Tasty Tudor Times

Cook adventurous! Cook timeless! Cook Tudor!

I was one of those academics that took every opportunity to bring my special historical era into modern times. After all, it was just a question of adjusting one time in the ages of mankind to my own and have fun exploring the results. The one thing we were still doing in 2020 that humanity had been embracing for all history was eating.

My colleagues wondered how I planned to throw a Tudor age bash in the close comfort of my apartment. I knew it could be done, because I’d done it before for my students. There’s nothing like letting belief that something is impossible to make it impossible. I don’t have time for “impossible” myself.

Everyone had an inflated idea of what eating in the Tudor era must have been like. The halls would be adorned with colorful carpets and wall hangings of all kinds. At the high table, the lord, his lady, and their closest vassals would sit for the feast. Dozens of trestle tables and long benches would have been taken out of storage and set up perpendicular to the high table. The table was set with a silver salt cellar, cups and spoons dusted with gold and crusted with gems. One by one, the lords and ladies approached the hosts at their high table. An attendant stood by, holding a bowl of water with sprigs of rosemary and sage, fresh bay leaves and tiny chamomile flowers.

Course by course, dinner was served in a tantalizing pageantry. The pages kept everyone's cup full as platter after platter of intricate delicacies were brought from the kitchens. There were plates of blackmanger, spit-roasted chicken spiced with anise and honey, and served with rice and almonds, and fine fat saddles of mutton. Gentlemen carvers attended several stuffed piglings, overflowing with nuts, bread and spices. 

Nuts to that.

Anyway, the festivities began with me rethinking what I knew about Tudor dining and the great variety of dishes that would qualify. That is, eating Tudor could be much simpler than the complexities of court delicacies. We wouldn’t need peacock tongues or quail eggs or great sirloins of beef. I would prepare a genuine sixteenth century meal with modern ingredients and a peasant’s wit. Allow me to point out that the diet of the less rich was far healthier than what the nobility would have known.

I would be serving a pork and pea pottage in dark bread trenchers along with a non-alcoholic mead. Two quality cheeses, a fine Cheddar and a wheel of semi-soft cheese from Holland, will be served with a loaf of nourishing dark bread, which introduces one of the great ironies of the age. White bread which had all of the nutrients removed was popular with the upper classes, thus did the peasantry actually eat better.

As for modern dietary restraints and concerns--forget them. There’s nothing vegetarian about this pottage. A Tudor feast meant meat and plenty of it. Celiac problems, lactose intolerance, low salt and low fat are all concerns for four hundred years down the road. I might have adapted the meal for modern tastes, but then I would have been sacrificing authenticity. Authenticity was everything.

Additionally, I wanted to make this feast with time to spare, so I prepared everything a day in advance.

My recipes were straightforward, and only barely adapted for the modern kitchen. At an actual Tudor meal, I would serve the pottage in a trencher, a bowl made of carved-out bread. My guests would be given a spoon, but would need to bring their own knives to the table. Forks were still science fiction. But trenchers were easy enough to create using rolls like ciabatta bread and scooping out the middle.  

Amounts are given Tudor-style--that is, spice and add to taste. For the pottage, I wanted to make certain to add three cups of liquid (chicken broth) for every one cup of split peas. If you want to spend hours sweating over chicken stock by all means go ahead, but I strongly suggest the canned broth.

First I started with a generous portion of ham. Ham, ham, and more ham. The fresh off the pig variety, not some substitute. This is the closest thing we have to what a Tudor chef would have used. I wasn’t worried about calories. Hock that hog into the chicken broth and allow the flavors to mix and mingle. Use as much as you want.

As mentioned, I wanted one cup of split green peas for every three cups of broth. I added one head of garlic, cloved and chopped. Yes, I used the WHOLE head. Don’t be put off by so much garlic. It softens in the soup and lends an interesting sweetness. Now the pottage called for sliced carrots, one diced onion, a few bay leaves, and honey to taste. When the pottage has come to a boil, leave it all to simmer for 2-3 hours or until the peas have broken down into a paste. 

Well that was fun, but next I wanted to try my hand at non-alcoholic mead, the famed honey beverage. I took 

one quart of spring water, one cup honey, one sliced lemon, nutmeg, a pinch of salt, and the juice of 1/2 lemon.

I boiled the first four ingredients together in a non-metallic pot. A kind of sweet scum rises to the top, and I scraped this off with a wooden spoon. When there was no more scum rising, I added the salt and the lemon juice. Then I strain the mead, and let it cool.

Along with the mead I served red and white wine. Surprisingly wine was a fitting addition as it has been produced in the British Isles since the Roman times.  

At the end, we toasted the evening with somewhat authentic horns of mead. All hail to me, the founder of the feast!