Messing about with Medieval Food for the Magna Carta exhibition preview

Many medieval recipes begin with instructions such as "first skin your rabbit" or "first pluck your goose". They go on to inform cooks to "put it to the fire till it be done". The manuscripts obviously say nothing of degrees Celsius, frequently omit suggested weights of ingredients and assume that the medieval cook already has considerable knowledge of their subject and will be able to cook pretty much by instinct.

Fortunately one has access to the splendid publication above in which some American cooks have experimented with the recipes as they were written down and translated the cooking instructions into something modern and workable.

Staff at Trowbridge Museum have gamely decided to have a go at making some medieval fare to serve to their guests at the opening of the Magna Carta exhibition on February 28th. The Assistant Curator's almond cakes have already proved quite a hit with her colleagues!

First- stale some bread!

Do not do as I did, and put the crusts in a warm oven to speed up the "staling" process. You may then find yourself struggling to find a means of grinding them into crumbs.

As you can see, I tried a 2014 processor, a 1970s one and finally a wooden pestle and mortar (such as a medieval cook would have used). The first two worked to a degree but still left lumps.

Fortunately someone had left a hammer out on the kitchen table...

Secondly, prepare your ground almonds. This does not work well if the almonds are in their skins, so I decided to have a go at "Blanching" them- or what I thought constituted blanching. I immersed them in very hot water a couple of times, cooled them down and found that the skins had split enough for me to be able to peel them off.
You will discover that you are left with very slimy almonds, so a spot of time in a warm oven will help.
DO NOT then put the almonds in a plastic container and leave them out for a couple of days before you get around to dealing with them. Moulds seem to find them extremely nutritious. I promise  I removed all the mouldy ones before proceeding with the recipe.

Blanched almonds drying- it's all a bit of a faff if I'm honest, but I wanted to be as authentic as possible...
Once hard and dry, the almonds can be very successfully ground up in a modern day kitchen appliance (or a pestle and mortar if you have time on your hands).

Which brings me to the issue of the Magna Carta Tea Towel.

Here is Andy Milroy, Trowbridge's own Mr Magna Carta, modelling the new tea towel produced especially to celebrate the town's role in the creation of Magna Carta.

Here am I, having turned the tea towel into a very handy apron, trying to find the best way of grinding almonds (I don't want to have to revert to the hammer again).
Anyway, you just mix up the almonds and breadcrumbs with sugar and beaten egg and use the mixture to make fritters in a shallow frying pan. They can be deep fried if preferred, but should be patted dry and sprinkled with sugar before consumption.
A medieval almond cake looks like this-

- and let me assure you that they are delicious.
Another very good series of books for historical recipes are those produced by English Heritage.