A few episodes back I asked the question how would a medieval peasant eat
and so today I'm asking the question
how would a medieval monk eat?
and the answer is like a king in many instances.
It was written of the 12th century Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds,
"he ate sweet milk, honey, and similar sweet things,
far more readily than any other food."
So with that as inspiration, I decided to make doucetes.
A medieval egg custard tart.
So thank you to HelloFresh for sponsoring this video
as we take a look at how medieval monks might have eaten.
This time on Tasting History.
So there are two stereotypes of the medieval monk.
The solemn and austere brother
devoted to a contemplative life of work and prayer
and the fat and happy monk, or
chunky monkey
who preferred a life of luxury living off of the monastic wealth gathered over the centuries.
And as it happens both types of monks lived in medieval Europe at any given time side by side,
but for our purposes today making a dish i'm going with that second fellow
who seems to have a little bit more options when it comes to cuisine
"Doucetes. Take cream a good cupful, and put it in a strainer,
then take yolks of eggs and put thereto, and a little milk.
Then strain it through a strainer into a bowl.
Then take sugar enough, and put thereto, or else honey for want of sugar then color it with saffron.
Then take thin coffins and put in the oven empty and let them be hardened.
Then take a dish fastened on a peel's end and pour thin mixture into the dish,
and from the dish into the coffins.
And when they do rise well take them out and serve them forth."
So these are kind of like a precursor to those wonderful egg custard tarts
that you can get at any good English bake shop.
They also remind me of the Portuguese pasteis de Nata a little bit,
and those are amazing they actually deserve their own episode.
The big difference is that modern custard tarts
tend to have the filling partially cooked before going into the oven. Not so with these.
Also since this recipe has the wonderful phrase serve them forth,
I will let you know that the off-requested
serve it forth merchandise t-shirt and apron are now available at the link in the description and
thank you to Rachel Alcorda, a viewer, for sending me the design. It's awesome.
So for this recipe you'll need
1 1/4 cup or 300 milliliters of cream,
7 egg yolks,
3/4 cup or 175 milliliters of milk,
a half cup or 100 grams of sugar or honey,
a pinch of saffron threads,
and some dough.
Now the recipe is not specific
as to what kind of of crust this needs to be but it does say they're coffins and
typically in medieval recipes a coffin is going to refer to something that you're not actually
going to eat. It's really just there to eat out of, so it's probably like a hot water crust pastry.
That said I want to eat the crust so I used a short crust pastry but you can use whatever you want.
So this is actually a pretty simple, recipe not too many ingredients and that's a good thing
because I hate going to the grocery store. Which brings me to today's sponsor HelloFresh.
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Also it was really fun to actually cook with José
who usually is forbidden from entering the kitchen while i'm cooking anything for the show
such as our doucetes.
Now these being called doucetes implies that they are small and many
but you can do just one big tart this will work for one nine inch tart or about 20 or 24 little tarts
that are just a couple bites.
So whichever size you go with line your tart tin with some baking beans
and then blind bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 degrees Celsius.
Now when I did the little tiny tarts
I used these which are perforated tart rings and you don't have to use baking beans.
They're really, really awesome I'm going to put a link in the description. I just found them and I'm kind
of obsessed and now I want to get all the sizes. They're not cheap but they are really, really cool.
Now if you are using baking beans or pie weights remove them after about 15 minutes and then put
that empty crust back into the oven for five to seven minutes until it is as the recipe says
hardened. Now for the filling if you are using saffron threads which I suggest because they're
going to get a nice dark color I'd put them into the cream at the very beginning for about 10 minutes
to soak. You can put it in later which is actually what the original recipe says especially
if you're using ground saffron. Anything, anytime is gonna work but I find that it's better to do
it at the beginning and strain them out early on it gets harder later on.
Next whisk your egg yolks,
then whisk in the cream.
Notice that I'm putting mine through the strainer now so I can catch those saffron threads.
Then add the milk and finally beat in the sugar.
Make sure to add the sugar nice and slowly so it incorporates properly.
Now at this point the original recipe says to pour the mixture
into the coffin or the crust while the crust is still in the oven and it says to put it on a peel.
The mixture on a peel. Which is this. Though it would have had a much much longer handle
at the time, and they would have fixed it somehow onto the end of this and then like poured it.
I'm not going to do that one because it seems like an engineering nightmare
but two because I don't have these massive medieval ovens like our 15th century baker would
have where moving things in and out is very, very difficult and you have lots of room to maneuver.
I have a little oven and it's easy to just take it out let it cool and then put it back in,
and you do want to let it cool because if the crust is hot as as it is in the original recipe,
it's going to curdle the egg just a little bit when it hits that hot crust,
and it just leaves a not very nice film uh kind of layer at the bottom you don't want that so
take the crust out of the oven let it cool,during which time you want to turn the oven down to
325 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 Celsius.
Then once the crust is cooled put it back into the oven and
pour the custard in.
Then you're going to bake that for about 45 minutes or until it puffs up.
If you're baking a smaller tart I would start checking them around 25 minutes depending on the
size it can take a little bit longer but really once it's kind of puffed up, and starting to just
darken on the top they're going to be done.
Now while those bake let us take a look at those two types of monks I mentioned.
One who would love our doucetes,
and one who would hate them.
"We think it's sufficient for the family dinner... that every table have two cooked dishes...
and if any fruit or fresh vegetables are available let a third dish be added.
Let a good pound weight of bread suffice for the day,
whether there be only one meal or both dinner and supper...
Above all things, however, over-indulgence must be avoided
and a monk must never be overtaken by indigestion."
That was the Rule of Saint Benedict written by Saint bBnedict around the year 516 AD and
it was the most influential list of monastic tenents governing the habits of medieval monks.
He covered every aspect of life in a monastery and had many things to say about food so when we
think of that most pious of monks, the first one that I mentioned it's someone who is following
the Rule of Saint Benedict to the letter.
So much of the year you only ate once a day
except in the summer where you got two meals because there was a lot more work
except on Wednesdays and Fridays when you had to fast all the way up until supper
which actually gives me an idea.
Hey Siri remind me to develop a fad weight loss diet called
medieval monastic intermittent fasting.
I live in LA so this could really be big here.
An interesting note about when during the day the monks could eat
"At all seasons let the hour, whether for supper or for dinner,
be so arranged that everything will be done by daylight."
Now that's all well and good for Saint Benedict who lived in Italy
but what if you're a monk at the very, very northern part of Scandinavia
during the winter where there's only a few minutes of daylight.
Alright everyone the sun is coming up...
NOW! Eat! Eat!
You have three minutes until sundown,
but provided that you did have time to eat your dinner what you got wasn't going to be
very exciting. He mentions that you get two dishes but really you're only supposed to eat one of them.
The other is there in case you don't like the first one, and depending on the time of
year most of those dishes would be fish and poultry and if you want to learn a little bit
more about that specifically during Lent because they had a lot of rules about eating during Lent
I'm going to put a link to the video that I did on lenten foods where you can learn why
beaver is a fish.
And for a monk no matter the time of year unless you were sick
"let all abstain entirely from eating the flesh of four-footed animals."
You also got one pound of bread and if you must,
one hemina, or about two modern day glasses of wine.
I love that word hemina.
Hemina.
Hm!
"Those to whom God gives the strength to abstain should know that they will receive a special reward...
wine is by no means a drink for monks
but since the monks of our day cannot be persuaded of this,
let us at least agree to drink sparingly and not to satiety,
because wine makes even the wise fall away."
But if there's anything to know about medieval wine,
or beer,
or cheese for that matter
you know that Europe's best often came from the monasteries,
and that brings us to something even more interesting than the Rule of Saint Benedict,
and that is how to bend the Rule of Saint Benedict,
because if medieval monks were good at anything it was following the letter of the law
if not the spirit.
In his wonderful autobiography the medieval writer Gerald of Wales
tells us in third person of when he visited the monks of Canterbury in England.
"Where on the day of the holy Trinity at the Prior's invitation,
he died in the refectory with the monks of that place.
And as he sat there at the high table with the Prior and the seniors he noted two things,
the multitude of the dishes and the excessive superfluity of signs which the monks made to one another.
For there was the Prior giving so many dishes to the serving monks,
and they in their turn bearing these as gifts to the lower tables."
So there are a couple rules being bent here.
First, more than two dishes.
Well Saint Benedict has a little caveat where he says that if the superior or abbot or in this case
the Prior gives you something then you should take it as a gift.
Seems sensible enough.
So Gerald of Wales is basically saying that all of these dishes are coming out of the kitchens,
going to the Prior and then the Prior hands them off as gifts.
Nice little way around that rule.
The other rule being bent here is that the Rule of Saint Benedict says you're not supposed to
talk during meals. It's supposed to be a time of contemplation and thanksgiving for the food that
you have received, but Gerald Wales says that the brothers are making all of these signs
"and all of them gesticulating with fingers, hands and arms,
and whistling one to another in lieu of speaking...
so that Giraldus seemed to be seated at a stage play or among actors and jesters."
So yeah all over Europe monks got around this rule by making a really complex system of sign language,
and sort of whistling language.
I just, I love it. So, so creative.
Now some years back there was a collection of 14th century recipes found at Evesham Abbey
in England and there's a modern
book of those recipes updated, but I can't find the originals. So if anyone out there knows where you
can find the original recipes let me know because I really, really want to see them but what I do
know is that they were filled with recipes for ox tongue, boar, veal, and plenty of other four-footed
animals that should be verboten, right?
Well Saint Benedict's Rule technically, technically only
covers eating in the refectory which is where the monks eat so that kind of should cover everything,
but if you were sick then you would eat separately in a room called the misericord,
and through the mainly in the 12th century we start to see this happen and throughout the
next few centuries these misericord grow from little rooms that might house one or two sick
monks to being as large as the refectory itself. So basically if you want meat and you're not sick
just go to the misericord and you can eat it there and not break the rules.
"Clever girl."
Now Gerald of Wales also tells us of something that is not particularly welcome at monastic meals.
"Finally, potherbs were brought to every table but were little tasted."
Potherbs refers to fresh vegetables and leafy greens.
Instead they preferred,
"so many kinds of fish, roast and boiled, stuffed, and fried,
so many dishes contrived with eggs and pepper by dexterous cooks,
so many flavorings and condiments compounded with like dexterity to tickle gluttony and awaken appetite."
Moreover you might see in the midst of such abundance wine and strong drink,
metheglin and claret, must, mead and mulberry juice, and all that can intoxicate,
beverages so choice that beer... found no place among them...
Their beer among other drinks is as potherbs are among other dishes."
So yeah, it's clear that a lot of the ascetic monks might feel a little out of place
at many medieval monasteries
and that's because of who was becoming monks especially later on in the middle ages.
Now early it was people who wanted to live that hermetic lifestyle, happy to follow the
Rule of Saint Benedict or other sets of guidelines set forth and surely that continued, but later on
especially the people who were becoming monks were often of a wealthier class.
See in most of Europe if you had two sons only the eldest was going to inherit anything,
the second son got nada.
So why not give him over to the monastery where he can pray for your immortal soul for the next 30 years,
but if you're a monastery and you're taking in some bratty kid who probably doesn't even want
to be there, and you're expected to feed him, then maybe you want a little recompense.
So you say to the you know Earl of Kent, or whoever, why don't you give us a little land,
maybe a village, the income then will cover your son's cost, great.
And since junior grew up in a castle eating fine cuisine that's what he's expecting at the monastery
so you start to see spices and these fancier foods start cropping up.
Now a monk is not going to have kids or at least kids that he acknowledges
and will leave anything to so that village when he dies stays with the monastery.
Now if you do this several hundred times over a few centuries,
and just keep amassing this land
eventually a monastery or an abbey might have a nicer lifestyle than say the king.
And Gerald of Wales gives us a wonderful story of exactly that situation.
"The monks of St. Swithin of Winchester together with their Prior
prostrated themselves in the mud before King Henry II,
and complained to him with tears and lamentations that Bishop Richard...
had deprived them of three dishes.
And when the King inquired how many dishes were left them, they replied 'ten'.
'And I', said the King, am content in my court with three.
Perish your Bishop, if he does not reduce your dishes to the number of mine!"
And there you go.
Now there were definitely monasteries in medieval Europe,
and different places and at different times that followed the Rule of Saint Benedict or other rules very strictly,
but based on contemporary writings and the contemporary feelings toward monks,
the second type of monk is probably a lot more common.
And I know if I went back to medieval Europe,
I would want to be in that second group.
Speaking of which,
I think it's about time to take our doucetes out of the oven.
So you'll know when they're done when the filling has puffed up just over the top of the crust,
and here we are doucetes or medieval custard tarts.
It's so cute.
It's so yellow.
I don't think the photo conveys just how yellow the the filling is.
It's like a dark, it's because of that um the saffron.
Wonderful.
Let's give it a shot!
Hm!
It's like a modern custard tart.
Mhm. Mhmmm!
I really wasn't sure what the inside was going to be like because it's
unlike a modern tart where it's cooked beforehand but it's just as creamy, and rich, and sweet.
Now I use a lot of sugar so it is sweet you can use a little bit less sugar if you don't want
to have it that sweet, but this is really good. It kind of reminds me of creme brulee and in fact the
fact that it was in a coffin and probably meant to be eaten with a spoon rather than eating the crust
it probably is like I'm closer to a creme brûlée.
That's interesting.
These are so rich and creamy they make me feel like the monk from The Canterbury Tales.
"He was a lord ful fat and in good poynt."
So make sure to go to hellofresh.com and use code tastinghistory10
to get 10 free meals including free shipping,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
So flaky. :D Hmmmmm!