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From the Brick Spoon
Sauces
by Wulfric of Creigull
Sauces are an easy way to make a simple roast meat more authentically medieval. They can also generally be prepared ahead of time and reheated, if necessary. So next time you're planning to bring a roast to an event, consider one (or more) of these as a low-effort addition.
These three sauces were all served at this last Jingles along with a roast of beef. All interpretations arc from Cariadoc and Elizabeth's Miscellany
Mustard, from the Menagier de Paris, 1400 or so: ... if you want to make mustard hastily in a village, grind some mustard-seed in a mortar and soak in vinegar, and strain; and if you want to make it ready the sooner, put it in a pot in front of the fire. Item, and if you wish to make it properly and at leisure, put the mustard-seed to soak overnight in good vinegar, then have it ground fine in a mill, and then little by little moisten it with good vinegar: and if you have some spices left over from making jelly, broth, hippocras or sauces, they may be ground up with it, and then leave it until it is ready.
| 4 t mustard seed | ½ cup red wine vinegar |
Soak mustard seed overnight in about 5T vinegar. Grind finely, adding extra vinegar as needed to get to the proper texture. Age before serving.
Cameline sauce, also from the Menagier: to make cameline they bray ginger, cinnamon and saffron and half a nutmeg moistened with wine, then take it out of the mortar; then have while bread crumbs, not toasted but moistened in cold water and brayed in the mortar, moisten them with wine and strain them, then boil altogether and put in brown sugar last of all; and that is winter cameline.
| 1 t ginger 1 t cinnamon medium pinch saffron 1 t nntmeg |
2 c cold water 2 T red wine 3 T bread crumbs 2 T brown sugar |
Grind spices as needed; add bread crumbs and grind until smooth. Add water and wine, bring to a boil, simmer until thickened and add brown sugar.
Jance, from Chiquart's Du Fait du Cuisine, 1420 or so: ... take good almonds and blanch and clean them very well and bray them very well; and take the inside of white bread according to the quantity which he needs, and let him have the best white wine which he can get in which he should put his bread to soak, and with verjuice; and when his almonds are well brayed put in a little garlic to bray with them; and take white ginger and grains of paradise according to the quantity of sauce which he needs, and strain all this together and draw it up with the said white wine and a little verjuice and salt also, and put it to boil in a fair and clean pot.
Jance recipe:
6 oz blanched almonds |
2 c white bread 2 t verjuice or 1 t vinegar ½ t grains of paradise 2 c more white wine |
Crumble bread, soak with 1 cup wine and verjuice or vinegar; grind almonds, then grind garlic with them. Add spices, mix with bread, grind or force through a strainer. Put into a pot with additional wine, bring to a boil and cook, over low heat about ten minutes.
References
Friedman, David, and Cook, Elizabeth. A Miscellany. 5th , edition. 1992.
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