Thoughts:

In my ongoing quest to prove that medieval food is not gross, I knew I had to try these two recipes. I discovered the cookbook of Bartolomeo Scappi this summer at a medieval food lab (yep, I’m a dork), and was so diverted by the wonderful recipes in the book that I quickly added a few of them to my queue. You can check out the cookbook itself on Google Books, here.

Although Scappi provides much more detail about his methods of cooking, as well as proportions for ingredients, these recipes fought back a little. It took a few tries, and even now, I’ll probably take another crack at them to try and perfect the recipes. For those unfamiliar with these dishes, they are traditional Italian desserts. Zeppole are like little fried doughnut holes, and Zabaglione is like a thick alcoholic pudding. While I knew they were traditional, I didn’t know they dated so far back as 1570. I imagine they might even go back to Ancient Rome… I’ll take a look.

Medieval Zeppole, from Scappi

As mentioned, the Zeppole need a little work. I followed the recipe very closely, and met with some difficulties. I boiled the chickpeas and chestnuts, which seems now unnecessary, unless you are using dried chestnuts.  The yeast was not sufficient to leaven the dough, so I added the six egg whites suggested at the end of the original recipe, which helped fluff the fritters up. I ground up the nuts myself, which made for a lumpy sort of dough that was prone to falling apart without the eggs. These were the many trials I struggled with in the process of working through this recipe. In the future, I would use a variety of nut flours, rather than the coarsely ground nuts I had, which should result in a more cooperative dough.

Medieval Zabaglione, from Scappi

The Zabaglione, on the other hand, is wonderful. Rich and boozy, it’s also somehow also light and fluffy, somewhere between a custard and a mousse. The modern version tends to be plainer, but I love the traditional addition of the cinnamon, which gives it a nice spiciness. This recipe took me two tries to get right, but once I did, it’s an instant house favorite. I omitted the water the second time, and the mixture fluffed up beautifully, just the way it ought to.

One very cool thing about these two recipes is that they are so complimentary. One uses six egg yolks, the other the whites. The flavors and textures go well together, and the result is a tasty dessert pairing worthy of any dinner party.

Zeppole Recipe

Makes around 2 dozen small fritters.      Time: around 1 hour

Cook’s Note: I’m putting in the recipe as I made it, but plan to revisit and improve in the coming month or so. You’ll have an easier time if you just use nut flours rather than trying to grind the nuts yourself. Be sure to check back for the update!

Zeppole Ingredients:

• 1 15 oz. can chickpeas/garbanzo beans
• 6 oz. chestnuts, shelled
• 6 oz. walnuts, shelled
• 4 oz. sugar
• 1 Tbs. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. combined cloves and nutmeg
• dash of rosewater
• optional seasonings: mint, marjoram, burnet, wild thyme
• 6 egg whites
• oil or fat for frying (I used Crisco)
• cinnamon sugar, for dusting

Wash the chickpeas, removing any of the outer skins that peel off. Boil the chickpeas and chestnuts in a light meat broth for 20-30 minutes, until the chestnuts are soft. Strain, then grind together the chickpeas, chestnuts, and walnuts until you have a relatively fine meal or paste. Add the sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, followed by the yeast mixture. If you like, add in some minced herbs to taste. Stir in the egg whites. 

Bring your oil to medium heat. Using a spoon, scoop out about two tablespoons of the batter at a time. gently drop this mixture into the hot oil. They should sink to the bottom of the pan, but then rise to the top as they cook (you may need to loosen them up if they stick to the bottom). Fry for about a minute, until the fritters are a dark golden brown. It may take some time to get the hang of this part, but keep trying!

When the fritters are done, remove to a plate covered with paper towels to drain. Brush each fritter with rosewater and roll in cinnamon sugar.

Zabaglione Recipe

Makes about 6 small servings       Time: ~20 minutes

Zabaglione Ingredients: 

• 6 egg yolks
• 6 oz. sweet malmsey
• 3 oz. sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 4 oz. water
• butter

Combine six egg yolks with the sugar and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Whisk briskly until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture looks like a very pale yellow cream. Add the white wine, whisk to combine, then place the mixture in a bowl over a double boiler, and whisk while it cooks until it is the consistency of a thick pudding. Carefully remove from heat (the bowl is hot!) and stir in the butter. Serve warm, as in the original instructions, or pour into serving dishes and chill for a thicker set.

 Many of us read about the feasts in Martin’s books, and think to ourselves, “77 courses?! That’s absurd. You’re just making this up! No feast could be that big!”  We’d think that, but we’d be wrong.

In fact, some historical feasts were considerably more lavish, more huge, and more absurd than those that GRRM details. In 1213, King John of England’s Christmas feast included 3,000 capons, 1,000 salted eels, 400 hogs, 100 pounds of almonds, and 24 casks of wine. A few decades later King Edward I’s coronation feast featured, among other items, 440 oxen and over 22,000 hens.  

Just think of the logistics of that for a moment! How far afield would one have to go, and how far in advance, to secure that amount of livestock for a single event? I’m terrible with numbers, but I can tell you that it’s NUTS. 

Richard II and his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, threw a feast for hundreds in the late 1300s that featured mostly roasts. Roasting animals was a relatively expensive undertaking at the time, given the amount of wood required for the fire and the cost of the animals themselves. In addition to nearly 100 pounds of salted venison, the feast included a wide variety of waterfowl, including herons, cranes, swans, and geese. The bill for the feast also called for 11,000 eggs. If you figure that a good laying hen can lay around an egg a day, ponder for a moment how many hens it would take, and how long, to amass that number. Here are the courses for the rest of the feast:

• 14 salted oxen
• 84 pounds salted venison
• 12 boar, including heads
• 120 sheep heads
• 300 marrowbones
• More than 100 waterbirds, including cranes, herons and curlews
• 50 swans
• 150 capons
• 1,200 pigeons
• 210 geese
• 11,000 eggs

According to the HRP site (Historic Royal Palaces), in a typical year, the royal kitchen in Henry VIII’s time served 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 760 calves, 1,870 pigs, and 53 wild boar. That’s more than 14,000 large animals, meaning each member of the court was consuming about 23 animals every year. The whole of this was washed down with about 600,000 gallons of Ale. Is it any wonder the king ended up looking like this?

Clearly Robert Baratheon and Henry VIII would have been the best of chums.  In order to process such quantities of ingredients and turn them into the feasts we all imagine, a staff of 200 worked extremely hard in the 3,000 square foot kitchen. Other notable features included:

• 6 fireplaces with spits
• a pastry house (!) with four ovens
• the ale cellar had double locks, and the keys were held by two separate officials
• three larders: for meat, fish, and all dry goods
• a boiling house, for making stock- the copper kettle could hold 75 gallons!

I would dearly like to have a pastry house of my very own…

Like her father, Queen Elizabeth I was no stranger to awesome food. The Spanish began cultivating a lot of sugar in the 1400s, and the English queen grew fond of the stuff. One of her earls, trying to gain the queen’s favor, threw a dessert feast for her. Lizzie sat in a gallery watching fireworks, while men carried up hundreds of desserts, among them:

• Sugar sculptures of castles, guns, soldiers and forts (English & French), as well as peacocks, swans and other animals.
• Marzipan creatures, fictional and real – eagles, lions, apes, frogs, snakes, worms, unicorns, mermaids and whales.
• Crystallized fruits, mostly apricots, damsons and plums.
• Preserved citrus peels (citrus fruits were still exceptionally rare in England)
• Sugar-coated almonds and spices, such as aniseed and fennel.
• Clear, cream and coloured jellies, flavoured with fruit juice, wine, rose-water, cinnamon and ginger, wobbling in bowls and or served in stiffened slices.
• Biscuits made from almonds, rosewater and ambergris.
• Fruit tarts of apples, pears and plums.
• Spice cakes made with cinnamon, cloves, saffron and mace.

Renaissance Sugar Cake, via marmitelover.blogspot.com

That lineup might not include sugar skulls, but here’s dearly hoping that GRRM includes a similar sugary feast in one of his books. He’s given us cream swans and spun sugar unicorns, but I’d love to make some of the dishes above! 

And of course, lest we forget the royalty of Pentos, Meereen, and other far flung cities across the Narrow Sea, I’ll take a look at some of the dinners put on by the Explorers Club in NYC. Stay tuned for that in a future post…