reference: cury-1390

Peeled garlic cloves, boiled in water and oil, served sprinkled with saffron, salt and spices. The name may mean 'pacified by water'.

Nowadays, small reconstituted white dried beans in slightly sweetened tomato sauce, with chunks of bacon, though an older tradition continues in parts of the Ea...

The name means, 'White Eating', a general term for an all-white mixed dish, highly favoured in the late medieval period as indicative of purity.

A sauce for fish containing wine, stock, ginger and sugar (Cury 1390, Wright 1857). The word may be related to 'braising'.

Gobbets of meat in a thickened sweet sauce with spices (Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1430, Austin 1440, Noble Boke 1480)

Meatballs of minced pork and egg, rolled in flour and fried (Cury 1390)

Cabbages cooked in spiced broth.

Fish, especially salmon, the cooking of which is begun while it is still alive (Cury 1390, WM 1658 etc.). Lord Macaulay's 'History of England' (1860) has "Princ...

A custard of milk and eggs, with cooked pork and seasoning, known from the 14th to 17th Centuries. The earliest known receipt is: "Take Pork and seethe it well....

A sauce made from the offal and giblets of a fowl. A giblet gravy. Most associated with swan, but also used with other birds.

Very tiny pies, known from late medieval times (c1390) up to the early 17th Century. Probably similar to the modern Whist Pie.

Chick peas boiled with garlic and spices (Cury 1390)

Cold pudding of cherry puree with wine, butter and sugar, thickened with breadcrumbs and decorated with 'gilofre' - clove-gillyflowers. (Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1...

This term appears regularly in ancient cookbooks including Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1430, Austin 1440 and appears to indicate either some type of sauce or a servin...

The Cockatrice (or Cockagrice or Cokentrice) is an entirely mythical beast, said to be like a bird's body with a serpent's tail, and able to kill just by lookin...

A form of egg pie with shredded meat, known from Cury 1390, who also gives a fish version using eel.

Small strips of fried plain paste, either pasta-type flour paste, or poured batter (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Minced beans with onions in broth. 'Drawen' may come from an old usage meaning 'to make of a suitable consistency' (OED)

Usually an open shortcrust base filled with beaten whole egg with chopped bacon, baked.

Old term for forcemeat, usually highly flavoured with sweet spices.

Fancy putting on an old-style feast? You'll find thousands and thousands of individual dishes on these pages, but, to re-discover the true taste of Old England,...

Pie with figs, spices, treacle and other fruit, a traditional Mid-Lent or Mothering Sunday treat. Especially associated with the towns of Blackburn and Burnley ...

Pork and cheese pie. The name may be associated with 'flaumpaump', meaning an odd mixture.

Small birds roasted and covered in a sauce of almond milk with shredded sheep or goat meat, decorated with hard boiled eggs (Cury 1390)

Grains, usually hulled cracked wheat (as 'Bulgur' wheat), or occasionally barley, boiled in milk (for a sweet desert dish) or stock (for a savoury accompaniment...

A form of very thick sauce, often made with bread, with spices such as galyngale, and sometimes wine added. Served with meat and fish.

Goose pieces stewed with onions, spices, wine or ale and thickened and darkened with either burned bread or boiled blood (Cury 1390, Liber Cure 1430, Austin 144...

Gourds appear in many early receipts, though it is unclear which variety they might be.

A pouring sauce made from the fat and juices which exude from meat in cooking, thickened slightly if need be, as a dressing for the meat. That the chief sauce i...

Ground rice boiled in milk, usually with nutmeg, often also with jam, dried fruit etc.

A dish of chopped, cooked, fish livers (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Grated white bread pounded with vinegar and ground ginger (Cury 1390)

Hare meat on a bed of bread or on the Old English Lozenge Pasta This is found in the 'The Forme of Cury' by the Chief Master-Cook of King Richard II - Foods of ...

Pig's pluck, liver, sweetbreads etc, chopped with sage, onions, seasonings, wrapped together and roasted (Cury 1390, Eaton 1822, etc).

Mixed fruits (figs, grapes, dates) on a skewer with nuts, roasted (Cury 1390)

Minced meat, typically pork, broth with finely chopped herbs and whole egg, baked in a dish. Later versions have a pastry case (Cury 1390, Austin 1440, Gerard 1...

A mix of herbs, bound together and cooked. The nearest modern equivalent is something like Dock Pudding.

Mustard flour made up with honey.

A dish of minced herbs, sometimes with minced meat or fish, thickened 'til it be standing' with, for instance, egg or breadcrumbs (Cury 1390, Austin 1440, etc.)

Dish of layered meat broth, pasta and cheese.

The precursor of macaroni cheese

(Also recorded as: manged, maunchett, maynche, maynchett, mayned, mengyd, meyned, manchete, manchett, manchet, mainchet, mancheat, mancheate, manched, manchuet,...

A general term for thick broth of minced meat in a spiced sauce, known from the 14th to 17th Centuries.

Rice cooked with meat, or in a meat broth. Hartley 1954 reports that "East End women make a rice pudding using broth ... when cooked it is finished under the jo...

Pressed curds with egg, fried (Cury 1390)

A bright red thick soup, sometimes with meat flakes. Coloured with mulberries, or 'sanders' food colouring (Cury 1390, Murrell 1638, etc)

A soup so thick that you can literally 'stand a spoon up in it'.

Moy or Moise or Moill was a very ancient class of set pudings, the name possibly from the Old French Moller - to mould.

English table mustard is properly made only from winnowed flour of mustard, usually the yellow mustard (Sinapis hirta) but sometimes with an admixture of brown ...

A medieval fried flour-paste patty. Either a flavoured poured-batter fritter, or a sort of fried pasty. One version includes fish (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Very thick soup of large marrowfat peas boiled until fallen, usually with a meat flavouring from, for instance, stock or bone or with ham flecks.

Now usually pigeon pieces, fried before being stewed with stock and vegetables, often with bacon.

The making of milky drinks and liquids from plants is not at all a new idea.

In England pears, are merely halved, poached in sweetened water and served with custard. They are not now normally prepared with any distinct extra flavours, un...

Poached eggs coated in a sauce of egg yolks, milk and spices (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

Double-crust hot water pie filled with chopped cured pork and a whole hard-boiled egg in the centre.

Porpoises are small cetaceans related to whales and dolphins, though the word has been used to refer to any small dolphin. Rarely eaten now, it appears in sever...

Very thin potato slices fried crisp in oil, seasoned and served as a cold snack.

Forcemeat cooked in a raw earthenware pot, the pot being broken open to access the food (Cury 1390, etc) cf. Appraylere.

A distinctive low-growing succulent plant of the Portulacaceae family with single stems carrying a multitude of fleshy, rounded leaves. Small yellow flowers in ...

A confection of spiced nuts cohered into a mass. In one receipt (Cury 1390) fixed with egg, in another (Austin 1440) with honey, perhaps like modern nut brittle...

Now, typically, whole rabbit joints, with carrots and onions.

A very thick spiced sauce, typically for fish, made of dried fruit boiled in wine (Cury 1390, Austin 1440, AW 1591)

Although rice has rarely, if ever, been commercially grown in England, it appears in more-or-less every English cookbook since Cury 1390, usually as an ingredie...

An early version of Rice Pudding, generally made with milk and almonds, highly flavoured.

Short grain rice boiled or baked in sweetened milk or cream until sticky. Flavourings, commonly nutmeg, but sometimes vanilla, almonds or a few raisins are occa...

Thickened cream flavoured with sweet spices and rose petals (Cury 1390, Austin 1440)

The term 'ruayn cheese' occurs in several old manuscripts including Cury 1390 where it is an ingredient of Loseyns.

The first known salmon receipt for salmon in an English cookbook is for 'Viande Cypre of Samoun', which may mean something like 'Salmon Meat Cyprus-style', thou...

Sweetened curds with egg and elderflowers, fried or baked, sometimes in a pastry case (Cury 1390, Noble Boke 1480)

Stuffing of herbs such as sage, parsley, hyssop, garlic and savory with fruit such as quince, pears or grapes, served alongside the goose in which it was cooked...

Toasted bread soaked in a broth, sweetened and coloured with saffron.

A thickened cream confection flavoured with hawthorn flowers (Cury 1390, Austin 1440). Our corresponden Alex Bray describes the taste as; "hard to describe. The...

Ornamental forms, often of sugar or moulded paste, either as table decorations, or to be eaten.

Minced pork with raisins and spices, wrapped in paste and boiled. Served with a meat sauce.

An ancient dish of a pig stomach filled with spiced pork, coloured and stuck over with spit almonds to imitate a sea-urchin or hedgehog. The spelling 'Yrchin' i...