jpgsawyer | Captured in Aspic (Reply)

Captured in Aspic

by John Sawyer

I was asked recently what a dish served under aspic would have been called in the 14/15^th centuries, so I found some recipes - they do exist - but I thought that the random Facebook comments that I made deserved something of a more considered and consolidated approach, and so here we are.

So, firstly, what do we mean by ‘an aspic’ or something ‘under aspic’? The Oxford Dictionary [1] defines it as "a savoury meat jelly used as a garnish or to contain game, eggs, etc.” and states that the word “aspic” comes from the fact that the colour of the jelly is a colour associated with an asp, the snake of Egypt and Wiktionary [2] agrees.

I don't have access to the full OED so I can’t confirm the earliest use of the word, but it’s supposedly borrowed from the Latin [2]. That said, none of the cookbooks I have access to use the word “aspic.” The closest is the Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin recipe 203 [3], a German cookbook from the 16^th century. In English translations of this book, aspic is used but the original German is Sültz. Sadly, I have no idea if it is a direct translation. I’m not aware of any 16^th Century recipes involving setting meats in jelly, but I suspect that is more because I am not as familiar with the recipes from this period as I am with ones from earlier centuries.

For example, in 14^th /15^th century England there are a number of recipes that come easily to hand, mostly from the Forme of Cury and related texts. The first is for “Gele of flesch” from Forme of Cury, Chapter IV, Recipe 105 as found in Curye on English [4].

Take swyner feet & snowter and the eerys. capouns. connynges calues fete. & wiasche hem clene. & do hem to seeth in the thriddel of wyne & vyneger and water and make forth as bifore.

Which is to say something like:

Take swine’s feet and snouts and the ears, capons, rabbits and calves’ feet and wash them clean and seethe them in wine, vinegar and water and make forth as before.

This is clearly a recipe that would result in meat in a thick jelly-like broth that would set as it cooled, which is what we are looking for. There are others too:

Diuersa Servicia (c. 1381), recipe 56 [4].

For to make a Gely, tak hoggys fet other pyggys, other erys, other pertrichys othere chiconys and do hem togedere and seth hem in a pot; and do in hem in flowre of canel and clowys hole or grounde. Do thereto vinegar, and tak and do the broth in a clene vessel of al thys, and tak the Flesch and kerf yt in smal morselys and do yt therein tak powder of galyngale and cast above and lat yt kele. Tak bronchys of the lorere tre and styk over it, and kep yt al so longe as thou wilt and serve yt forth.

Again, we have pig’s feet and ears as a source of gelatine to help set the jelly. There is also a Gele of Fyssh, also from the Forme of Cury, which seems to be simply to cook fish in stock and let it cool. One presumes that the presence of the bones in the fish would provide the gelatine to allow it to set. Hieatt and Butler discuss this recipe in Pleyn Delit [5], suggesting that other recipes they have seen call for fish skins to be added, which would give an additional setting agent and keep the fish day nature of the recipe. However, they suggest adding gelatine which we may need to disagree on as, although it achieves the desired result, it doesn’t do justice to the dish.

Going to French sources, we can examine Le Viandier de Taillevent, written at a similar time to the English Forme of Cury and similar documents we have already examined. James Prescott has made a translation of the 2^nd edition which is from a manuscript in the Vatican [6] and he lists:

70. Jelly of slimy fish, and of meat.

Cook it in wine, verjuice and vinegar. Some add a bit of water. Take ginger, cassia, cloves, grains of paradise and long pepper, steep in your broth, strain through cheesecloth, and boil with your meat. Take bay leaves, spike lavender, galingale and mace, tie in your cheesecloth (without washing it) with the dregs of the other spices, and boil with your meat. Cover it while it is on the fire, but when it is off the fire, skim it until it is set out.

When it is cooked, [strain] your broth into a clean wooden dish until it is settled. Put your meat on a white cloth. If it is fish, peel and clean it, and throw your peelings in the broth until it is strained the last time. Make sure your broth is clear and clean.

Now set your meat out in bowls. Put your broth back on the fire in a clear and clean dish, boil it, and while it is boiling throw it on your meat. Sprinkle cassia flowers and mace over the plates or bowls where you put your meat and broth, and put your plates in a cold place to set. If you wish to make jelly, you do not need to sleep. If your broth is not very clean and clear, strain it through two or three layers of white cloth. On your meat, if it is fish, put crayfish tails and feet, and cooked loach.

Sadly, I can’t find the original French text for this so it doesn’t help us with the terminology but it’s very clear that the fish skins are to be put in the dish and this may be the recipe that Hiaett and Butler were referred above. I have found a text of, presumably, the first edition of Le Viandier de Taillevent in the original French [7] and there are a number of recipes that contain the word Gellee. From my reading, they seem very similar to the ones above but are not quite the same. There is, however, a great recipe to make 100 plates of jelly.

Cent platz de gellee.

Pour faire cent platz de gelee prenez xxv. Poussins, six lapereaulx, quatre cochons, trente gigotz de veau quatre pinte de vinaigre blanc, six sextiers de vin blanc, six aulnes de toille, trois quarterons gingembre, graine de paradis, trois quarterons de mesche, six onces saffran, v. culiers de boys deux grans oyselles de terre, vingt potz de terre, six iacez & a boire aux compaignons.

Which, I think, very roughly translate as:

To make one hundred plates of Jelly. Take 25 poussin, six young rabbits, four pigs, thirty legs of veal, a quarter pint of white vinegar, six sextiers^{^[1]} of white wine, six aulnes^{^[2]} of fabric, three quarters of a pound ginger, grains of paradise, three quarters of mesche^{^[3]}, six ounces of saffron, five spoonfuls of sorrel, twenty earthenware pots, six [iacez?] and drink to the company.

It should be noted that this really isn’t a recipe but more of an ingredients list. Presumably one would cook all this up, strain it through the fabric and strip the meat off the bones. Pour the stock over the top and let it set. Also our best guess for the iacez is that it means Jacks as in wine vessels and is part of the instruction to drink to the company. This is rather nice.

Moving on to the 15th century, we are not very well blessed with recipes but I did find one in a manuscript from Corpus Christi College, Oxford [8] for Gely of Pyk, Tenche or Perch, and it seems very similar to the recipe above.

It seems that there are an array of recipes that are some kind of flesh set in a jelly and it would appear that, in the 14^th/15^th centuries, the dish we might now refer to as being “under aspic” is in fact a Gellee or Gele or some similar word. In fact, my Oxford dictionary [1] still lists a definition of “jelly” as being meat in prepared in a gelatine.

So I think the answer to the question of what a 14^th/15^th century cook would have called a dish covered in aspic is…. Gellee!

References

[1]	The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English - Eighth Edition, Oxford, 1990.
[2]	“Wiktionary Article on Aspic,” [Online]. Available: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aspic#Etymology. [Accessed 6 September 2020].
[3]	“Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin recipe 203,” [Online]. Available: http://www.medievalcookery.com/search/display.html?kuchb:203:SNMN. [Accessed 6 September 2020].
[4]	C. B. Hieatt and S. Butler, Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century, London: OUP, 1985.
[5]	C. B. Hieatt and S. Butler, Pleyn Delit, Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks - 2nd Edition, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
[6]	“le Viandier de Taillevent 14th Century Cookery Based on the Vatican Library Manuscript Translated into English by James Prescott,” 1987. [Online]. Available: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/prescotj/data/viandier/viandier1.html. [Accessed 6 September 2020].
[7]	G. Tirel, “The Project Gutenberg EBook of Le viandier de Taillevent,” 9 September 2008. [Online]. Available: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26567/pg26567.txt. [Accessed 6 September 2020].
[8]	C. B. Hieatt, Cocatrice and Lamprey Hay: Late fifteenth-century recipes from Corpus Christi College Oxford, Prospect Books, 2012.

Many thanks to Vitus for asking the question, Turi Henderson-Palmer, Emoni Hanson, Jennifer Sawyer and Rachel Barlow for editorial help and to Alice Laferrere, Elizabeth Brown and Fabienne Fauvarque for their help with translations of the French.

[1] A sextier seems to be https://dvlf.uchicago.edu/mot/sextier 1/6th of a Muid which is seems to be 274.2 litres. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/muid So six sextiers would seem to be 274.2 litres which is rather a lot of wine.

[2] aulnes 47 inches which is probably the equivalent of the English ell. https://www.wordreference.com/definition/aune

[3] I am not entirely sure what this is and think it might be ginger again.