“‘Hungry again?’ he asked. There was still half a honeyed chicken in the center of the table. Jon reached out to tear off a leg, then had a better idea. He knifed the bird whole and let the carcass slide to the floor between his legs. Ghost ripped into it in savage silence.” (I:43)
Medieval Honeyed Chicken
Our Thoughts:
Yum. The sauce reduces down to a thick, syrupy consistency, which melts ever so slightly when drizzled over the hot chicken. The raisins soak up the sauce, and become absolutely delicious little morsels. Combine a bite of the chicken, dripping with the juice from the plate, with a plump raisin, and you’re golden.
Bottom line? Omnomnom!
Medieval Roast Chicken Recipe
This was a recipe that gave us some difficulty; Absurd, when it seems so straightforward. However, there appear to be no recipes for “honeyed chicken” from a surviving period cookbook. At last, we found a recipe that we could work with. Thank you Ancient Romans! Now, you say that ancient Rome is not the Middle Ages, and you are correct. However, we use what we can. And really, it’s honeyed chicken. Are you really going to hold that against us?
Our changes: Since this dish is mentioned in The North, we took out a few things that were more Roman than Stark. We started with Apicius’ recipe for Chicken in Honey and Dill Glaze (Apicius, 6.8.2). Instead of white wine vinegar, we substituted apple cider vinegar, and added raisins, assuming that apples are easier to come by in The North than are grapes. We eliminated the dill and date syrup for the same reason. Also, absolutely no fish sauce with our chicken. This left us with ingredients as follows:
Ingredients:
- 1 whole chicken for roasting
- olive oil/butter
- salt
sauce:
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/3 cup honey
- Dash of mint, dried or fresh (abt. 1 tsp.)
- Small handful of raisins
- ~tbs. butter
Rub the chicken down with olive oil/butter and salt. This makes the skin crispy and delicious. Cook in an oven at 450 degrees F for approximately an hour, or until the juices run clear, and the thick meat of the breast is no longer pink.
While your chicken is roasting away in the oven, combine all ingredients in saucepan and allow to simmer until the raisins plump and the sauce reduces slightly. Remove from heat, and when the chicken is done, spread the sauce and raisins over the bird.
Oh wow, I was looking online for this recipe specifically, and found a bunch of modern twists. I’m no medieval expert, so I was just looking to adapt one that sounded most delicious to me. Now I have this! THANK YOU!!
Glad we could help! Hope your premiere party is a blast!
Did you brine the chicken first? I will definitely be making this one for the viewing party!
Hey Rhaygar, we just covered it with olive oil and liberally sprinkled salt on it. It’s the simplest thing, and makes crispy, delicious skin! Best of luck with yours! :)
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Out of curiosity, if you think that grapes will be less common in the North than they would have been in ancient Rome, then why the raisins? You removed the white wine vinegar, but added raisins. If raisins are made from grapes, wouldn’t the same logic apply to them as well? I’ve been considering making this with dried cherries, or perhaps dried cranberries, as these fruits would be more common to northern Europe.
Good point! We figured that while grapes wouldn’t grow in the north, raisins could be bought and transported from the south. You are correct that wine vinegar would also be perfectly feasible as a northern ingredient, but for the flavor combination, we simply preferred apple cider vinegar. This would also likely have been available at Winterfell, and we thought the flavors suited one another. Using cherries and cranberries also sounds delicious! Let us know how it turns out!
where did you see there were cranberrys in northern europe???!!!
I have two chickens defrosting Hubby never can find apple cider vinegar so he tells me . Another recipe said to use tomatoe sauce if you don’t have apple cider vinegar some how this doesn’t seem right . Think I should go to the market myself.
Another vinegar would work if you have it, or even some wine. The key is to carefully reduce the sauce over low heat. Tomato sauce could be an option, but you’d lose the proper “Honeyed” chicken part of the recipe.
Best of luck!
we also used this recipe. I opted for the precooked rotisserie chicken. I loved the sauce though. I went with the fresh mint and changed the raisins to goji berries. We had them around and they seemed exotic enough to work.
For the side vegetables I made fresh green beans with salt and butter with black forest bacon and almond slivers.
Aaron, that just sounds really awesome of the side dish.
Did a pair of honeyed chickens tonight on the grill! Split the birds in half, coated liberally with olive oil and a pinch of black pepper. Smoked with hickory wood about an hour indirect followed by 20 minutes of direct grilling. Came out golden brown and crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. Then drizzled them with the sauce (I used a little more honey than you call for). Even my lady Cersei at an entire half and then some!
I tried this recipe last Sunday, came out great! The sauce was delicious, only thing i did different was stuff the inside of the chicken with raisins and apples. This blog is awesome, I’m using a new recipe for each time the show comes out.
Sounds like a great recipe! Any ideas how I should prepare the chicken that i bought straight from freezer?
Right! If your chicken is frozen you’ll want to thaw it. To do so, soak it in hot (but not too hot!) water until it is thawed completely through. You should then be able to follow the usual cooking instructions. Hope that helps!
Cold water. DO NOT DEFROST CHICKEN IN HOT WATER. Place chicken in airtight plastic bag and submerge in cold water from the tap. Change the water every 20-30 minutes.
Just wanted to say that this recipe came out AWESOME! I basted the chicken with the butter, salt, and oil mixture about every 15 mins to keep it moist and doubled up on the raisin-honey sauce and let it soak into the chicken for about 30 minutes before serving. Had friends from the party literally picking the bones clean. Would it be a good idea to marinate the chicken in the sauce overnight? Just curious.
Glad you liked it! It’s one of our favorites… As for marinating, I’d say that doing up a whole chicken overnight wouldn’t probably make that much of a difference. If you were using the sauce recipe with pieces of chicken, such as breasts, thighs, or drumsticks, I’d say marinating would be a great idea. If you try it, let us know how it turns out!
Try using a flavor injector into the pre-cooked chicken to deliver the sauce into the meat. It looks like a really big, scary version of a doctor’s needle.
We made this tonight and it was very tasty! The sauce was a new flavor combination for us, and one we’ll definitely be wanting to eat again. We also made the crusty, fresh-baked bread, which sopped up the mingled sauce and chicken juices very nicely. In the future I’ll probably be lazy and just make the sauce for baked boneless/skinless chicken breasts, but for now I have a lovely stock cooking from the bones and leftovers!
The sweetness of the chicken makes for a wonderfully sweet broth; glad to see it’s a dish that keeps on giving! :)
Made this tonight with b/s tenders. It was absolutely delicious over rice. My husband asked for thirds and my two year old actually cleaned his plate! Thank you, very much.
High praise indeed from the next generation of fans!
Made this tonight with dried cherries instead of raisins, with sweet potato fries on the side. The sweet potatoes worked really well as a side dish to this. One question I have is, how much cooking time did you allow for the reduction to get to spreadable consistency? I simmered the sauce for about ten minutes. I removed it from the heat with two or three minutes to go, and it had reduced slightly, but it was still too liquid to spread. I wound up spooning the liquid and cherries onto the meat. It tasted good, but I felt it would have worked better as a spread.
In the future, you’ll probably want the sauce to reduce a bit more, until it is the consistency of thick honey. It should melt a bit when it hits the hot chicken, and then be a great, gooey consistency. The time for reducing is sort of a rough guideline, more than a definite one. :)
I think next time I do this recipe, I will begin reducing when I first put the meat in to cook, maybe even when I begin preheating. I can just take it off when it hits the right thickness then, rather than depending on when the meat is done.
If I were to make this dish with chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken, what would you suggest in terms of cooking temperature/time? (Oh, the challenges of cooking for one.)
If you are baking the chicken thighs, I’d recommend around 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Of course, if you were to spring for a whole chicken for yourself, you could then count on tasty leftovers, and even boil down the carcass for a nice, sweet chicken soup. Just saying… :)
I tried this one out tonight. I used butter, salt, and pepper to prep the chicken, and then added another ~1 tablespoon of butter dolloped over the chicken halfway through cooking.
My husband was a bit put off by the sharp smell of the apple cider vinegar, so I added the juice of one lemon, then added the butter/juice from the cooking chicken. I poured this over the chicken for the last 15 mins, and at this point it was a big juicy mess! The result was amazingly moist chicken with a nice sweet twist to it. We have plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and I’m boiling the carcass for a great stock I can use once autumn rolls around.
PS: LOVE the site! I had commented to friends that there ought to be a Song of Ice and Fire cookbook, and they directed me here.
This is incredibly delicious. I would love to feature this recipe in my cooking column and link back to your blog. Would that be ok?
Sure thing! Where can we find your column? :)
It will be posted Thursday on whitelake.patch.com :) Thanks!
Excuse me, do I put water in the initial sauce, with all the ingredients (in the saucepan)?
I am trying to make this recipe and really need to know :P
Nope! No water, just the ingredients for the sauce: 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/3 cup honey, Dash of mint, dried or fresh (abt. 1 tsp.), Small handful of raisins, ~tbs. butter. Good luck!
Thanks for the help, I managed to get it! It was delicious! Had a little problem with the sauce, I poured it on the chicken to early and some of it didn’t stick to the chicken :D
Next time Ill do better!
Glad you liked it! The sauce will often slip off, but then you can mop it up with every bite. Yum! :)
Just tried this as my first attempt from this blog. We have a *lot* of food allergies, so we’re always looking for old-fashioned or ethnic recipes that happen to not have our triggers in them. I can’t wait to try some of the other items in here!
I used the olive oil on the chicken, as dairy is one of our issues. Very crispy skin; yum! I made the sauce according to the recipe, just subbing saved chicken fat for the butter, and found like kmw5 above that it was too sharp (and I’m a vinegar-lover, so I knew the rest of the family wouldn’t like it). Since I was making two chickens anyway, I added another 1/3 cup honey, juice of one lemon, and some more mint, and reduced it again. *This* time it came out WONDERFULLY. Everyone adored it!
We opted to serve the sauce separately, as our kids (ages 3 and 7) often get upset if we befoul their meal before they get a chance to do it themselves ;-) but it worked great to dollop onto individual servings.
We served it with an adapted version of the Summer Greens with Grapes and Pecans (cashew cheese instead of gorgonzola; walnuts instead of pecans, because we had them on hand; skipped the fennel; made a honey-mustard vinaigrette instead of the apricot dressing). Delicious top to bottom!
I’m planning on making this either this weekend or next week! I was wondering if you have a favorite recipe you like to follow to make stock out of the leftovers from this. Thanks!
Generally I just put whatever bones are left into a pot, cover with water, and simmer down for a couple of hours. Then I strain it, and stick it in the fridge/freezer until the fat has set on top, at which point I can scrape it off and discard it. Because of the honey, the broth tends to come out uniquely sweet, and unlike other chicken stocks. Very yum.
On the somewhat rare occasions we’ve had meat left over, I’ve made risotto with mushrooms and asparagus (also AMAZING with duck stock, fwiw), or with a little extra meat you could make up a chicken pot pie. I’ve also used the stock for making Turkish red lentil soup, Italian strachiatella soup, and the usual standby of traditional chicken noodle.
Sounds like it would also be amazing for congee! Thanks!
You DON’T mention that later in that same feast (same page, actually), Benjen Stark spears a roasted onion:
“He snagged a roasted onion, dripping brown with gravy, from a nearby trencher and bit into it. It crunched.”
So the menu would be: Honeyed chicken with roasted onions in brown gravy, paired with “summerwine.”
yum
So I made this tonight as it turned out fantastic. Everyone loved it. I didn’t put the sauce on the chicken until it was on the table so everyone could have as much or as little sauce as they wanted and even though the sauce turned out a little thin, it was still spectacular. And I don’t even like raisins.
Thanks for this recipe! Can’t wait to try more!
My aunt makes a tarragon/honey chicken that’s TO DIE FOR. How do you think tarragon would work in this instead of mint?
Brilliantly! :)
I’m making winterfell honeyed chicken tonight! I am using a dark wildflower honey for the sauce, omitting the raisins, and stuffing the chicken with onions & apples. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!
Okay, I have to say that I made this today and it was absolutely delicious. Thank you!
I am curious about the dill. (I come from Estonia, which had five types of herb available during Soviet times. Dill was one of them. (The others were parsley, thyme, oregano and dried bay leaves.)) And I must say that it does grow here just fine. So I’m wondering why you left it out? Was it not used in those days? I know it was grown in the medieval apothecary’s gardens in Tallinn at least. (This is not a particularly important question, I grant you. I just got curious). Oh, and was it an ingredient of the sauce in the Roman recipe?
Also, I found your blog this week and absolutely love it and can’t wait for the cookbook. At least I have loads of recipes to try before that!
I just made this, and it was quite yummy! My only complaint is that the ratio of the sauce is VERY heavy on the vinegar, even when I adjusted it to equal parts, and I love vinegar. Reversing the proportions might make the vinegar less shocking! I also improvised a stuffing of toasted sourdough bread, onion, granny smith apple, butter, salt, and pepper. Yum!
I love this blog! I’ll be making the black bread (old version) and period lemoncakes over the next couple days :D
That stuffing sounds terrific!
I hope you enjoy your next baking endeavors- lemoncakes never last long in our house!
Guys, you are awsome! Right at this moment, I’m drinking Salladhor Saan’s Hot Wine, and Medieval Arabic Lamb Meatballs are planned for tomorrow.
Havent tried this recepie yet, but have an opinion about Roman variant: it wasn’t nessesary to exclude dill. In many cold countries like Baltic States and Russia, dill traditionally is the important part of the menu, and grows in the garden without greenhouse during the summer. So, I think that using dill for cooking fantasy Northern food is OK.
Tried this today, it was awesome, thanks a lot for sharing! The only change was that I used Jerez vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar.
Hey guys,
As a medievalist, reenactor, and GoT fan, I absolutely LOVE this site. And as a beginner cook, I have a question that might seem stupidly basic. If I were to buy a fresh chicken, are there any parts I should remove before roasting it? I know my mother is always pulling parts out of our Thanksgiving turkeys but I’ve never done a whole chicken before. Thanks very much!
Not to worry! Poultry is usually packaged with the giblets (heart, gizzard, liver, neck, etc), from which a tasty, tasty gravy can be made. However, in terms of actually cooking your bird, all of that should come out first. Looking forward to hearing how your first honeyed chicken goes over! :)
It went fantastically! We stuffed it with parsnips and onions, with a salad and Black Beer Bread as a side. It was a big meal for two, but we ate almost all of it! We’re boiling up the remains of the chicken and the tops of leeks (from the Roast Aurochs recipe) into a broth tonight. This site has really expanded my cooking horizons and I look forward to some new adventures!
When trying this tonight, I made up two batches of sauce to see which I liked better – one with raisins, the other with 1/3 cup of dried cherries. After one taste of each, I threw the raisin sauce out. The tang of the vinegar really pulled out the cherry flavor, but without being cloyingly sweet. Next time, I’ll make a double batch of sauce; it really didn’t go quite far enough. This is *definately* going on my menu for Gulf War in March.
Hooray! Sad that we won’t be at Gulf Wars to share some with you, but maybe Pennsic? :)
Much as I’d love to go back to Pennsic, my mundane life keep preventing it. *sigh* Maybe next year…
Once I get our meal plan fully worked out, I’d be happy to share the line-up with you. You already have at least half the recipes, tho. ;)
Love your blog, and love the recipes! I am planning on adapting this to roast pork loin for dinner tonight. Can’t wait to taste it!!
I’ll try this soon, I think, it seems fairly simple and tasty. I’m not a fan of raisins, so I might go for cranberries instead, of possibly blueberries, since they’re a good ol’ northern fruit (I don’t cook much with berries, so it’ll be a nice experiment). I’ll make me some broth afterwards too, and use it to make this soup:
http://www.ivillage.com/autumn-chicken-stew/3-r-296030
I feel like the flavours will go together well (I hope)
Awesome! I can vouch that the leftover chicken from this recipe makes a fantastic soup. Enjoy!
We made this for our season 1 bluray premiere along with spinach salad, rustic country bread, roasted potatoes, blackberry pie and mulled Mead. (And a glass of milk with the pie)
One guy summed it it up with the phrase, “that is the best meal I’ve had since Christmas”.
In short, this recipe is awesome.
made it with porkchops and its great. thanks!!!
Ran across this blog when I was reading Game of Thrones and thought to myself, mmm honeyed chicken- gee, wouldn’t it be nice if some foodie fans of George R. R. Martin made a website devoted to re-creating the food mentioned in the books? I love the internet. Great recipe, and blog!
Oh- and will be buying the cookbook, as well. Awesome idea!
This recipe is great! I made it last night for my Pre-Premiere party. The only problem I had was the olive oil kept smoking up my apartment. Maybe I used too much oil. I solved the issue by covering the chicken with foil, the skin wasn’t as crispy but the meat was moist and the sauce came out great.
Wow! I made this tonight for the pre-premier dinner, and it was FANTASTIC. It was juicy and delicious, and the sauce was heavenly. We rounded it out with the White Beans and Bacon recipe and Lemon Cakes for dessert – using the lemon curd suggestion. My hubby and I have the meat sweats right now, but it was well worth it. Thanks!!!!
I made this for the premiere last night, and it was delicious. I used golden raisins instead and garnished with fresh mint leaves – it was beautiful. We also had bacon wrapped fingerling potatoes, peas and onions, scotch eggs, crusty bread, hard cheese (gruyere), soft cheese (goat cheese rolled in herbs), sausage (hard salami), strawberry lemon galette, summer wine with strawberries, mead and ale — it was awesome!
I served this at my premier party last night, and thought it was amazing. I prepared two chickens (one was 4 pounds, and the other was right under 4 lbs), and was nervous about the cooking time, so I added 15 minutes to the hour recommended – it was perfect. I was worried about the amount of vinegar in the sauce, but you’re right – it just has to be reduced enough, and then it’s fantastic. I added a little butter to the sauce and used golden raisins, but those were my only changes. Thank you!
All the lords and ladies at my dinner party were very pleased with this dish. Instead of a whole chicken, I used 10 whole chicken legs and tripled the sauce recipe. Roasted them for 1 hour and 40 mins with a little water in the bottom of the pans and aluminum foil on top, removing the foil for the last 15 minutes. It worked great to keep them moist, thoroughly cooked, and crisply browned. The sauce stung my sinuses a bit (in a good way) while it was simmering. But, once it reduced, it had the loveliest, mild, sweet tang. Thanks so much.