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My english class is working on shakespearian times and we decided to have an Elizabethan feast. Each group has to make three dishes, a side dish, a main dish and a dessert. We are having trouble finding a good recipie for a turkey and we don't know what to do for the other two. Any ideas?
P.S. One of the group members is a vegetarian
Posts: 81 | Registered: Feb 2007
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I have two "cooking with Shakespeare" and several other historical cookbooks. I can post suggestions when I get home this afternoon (1pm or so) and send you recipes for any of them that you'd like.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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ok, now we have a dessert (orange and apple tart) and a side dish (brandied carrots) with recipies, so we only really need a recipie for turkey/stuffing.
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I don't know about food (spit-roasted hog is the only thing which comes to mind - and I think they tended to eat blackbirds, larks, rabbit and other odd wildlife), but to be authentic you should definitely drink ale with your food. Water was unsafe to drink at that time.
Potatoes may have been fashionable, being relatively new to their diet.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Brinestone is right. Turkey would not have been a common food in Elizabethan England since it is not native to England or Europe. Goose would have been a better choice. From what I've read, beef was the most commonly eaten meat in England during that time period and roast beef is a classic very traditional english dish.
I'd recommend a roast beef with Yorkshire pudding which has been an English staple since the middle ages. Here is a link with a recipe for Yorkshire pudding.
quote:Originally posted by Brinestone: Turkey is native to the Americas and would not have been part of an Elizabethan feast.
Depends on the social level. Shakespeare would never see a turkey, but Queen Elizabeth might, as an an exotic delicacy.
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Are you suggesting that English explorers would have trapped wild turkeys and hauled them live across the ocean for the amusement of Queen Elizabeth? Even that seems highly unlikely.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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The vegetarian should actually do okay here. Everyday people were likely to eat a diet that consisted of a lot of oats and other grains, whole-grain bread, and home-grown vegetables and fruits such as wild or cultivated berries, supplemented with what milk and fish they could get and on the rare feast day some meat. Monks and nuns also observed many fast days when they would eat no meat except for fish.
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quote: Are you suggesting that English explorers would have trapped wild turkeys and hauled them live across the ocean for the amusement of Queen Elizabeth? Even that seems highly unlikely.
Er...they are just turkeys, not T-Rexes....
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I found an Elizabethan recipe. Some of the ingredients may be hard to obtain at the local A&P, however:
quote:Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witch's mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab. Add thereto a tiger's chawdron, For the ingredients of our cawdron.
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good.
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According to Shakespeare's Kitchen turkeys were introduced to Europe from the Americas by Spanish explorers in the late 1500s. They are referenced in Twelfth Night Act II, scene 5. And the book includes a recipe for Stuffed Turkey Breast.
Other choices from the Fowle chapter are:
Roasted Pheasant with Currants and Wine Capon with Peppercorn and Onion Stuffing Chicken with Wine, Apples, and Dried Fruit Chicken and Artichokes Cornish Game Hens with Sage Chicken Plum Pie Duck Breast with Gooseberries Almond Saffron Chicken in Bread Chicken with Sorrel Pesto
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Try shopping for recipes here: http://www.florilegium.org/ The index to the left contains several "Food" and "Feast" sections. Depending on just which year of "Elizabethan" you'd like to replicate, you might not be able to use any New World foods at all, which of course include potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate, corn meal, (remember that older English "corn" just means "grain", wheat, barley, etc, no maize, and might mean "peppercorns" which were exotic spices imported from the Far East) -- of course other have already covered turkeys.
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: According to Shakespeare's Kitchen turkeys were introduced to Europe from the Americas by Spanish explorers in the late 1500s. They are referenced in Twelfth Night Act II, scene 5. And the book includes a recipe for Stuffed Turkey Breast.
I stand corrected. Evidently Turkey's had become relatively common in England by the end of the 16th century.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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You should definitely serve bread. Bread was a staple and would have been at every meal. In fact, most of peoples calories would have come from bread with meat and vegetables being more or less garnishes.
I'm not sure what kind of bread would be most appropriate for 16th century England. In other regions of northern Europe, a sour dough rye bread with a thick crust would have been most common.
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quote: Peacock, long a symbol of nobility and immortality, was one of the most esteemed feast foods in Shakespeare's time. Served roasted and placed back in its feathers it was then dusted with real gold. Metal rods were inserted into the bird's body so that it remained upright and seemingly alive. The peacock would be made to appear to breathe fire by the cook's trick of placing a bit of camphor-soaked cotton in its mouth and lighting it just before serving.
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