As Donovan once sang "I'm just mad about saffron"
and so was Medieval Europe.
The most expensive spice was all over the cookbooks of the Middle Ages,
and today we're making a 14th century version of saffron rice which came with the rather dramatic name
ryse of fleyshe.
So thank you to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video as we discuss
saffron, this time on Tasting History.
So today's recipe comes from that old chestnut 'The Forme of Cury',
an English cookbook from the court of Richard II written around 1390.
Now the recipe is really just for a fairly simple saffron rice but the book calls it ryse of fleyshe.
But despite its name which translates to meat rice, there is no meat in this rice except for
a bit of chicken stock. What it means is that it shouldn't be served during Lent or fasting days
which there were many of in Medieval Europe, rather it should be served with meat.
"Ryse of fleyshe. Take rice and wash it clean and put in an earthen pot with good broth and let it cook well.
Afterward take almond milk and add it and color it with saffron and salt, and serve it forth.
Rather like saffron rice today albeit with almond milk which was another very popular ingredient in the Middle Ages.
What got me was that it has you add the saffron and almond milk
after the rice is cooked. At least that's kind of what I'm reading in the recipe, and I tried that
and it doesn't really work because it doesn't end up coloring the rice properly, and that's
the point of adding the saffron was to color it, or what they call endore foods which was a very
popular thing to do with all sorts of colors in the Middle Ages.
So I'm going to be cooking it with the rice so that we get that color like it's meant to be, and that's kind of the problem with
most cookbooks from the Middle Ages is what's actually on the page is maybe not necessarily
what is actually meant to be happening, and that was because the way that recipes were written
it was like a game of telephone. It would be kind of like the chef talking to the cook,
who would then talk back to the chef, who would then talk to one or more scribes over a period of days.
Possibly multiple chefs talking to multiple scribes to write down the recipe.
So a lot of things don't make sense, but that's okay. That's part of the fun, but for this recipe what you'll need is:
2 cups or 350 grams of white rice,
3 cups or 700 milliliters of chicken broth,
a large pinch or about a half teaspoon of saffron threads.
Now we are going to talk about saffron later but I can already hear people saying that's a lot of saffron.
That's going to be a really expensive dish, yes it is the most expensive spice in the world coming in right now
at about ten dollars a gram for the really good stuff,
but in one gram of
saffron, that's a lot of saffron because it's such a light thing. So the amount that I'm using for this
is probably like two or three dollars worth, which yeah it's a lot but it's not going to break the bank.
Three quarters of a teaspoon of salt and one cup or 235 milliliters of almond milk.
Now you can make your own almond milk. I've done it a few times here on the show.
I'll put a link up here to the dillegrout episode where I made it just a couple months ago
but you can also just buy it as long as the only ingredients are almonds and water.
You don't want any flavorings, that that's not good. Now in the Middle aAges it was often actually made with
wine but if you make this with wine, even if it's white wine, it ends up kind of changing
the color so make it with water if you're going to make your own,
but even if we're not using wine to make our almond milk that doesn't mean we can't enjoy a glass of wine with our rice.
A glass of wine which I got from today's sponsor Bright Cellars.
I love Bright Cellars because they keep me on my toes when it comes to the wines that they send me.
I started with the simple seven question quiz that lets Bright Cellars know your taste preferences, and then they sent me a selection.
Then I got to rate those wines and so the next box was even more tuned in to what I wanted.
Personally my favorite thing is that they send you these cards on each wine that you get
which gives you kind of some information about the wine before you're actually drinking it. I've got
tetrachroma pinot noir which is from California. It has vanilla, red currant, and strawberry. Busch
tele which is a cabernet sauvignon from Australia. I just like the name bushtelly bushtelli it's my
terrible Australian accent right there, and then Obscura Zinfandel. I love a Zinfandel.
This is strawberry plum raspberry. I think i might have to go with the tetrachroma pinot noir.
That's juicy. That's what that's the word I would use, it's juicy. Oh I can taste that vanilla in there.
That's going to go really well with our saffron rice.
Now Bright Cellars is giving TastingHistory viewers 50% off of their first six bottle box,
so just click the link in the description to take your quiz and sign up today.
Now with your glass of wine in hand go ahead and crush your saffron,
and add some of the almond milk into the mortar to let it diffuse for about five minutes.
During that time you can wash your rice and set it in a pot with the chicken broth,
the rest of the almond milk and the salt. Finally add the almond milk that has the saffron in it and
stir everything together. Then set it over a high heat and bring to a boil.
Let it boil for about 30 seconds, then reduce the heat to low and cover the pot letting the rice cook for 20 minutes.
Now while that cooks let's take a look at why Medieval Europe was just mad about saffron.
I love that song, obviously. I love Donovan and if you don't know who Donovan is go look him up.
Saffron, the red gold of Persia or Spain, or wherever it happens to be growing I suppose.
Now it was often the most expensive spice in antiquity, and is still the most expensive spice today,
but unlike other spices which were expensive due to the fact that they had to
come all the way around the world, at least if you were in Europe,
Saffron grew pretty much all over Europe for most of the Middle Ages.
What made it so precious is how labor-intensive it was, and still is to obtain.
It comes from the flower of the crocus sativus. The flowers need to be
hand-picked between September and October and they have to be picked within just a few hours of the blossom opening,
otherwise the stigma will dry up and kind of become unusable. And it's those
stigmas, stigmata, stigmata, stigma? It's those stigmas that are well, that's the whole ball game
because that's where all the color and the flavor are.
Once they're picked and the stigma is removed then the stigma is dried and that is saffron.
Now, the three stigmas in each flower are connected to a style which is much longer and weighs quite a bit,
but it has no flavor and it has very, very little color.
But it's often in inferior quality saffrons to bulk it up. So if your piece
of saffron is that long, that ain't saffron. Now I plan to do the entire history of saffron but
it turns out that it is a rather robust topic, and so I am focusing on Medieval Europe because they
just love their saffron so, so much. So much so that in 'The Forme of Cury' where we're getting
our recipe from today, it's in 40% of the recipes.
Now it's thought that after disappearing from Europe following the fall of Rome
saffron probably called za'faran which comes from an old Arabic word meaning yellow
was brought up through Spain by the Moors. After crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in 711,
the Umayyad Khalif conquered much of the Visigothic kingdom of the Iberian peninsula.
And they brought a whole wealth of learning to Europe as well as a brand new cuisine which included saffron.
Some believe that it even made its way as far north as Poitiers in France when in 732
Charles Martel pushed the Umayyad invasion back at the Battle of Tours.
Now it's not known that it was growing there that early, but definitely by the early 1200s it was being cultivated in France.
And not long after it was being cultivated all around Europe.
In England for instance it was grown throughout the southeast part of the kingdom most famously in a town called Chepyng Walden
which in a Medieval marketing campaign changed its name to Saffron Walden, and the marketing campaign
clearly worked because in the 16th century the Clergyman William Harrison said,
"As the saffron of England... is the most excellent of all others... that which groweth about Saffron Walden in the edge of Essex
surmounteth all the rest and therefore bereth worthily the higher price."
Though much of the saffron in Saffron Walden wasn't actually for eating but rather for dying cloth.
The dye works there being established no later than 1359.
And it's possible that Henry VIII who in 1514 granted the town a charter decorated with the saffron crocus
had his clothes dyed yellow there.
This wasn't long before he decided that other people namely the Irish couldn't
"wear any shirt smock, kerchor, bendel, nickerchour, mocket, or linen cap colored or dyed with saffron."
He was all about controlling how people dressed and wore their clothes especially the Irish because he also said
"No person... shall be shorn, or shaven above the ears... or have or use any hair growing on the upper lips called a crommeal."
Do you think he means me? Do I need to shave? Man he was a jerk.
Also a little note about Saffron Walden. It is the location of Audley End.
Anyone who watches Mrs. Crocombe will know that Audley End is where she works.
Now while England was growing their own saffron or else importing it from Spain or France depending on who they were
not at war with at any given time, other areas of Europe also tried their hand at growing the stuff.
One was the town of Basel in Switzerland who after having a large shipment stolen by
a group of nobles started a three-month war with the thieves known as the Saffron War.
Now it ended in them getting their saffron back but to stop it from happening again
they decided to start growing their own and they did so with some success for about 10 years
before they gave the venture up. Not entirely sure why but it's probably because it's just a lot of work.
Instead even with thieving nobles it was just easier to get it from Nuremberg.
For centuries whether coming north from Italy or from the east via the Venetian spice trade,
Nuremberg was where pretty much all of central Europe saffron was sold and the trade was
controlled by just a few families, one of which was the Imhof family and one member of that
family was named Katerina Lemmel. She was heavily involved in the business before deciding to become a nun,
but just because she had become a bride of Christ that didn't mean she was ready to give up her saffron.
In several letters to her cousin Hans she has him send pounds of saffron to the convent each year
mostly to be used during Lent while they were singing and having to stay up late praying
because saffron in sufficient quantities could be used as a stimulant. No coffee? No tea? Use saffron.
Now as I mentioned earlier there are still a lot of knockoff saffrons or companies who kind of bulk
up their saffron to make it worth more and it was a problem in medieval Nuremberg too.
Merchants were cutting their saffron with safflower, marigold and even horse hair,
but the Germans are a no-nonsense people and so the officials of Nuremberg laid down the law
with the Safranschou, or saffron show.
The schou would inspect the saffron and if it was deemed unworthy you would be punished. You could be
You could be fined or much, much worse.
On July 27 1444 Jobst Findenken on his way back from getting saffron in Italy
was found to have adulterated his product and he was burned alive at the stake with his saffron,
and his wife exiled from the city.
There are also reports of people being buried alive with their saffron.
Really messed up.
But the reason for these draconian laws was because saffron was so important.
It did a lot more than just dye clothes and make food gold.
It was one of the most important ingredients in making the yellow inks of illuminated manuscripts,
and was used to dye the hair of the ladies of Venice.
In one twelfth century treatise on women's cosmetics and medicine known as the Trotula,
women are instructed "For making the hair golden. Take the middle bark of boxwood,
flower of broom, saffron, and egg yolks, and cook them in water. Collect whatever floats on top and anoint the hair."
This wasn't nearly as bad as if you wanted your hair white.
"For whitening the hair. Catch as many bees as possible in a new pot and set it to burn, and grind with oil, and then anoint the head."
And if you wanted to make your hair grow you had to take barley and grind it up with bear fat.
Like *rawr.
Bear fat, and then slather your head in that.
Yeesh.
But perhaps the most important use for saffron in the Middle Ages was as medicine.
During the Black Death the price shot up because it was thought to be a cure for the disease.
Treatments included saffron mixed with oat flour and treacle dissolved in vinegar.
Then a cloth dipped in said vinegar should be pressed against the buboes.
And if that was too complicated then eating a concoction of saffron mustard and
treakle fried in an egg shell was supposed to work wonders.
In 1482 Hans Folz who was a master barber of Nuremberg,
and later made famous as one of di maestro zinga for Nuremberg in Wagner's opera,
wrote a treatise where he prescribed saffron soaked in vinegar as a treatment for the Plague
but he understood that not everyone could afford it and so he said that you could also just take
parsley and sage and put that in vinegar and that would work just as well.
Kind of kind of sounds like he could work for my insurance company.
Now the Plague was not the only thing that could be treated with saffron.
It could be used to treat melancholy or as a sedative or stimulant
or a carminative if you're feeling gassy.
It could also be used as an antispasmodic but in that case
you didn't ingest it but used it as a poultice as in this recipe from a 15th century leechbook from England.
"Take may-butter of the amount of a nut, five blades of saffron... and mingle it with the butter.
And put it in the navel of the sick. And take the earth that is upon a threshold... and lay it on coals of fire,
and sprinkle there on dregs of good ale... take it up and lay it in a linen cloth...
And lay it over the butter and saffron, and so put it on the navel. And he shall be whole."
Dirt from the doorway cooked with ale dregs that seems weird but at least butter and saffron sounds good,
until I tell you what may-butter was. It was made in May has the name and it
it was made with no salt, but when it was used as a medicine it would be left out in the sun for
days or weeks until it became putrid. It sapped all the vitamin A out and kind of filled it up
with vitamin D so it actually may have worked for certain things like rickets and whatnot,
and it was used all the way until the 18th century...
but ew?
Now what if it's not you that's sick but let's say your pet bird?
"Item, when any bird of prey yawns three times in a row
and does not look well, it is a sign that it is sick with an illness the falconers call fills, which is a worm that pricks them.
To cure the bird, feed it meat in which saffron has been wrapped, and the worms will die."
It also says that if you want to control these birds especially the large Peregrine falcon
you should not eat garlic, onions, or leeks. Now a few years ago I went afalconin in England,
and the person who was in charge didn't tell me to alter my diet in any way and I'm starting to think
well that was a little negligent of him.
Now by the 18th century most parts of northern Europe had stopped growing saffron, and it was possibly due to the little ice age in part but
mostly it was probably due to the fact that people could make more money in a factory than out picking crocuses.
Also the wealthy who had commanded the need for the spice
found new things to spend their money on like chocolate and coffee and vanilla and tea.
And it also probably didn't help that the Puritans considered saffron and other spices in food
too decadent and they preferred a blander cuisine,
but whatever the reason outside of the countries of the Mediterranean like Spain and southern France and Italy most of Europe doesn't
use a lot of saffron today but that's okay means more for me.
Now let's finish this ryse of fleyshe.
So once the rice is cooked for 20 minutes remove the pot from the heat,
and let it sit for about 10 minutes to steam.
Then fluff the rice and serve it forth.
For added panache feel free to bedight it with a few extra strands of saffron,
and here we are 14th century saffron rice.
Smells very saffrony. I like that you know it kind of adds like an aromatic but bitter
flavor, so you could probably tone down the saffron and maybe not add the extra on top,
but I like it so that's what I did.
It almost is like a risotto. It's very
liquidy? It's not liquidy, it's very moist. I guess would be
the word it's definitely not dry rice. That's really good. One more.
I'm not getting any almond milk. I mean it's such a mild flavor. The saffron kind of cuts it.
You could not use almond milk I'm thinking and it would be exactly the same, but maybe
there's a creaminess to the almond milk. I don't know but it's absolutely wonderful.
I definitely think it would go really well with some flesh or
meat. Osso buco something like that. That's actually what it's often served with today.
Make me some osso buco. I don't have time but if you want to make it, make it.
Now earlier I mentioned that they had stopped growing saffron in Saffron Walden way back in the 1700s,
but in the last few years a couple farmers have actually started growing saffron in England again,
and you can get English saffron. And they have a saffron gin from the area that I really,
really want to try. Unfortunately I couldn't get it shipped to the US but maybe I can figure out a way
because I really want to try that gin. O_O
So thank you again to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video and make sure to follow me on Instagram
@tastinghistorywithmaxmiller and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
Probably going to finish this.
How could I get osso bucco?
I don't know.
I really want osso bucco now! o_0