipes.

Tragopogon porrifolius (Salsify): an edible root sometimes called ‘oyster plant’ for, with a leap of the imagination, the flavour vaguely resembles the oyster.

Wastel: the best, white, wheaten bread, the flour was sieved several times, from the Norman French gastel or cake.

Wether: a castrated ram.

Wormwood (Artemisia Absinthium): an aromatic plant of bitter flavour.

Verjuice: unripe grapes which in northern Europe were otherwise wasted were fermented to form a fruit vinegar used in cookery and pickling. Later crab apples were used. They were substituted for the lemons unobtainable in any quantity in England and which the Crusaders had enjoyed.

Zedoary (Curcuma zedoaria): an aromatic root related to turmeric, native to India and Indonesia.