There are lots of foods whose names are hm, not great:
head cheese, pork butt, cock-a-leekie but for me today's dish takes the cake
Farts of Portingale, or Portuguese farts.
I really hate that word so I apologize ahead of time
for the amount of times you're about to hear it. Farts of Portingale were a
popular meatball in Elizabethan England right during the
time of Shakespeare. So while you contemplate what other
videos are going to get suggested once you hit that Like button,
I'm going to find out what a Portuguese fart
tastes like, this time on Tasting History.
"And most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath?"
That was the aptly named character Bottom from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer
Night's Dream" imploring his actors not to eat foods
that would make their breath smell bad right before they go on stage.
Funny enough he had no prohibition against eating farts of Portingale
probably because they would have actually made your breath smell sweet.
See there are actually two concurrent recipes in England
for this dish and they are wildly different from each other,
it's really confusing. The first appears in A Book of Cookery:
very necessary for all such as delight therein.
It's recipe for farts of Portingale is one of lightly fried balls of dough
mixed with honey and spices, extremely different
from the one just a few years later in 1597
that we're making today. It comes from the second edition of The good
Housewifes Handmade for the Kitchen by Thomas Dawson. "How to make farts of
Portingale. Take a piece of a leg of mutton, mince it
small and season it with cloves, mace, pepper, and salt, and dates minced
with currants: then roll it into round rolls and so
into little balls and so boil them in a little beef broth,
and so serve them forth." And so it actually
sounds pretty easy especially because I got
some wonderful tips from Ellie at "The past Is A Foreign
Pantry". She made them recently and had some pointers on how to make
sure they stick together while you're cooking them. I'm going to link to her
site in the description, it's fantastic it's filled with
wonderful old recipes as well as some very witty commentary.
I wonder why i'm such a fan. So for this recipe you'll need 1 pound or 450 grams
leg of mutton. You can also use lamb, mutton's really actually quite hard to
find I had to call a dozen butchers before I found someone who had it.
So go ahead and use lamb, frankly it's probably going to be more tender if you
do that anyway. 1/8 teaspoon ground clove, one half
teaspoon ground mace, 1 half teaspoon black pepper, 1 teaspoon
of salt, 1/3 cup or 60 grams of dates, 1/3 cup or
60 grams of currants, and 1 liter or 1 quart of unsalted beef
stock. if all you can find is salted beef stock
that's fine but cut back on the additional salt that you add earlier on
in the recipe. So first the recipe calls for us to mince the meat
small, and really because these are going to be like
meatballs you almost want it like ground meat,
and so you can do this with a knife. I started out with a knife and
got tired very quickly so i switched over to my food processor,
and I would suggest you do the same if it's not
done finely enough the balls will just disintegrate
in the water or in the broth and you don't want that.
Then slice up your dates into small pieces as well as your currants if
you're working with a larger currant now back in the day in England they had
red currants, black currants, and currants of corinth
which are modern-day zante currents which are probably actually going to be
the easiest for most people to find, so use whatever you want. Then in a large
bowl add your mutton, your dates, and your currants and mix
everything together. Then add in all of your spices and mix
until everything is well incorporated. Then take a bit of the mixture and roll
it into a ball about an inch and a half in diameter. The
recipe should make about 12 or 13 lovely little farts. Next you're going to
pour your beef stock into a medium pot and set it over medium high heat until
it's simmering. Then drop your farts in the water a half
dozen at a time, and let them simmer for six to seven minutes during which time
we can take a look at how these poor little meatballs got saddled
with such an unfortunate name.
The year was 1504 and the right honorable William Warham was just
enthroned as the archbishop of Canterbury. After the ceremony there
was a grand feast and only the most noble and regal guests
of the kingdom were in attendance, but despite the pomp and circumstance of
the evening we have to allow for the fact that at some point during
the meal it's possible that the new archbishop
uttered the phrase what a delectable little fart.
That's right farts of Portingale made it on the menu, but why would they name them
that? Well there's a lot of controversy around
the etymology of the word but there is a consensus forming that it was
probably just a crude joke, and that's because these
farts are not unique. In 15th century Germany
and Austria you could order a dish of Nonnenfürtze or nun farts.
They were essentially just a puffed up ball of sweet pastry dough.
In Canada you can still order nun farts though they say it in French (pet de soeur),
and it makes sense because Canadians love fart jokes,
and in the most respected French cookbook of the 17th century
Le Cuisinier Francois, the cookbook that set the tone
for French haute cuisine for 300 years had a recipe for a sugared beignet
called - shield your ears children - pet de putain, or farts of a whore.
I'm serious. So the thing that all these international farts have in common
is that they tend to be little balls of pastry
puffed up with hot air inside, so you can kind of see the joke writes itself,
but our farts of Portingale which i think has the least offensive name of
the bunch probably got its name just because it
was the same shape and size as the other farts. I mean that's why
there are two recipes with the same name for two totally different dishes,
so weird. But either way the name is really fitting because
at the time that our recipe was written, 1597
the hottest ticket in London was to go see a Shakespeare play
at the Rose Theatre, and old willy loved a fart joke. "A man may break a word
with you, sir, and words are but wind; ay and break it in your face, so he break
it not behind." Now that was from The Comedy of Errors
so of course you're gonna find fart jokes in that, but
Shakespeare didn't mind letting his more serious tragic
figures let a fart joke slip in every now and then.
King lear implored "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!
Rage! Blow!" so like I said pretty fitting that these little meatballs were thought
to be served at the food stalls outside of the Rose
and the Globe theaters where Shakespeare played his plays. Though
those farts probably wouldn't have been as spiced as the ones that we're using
today because spices were still relatively expensive
and many of the patrons going to see Shakespeare's plays didn't have the
funds for a fancy fart. "Your groundling and gallery commoner
buys his sport by the penny." Thomas Dekker was right for
only a penny you could have gone to see Richard
Burbage play Hamlet, but you would have had to stand the
entire time hence the term groundlings. So you know if you
didn't bring your own food which you could
then about two hours in you might want to sneak out to the food stalls to get a
bit of nosh. During the excavation of the Rose and
Globe theaters in the late 80s archaeologists found evidence that
audience members were enjoying things such as
figs, grapes, nuts, oysters, cockles, cold chicken pastries, and little meat
dishes like the ones that we're making today,
and that reminds me....
another option available to patrons was to go next door to the ale house which
happened to be owned by John Heminges of the Lord Chamberlain's
Men, the troop of players that Shakespeare wrote for.
Heminges was making money on and off stage, here's to good business.
So as i top off my liquid courage I think that i'm ready
to see what a fart of Portingale tastes like.
So after about six or seven minutes or until they reach an internal temperature
of 160 degrees fahrenheit/ 71 celsius take the mutton balls out of
the stock using a slotted spoon and set aside to
cool, and then just repeat until they're all
cooked, and you're ready to eat. So here we are farts of Portingale.
There is absolutely no accent that I can use that's going to make this dish sound
good, but I have to say
these farts smell delectable. Truly they smell a bit like the holidays, it's
very christmasy. Yeah there's nothing in here that
doesn't sound appealing. It's just the name so I don't know why
I'm so hesitant... So I'm not going to hesitate anymore,
and I'm going to eat this fart.
It's delicious.
If you use lamb it's going to be a little more tender I think, the
the mutton's a little chewy but not overly so.
It's actually really, really good. I had heard from people who had
made them that the clove could be overpowering so that's why I went with
just an eighth of a teaspoon, and I can still taste the clove so I
wouldn't use much more than that, because you still want to taste the the
mace and the other the other things in there. What's
interesting is that they're quite sweet, they're not
like a modern meatball at all. They're you know, the texture
is kind of but they're very sweet because of the
currants and the dates,
dates. But they're really nice, and I like how they got just a little
bit of like a crust on the outside which I thought would only happen if you were
baking them, I didn't expect that from boiling so happy accident. Mhm, mhm, mhm. :)
Now these might have been served perhaps with some sort of
sauce, I don't know but honestly you don't need it,
there's plenty of flavor here. They're really quite wonderful so I
encourage you to go home make your own farts of
Portingale, and I will see you next time on Tasting
History.