I’m sure you have never really thought about the origins of the humble apple, but it turns out that it’s fascinating and deeply entrenched in Tudor history
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Apples in Tudor Times
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Hot Tudor salads in cold England
In this Friday’s video, historian Brigitte Webster talks to us about herbs and the new Elizabethan craze for salads.
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Tudor Christmas Food Crossword Puzzle
As it’s the last Sunday before Christmas, we thought we’d test your knowledge of Tudor Christmas food. So, grab your favourite Christmas tipple, a mince pie or slice of Christmas cake, and have fun with this crossword puzzle. Good luck!
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Supermarket brings back popular Tudor vegetable salsify
Further to my Claire Chats video talk on Tudor fruit and vegetables, I just had to share this news article which is completely coincidental – life is strange!
In my talk, I mentioned the popular medieval and Tudor root vegetable salsify, a vegetable which was consumed regularly in the UK up until the 19th century but which many Brits today have never heard of. Well, good news! The supermarket chain Waitrose is selling black salsify, grown in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, and some white salsify, grown in Ayrshire, in 100 of its stores from now until the spring. So, if you’re in the UK, do look out for it and please do let me know if you buy it and try it.
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Tudor Fruit and Vegetables Crossword Puzzle
This Sunday’s puzzle tests your knowledge of Tudor fruit and vegetables. You should find this very easy if you have watched this week’s Claire Chats on the topic.
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Informal live chat – Saturday 12 August
ugust’s informal live chat will take place in the chatroom this Saturday, 12th August. The topic is Tudor food and recipes.
If you’ve never been to one of our informal live chats then let me explain… We all pile into the chatroom and then it’s a free-for-all. It’s an hour where we can discuss the chosen topic, share our thoughts, share book recommendations, pose questions…anything really. It’s always good fun and the hours flies by. So for this one, we can discuss the foods the Tudors ate, how they cooked it, how they preserved it, books about Tudor food and cookery, recipes we have tried etc. I do hope you can come along.
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The Sweet Makers – A Tudor Treat
Did any of you manage to watch this documentary last week? It’s part 1 of a 3 part series looking at sweet makers in different historical periods.
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The Sweet Makers: A Tudor Treat – BBC Two on 19 July
Thank you to Tudor Society members Dawn Hatswell for alerting me about this programme which airs on BBC Two at 8pm on Wednesday 19th July 2017. It’s part 1 of a 3 part series looking at sweet makers in different historical periods.
Here is the BBC’s blurb for the Tudor episode:
“Four modern confectioners step back in time to discover what life was like for their Tudor predecessors. They’ll explore how our national sweet tooth developed, and how the tables of the aristocracy boasted fantastic displays of sugar craft which showed off their owners’ wealth and status.
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Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday
You can read all about Shrovetide and Lent in my article “Shrove Tuesday, Pancakes and Lent”, but I wanted to share with you my latest Tudor Cooking with Claire video which features Tim making Tudor inspired pancakes.
Here is the recipe…
Tim’s Tudor inspired pancakes
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The Forme of Cury and medieval recipes
Today’s Claire Chats is about “The Forme of Cury” manuscript and primary sources for medieval and Tudor cookery and food.
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Tudor Cooking Videos
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Tudor Cooking and Food Primary Sources
Many medieval and Tudor cookbooks and recipe manuscripts have been transcribed and are available to read online or in books. Here are links to those I have found so far. I hope you find them useful.
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Tudor Cooking with Claire – Lombard Slices (Leche Lombarde)
In this edition of Tudor Cooking with Claire, I make Lombard Slices, also known as Leche Lombarde, a medieval sweetmeat. In the video, I read the original recipe which is found in Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books and here it is:
“Take fayre Hony, and clarifi yt on the fyre tylle it wexe hard, then take hard yolkys of Eyroun, & kryme a gode quantyte ther-to, tyl it be styf y-now; an thenne take it vppe, & ley it on a borde; then take fayre gratyd Brede, & pouder pepir, & molde it to-gederys with thine hondys, tylle it be so styf that it wole ben lechyd; then leche it; then take wyne & pouder Gyngere, Canelle, & a lytil claryfyid hony, & late renne thorw a straynour, & caste this Syryp ther-on, when thou shalt serue it out, instede of Clerye.”
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Tudor Cooking with Claire – Strawberry Tart
I love strawberries so when I saw this Tudor/Stuart strawberry tart recipe I just had to give it a go. It was delicious and takes very little preparation and time.
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Tudor Cooking with Claire – Hippocras
I’m always coming across mentions of hippocras when I’m reading primary source accounts of banquets, coronations and christenings. It was something that was served at the end of a banquet with wafers and “spice plates”. I love trying out things I read about so I looked in my books for a contemporary recipe and a modernised version. Here is the result:
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Tudor Gingerbread
For this week’s Claire Chats I wanted to share with you a video I’ve just made for my “Tudor Cooking with Claire” series. I love ginger and so was interested to find various mentions of “ginger bread” in medieval and Tudor recipe books and to find that it really was ‘gingered bread’.
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Tudor Cooking with Claire – Bread and Butter Pudding
For this week’s Claire Chats video, I decided to do a recipe from the November section of Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book, a compilation of Elizabethan recipes by Lady Elinor Fettiplace. As I say in my video, I didn’t think it would be sweet enough with just sugar scattered over the top, but it actually was. It was a big hit at lunch, disappearing rapidly.
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Eat, drink, and be merry – A virtual exhibition
Thank you to our art historian Melanie V. Taylor for letting me know about this wonderful virtual exhibition which has been designed to complement “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: Food in the Middle Ages and Renaissance”, an exhibition organized by the Manuscripts Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles which is on now and which runs until 3rd January 2016.
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Cooking with Claire – Tudor Buttered Sweet Potatoes
In today’s Claire Chats video, I am cooking Buttered Sweet Potatoes from Elinor Fettiplaces’s Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking edited and modernized by Hilary Spurling. The original book was compiled by Lady Elinor Fettiplace from Oxfordshire in 1604 and it’s a treasure trove of Tudor recipes divided into the months of the year. In the October section, I found a recipe entitled “To Butter Potato Roots” and that’s what I have made.
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Tudor Food Quiz
Just how well did you listen to Claire in her recent Claire Chats videos? How much can you remember about Tudor food and feasting?
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Tudor Dining, Table Manners and Etiquette Video
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Tudor Food Video Part 2 – The Rich
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Tudor Food Video Part 1 – Peasants and Farmers
