HFF 5.18: The More Things Change

The Challenge: The More Things Change. Make a dish or use an ingredient that was common in your historic era, but is unpopular or hard-to-find today. 

I decided to use an uncommon technique, and fry these pastries over an open fire. In a ceramic pan.

The Recipe: Risshewes from Harleian Manuscript 4016 (Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks)

"Risshewes. Take figges and grinde hem ał rawe in a morter and cast a lituð fraied oyle there to. And þen take hem vppe yn a vessell and caste there to pynes, reysyns of corañce, myced dates, sugur, saffron, pouder ginger, and salt. And þen make Cakes of floure, sugur, salt and rolle þe stuff in thi honde and couche it in þe Cakes, and folde hem togidur as risshewes. And fry hem in oyle and serue hem forth."

The Date/Year and Region: c. 1450, English

How Did You Make It: I cut up a small handfull of figs, and ground them in a marble mortar, and mixed them with zante currants, chopped dates, a small handful of grandulated sugar, a few threads of saffron, about a tsp of powdered ginger, and a small piece of butter (for the "fraied oyle"). I omitted the "pynes", as I could not find any pine nuts to include (though I wondered if this actually meant "prunes", but decided "pines" is the more straightforward reading).

For the "cakes", I took about 1 cup of flour and 1/4 cup sugar and a dash of salt, cut in 1/2 cup butter, and added minimal amount of water to make a paste, rolled it out with a rolling pin, and folded into half-circles with a spoonful of fruit-paste in the center. I then fried them two at a time in butter over the coals.

Total Time: No clock outdoors, but I think it was about 30 minutes to mix things up and shape the pastries, and another 30 or so to fry them. [After the first 8, I switched to cast iron just to get the things done.]

Total Cost: This was a bit expensive with all the dried fruit to purchase, but I can't find the receipt. I did at least have some saffron threads left from my own harvest, which knocked the price down a lot.

How Successful Was It?: My cooking mentor compared them to fig newtons, which isn't a bad descriptor. Under her tutelage, I think the pastries turned out quite nicely, though frying them was a bit of a trick. I had transcribed the recipe as using butter, not oil, for the cooking, which was a bit higher temperature than the pan wanted to go, so things were cooking very slowly. The best/most crisp ones were the last few, which I threw in an iron pan after cooking almost half of the pastries on the ceramic. The butter certainly melted quickly, but it just wasn't hot enough to fry the pastries crisply. These first few weren't bad warm, but were obviously under-cooked as they cooled down.

How Accurate Is It? Other than the butter/oil issue, I think I did pretty well within the lose guidelines of the instructions (no quantities, no directors for the paste, etc).