Did a custard tart take down one of Shakespeare's most villainous kings? Well
no, no, not exactly, but Richard the seconds penchant for opulent feasts and
fantastic food did lead to him getting into some hot water, which then led to
his downfall. So today I'm going to show you how to make a Crustade Lombarde, or
Lombardy Custard which was featured at one of the most famous of Richard II
feasts. Then we'll dig into how Richard II did fall from power, and how it gave
way to the rise of the Lancastrian dynasty. This time on Tasting History.
The Crustade Lombarde, or Lombardy Custard, is essentially just a fruit
custard tart, but with a medieval twist. See while it has eggs, and fruit and
cream, and sugar which would be normal in a fruit custard tart. It also has some
interesting ingredients like bone marrow, and parsley. Bet you didn't see those
coming. So the recipe I'm going to use today comes from the Harleian manuscript,
and reads as thus "Take good cream and leaves of parsley, and eggs the yolks and
the whites and break them into the cream. Beat the mixture until it is so stiff
that it will stand by itself. Then take fresh marrow, and dates cut into two or
three, and prunes and put the dates and the prunes and the marrow into a fair
coffin made of fair paste and put the coffin into the oven until it is a
little hard then draw it out of the oven. Take the liquid and put it into the
coffin and fill it up and cast enough sugar on. If it is Lent leave the eggs,
and marrow out, and then serve it forth." Now this recipe is kind of cool because
it answers a question that I have often wondered and that is how do they do
blind baking in the Middle Ages?Tthey never really mention it in in any
recipes but if you just bake pastry a tart shell by itself it's going
to puff up. So did they use baking beans or pie weights like we do today, and
if so what were they made out of? Well I don't know, but in this case they
actually use the fruit, and the bone marrow to keep the pie pastry down. So
I think that's a little ingenious. Now when it does come to the crust, or as it
calls it a coffin, which iI think is way, cool it calls for a fair coffin made of
fair paste which is going to be made out of fair flour. Which is nice white
refined wheat flour and it's interesting, because in the Middle Ages crusts were
often not meant for actually eating. You would eat the inside and then the crust
was just there to kind of keep everything together, but since this
specifies that it's going to be made out of nice refined wheat flour it kind of
implies that you're going to eat this crust, so interesting. Anyway that is our
first ingredient a nice pie pastry made out of wheat flour.
Now the original probably would have just been water, and flour but go ahead,
and make whatever kind of crust you want, or just buy it nobody's gonna judge you.
I'm not gonna judge you. Next you'll need about 15 dates and 15 prunes. It's gonna
vary depending on the size, but what you want is enough that when they're cut up
they're gonna pretty much cover the bottom of the pie plate. Then about 1/4
cup of bone marrow, a cup of heavy cream, 1/4 cup, or 50 grams of sugar. Now for
this I used turbinado sugar, but you could use regular white sugar, or brown
sugar. Really whatever you got. 2 eggs, 3 tablespoons of finely minced parsley, a
pinch of salt, and the smash of a Like button. Now that's not in the original
medieval recipe, but I promise you it makes everything taste just a little bit
better. Now the recipe says if it be Lent leave the eggs and marrow out, but it not
be Lent so we're leaving the eggs and marrow in. So go ahead and pre-heat your
oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and pull out your marrow bones. Now the best and
easiest way to get marrow is to get an actual marrow bone that's just
chilled, but you can't always find them. Usually if you have a really good
butcher, or an Asian market they'll have them, and they'll actually hack them open
for you which is necessary, but if you don't have that or you just can't find
it then you can always get frozen ones. Just put them in the oven for about 20
minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit and that'll loosen up the marrow enough that
you can scoop it out, but I got an entire leg bone which is by the way, way too
much, but that's what they had and he hacked it open for me at the Asian
market down the street, and so it's gonna be just so much easier to scoop out. I'll
show ya. Just take a spoon, and scoop it out of the bone and it just kind of
crumbles which is perfect, because you're gonna end up having to crumble it anyway,
and then set it aside. Then take your prunes, and chop them up into two or
three pieces each, and then take your dates and chop them up into two or three
pieces each. You want them fairly small because you want to kind of cover all
the gaps when you lay them out.
Then take a 9-inch pie plate, and line it with your dough prick the bottom then
spread out the prunes, and the dates and cover those with the marrow then
provided that your oven is preheated pop it into the oven for about 10 to 12
minutes until it's pretty much completely cooked. Now while that's in
the oven go ahead and mince your parsley nice and fine then in a bowl combine the
cream and the eggs, and whisk now the recipe says to whisk until it stands on
its own. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I assumed it meant like peaks. Well
because you're using a whole egg instead of egg whites it's probably never going
to get like stiff peaks like a meringue, or whipped cream. So if you can
just get it you know fairly firm nice soft peaks that's going to be good
enough. Then add in your pinch of salt, and your parsley and whisk that in. Now
you'll notice that salt is not actually mentioned in the recipe so you can leave
it out if you want, but salt is almost always omitted from medieval recipes, but
we know that they used it so I think it was just maybe one of those things
that you know cooks just knew to throw that in there, but I'm just using a pinch
so if you leave it out probably not a huge deal. So I've made this tart twice
now, and the first time I made it was was quite some time ago before I started the
show, and I made it like a pecan pie where all of the ingredients would be
together in the mixture, in the custard, but that's not what this recipe
says. This recipe has you put all the fruit on the bottom, then you make the
custard with a filling, and then instead of including the sugar in that, the sugar
is cast on top and I kind of thought hmm that's that's interesting. So the first
time I I didn't do it that way but this time I did, and you'll see how it turns
out. So by now the pie shell should be ready, so take it out of the oven, and
reduce the oven to 375 Fahrenheit or in 190 Celsius. Now you want to let the
crust cool pretty much all the way before adding in the filling, but once it
is cool add in the cream, and egg filling, and then cast sugar on,
and now maybe in the Middle Ages they would have just used a little bit of
sugar I don't know but I pretty much covered the whole top with sugar because
I like things sweet, and you know why not show off, you're the king. Then set the
custard back into the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the top starts to brown.
Now while the tart bakes let's take a look at the king who ate it, Richard
II. So like I said this is less a history about the custard itself, and
more history about the king who ate it, Richard II. I thought I would do
it this way because he played such an important role in the culinary history
of the Middle Ages, so I thought I could just kind of shoehorn it in plus I think
it's interesting, and it's my show so I can do what I want.
Now Richard II became king of England at the tender age of 10 so it's probably no
surprise that he was not exactly down-to-earth. In an episode a few weeks
back about The Forme of Cury which was England's first cookbook, and created by
Richard's chefs. I'll link to it in the description below. I discussed how
Richard really loved the finer things in life.
He held lavish banquets filled with fantastic food. He wore fine clothes, and
commissioned expensive pieces of art, and while all that sounds just peachy he
could be a bit much. He was peevish, and capricious, and
notoriously thin-skinned. He was in need of constant praise. In fact he was the
first English king to make sure that everyone around him called him your
majesty, or your high royal presence. He created an air of divinity around the
crown, that kind of Divine Right of Kings and that didn't sit too well with the
the nobles of England, because up until then the English King had really been
first among equals. He was in charge, but he had to listen to the whole group
especially after Magna Carta 170 years before, and it didn't make things better
that Richard really liked to play favorites, and the favorites that he
chose tended to be seen as kind of upstarts, and many blamed them for
counseling Richard into some really poor policies that eventually led to the
peasant revolt in 1381. What made it almost even
worse was that Richard to the peasants came out smelling like a rose which was
ridiculous, and as he grew more powerful he siphoned off money from the
government to give to his favorites and pay for his extravagant lifestyle,
including these amazing banquets that he had. In the play "Richard II"
Shakespeare has his Uncle, John of Gaunt chastise the young king by saying
"Landlord of England art thou now, not King" and truly it was John of Gaunt who
kept the wolves at bay for Richard, because at once he was one of his
greatest critics, but he was also his most fervent protector. So fast-forward
to 1386 and John of Gaunt decides to go off to
Castile to press his claim to the throne their leaving poor King Richard to his
own devices. Well it didn't take long for Richard to elevate Robert de Vere, his
number one favorite, and "familiaritas obsonenae" lover to Duke of Ireland. The
nobles against Richard now known as the Lord's appellant retaliated by holding
what was known as the Wonderful Parliament which attempted to rein the
king in, and basically dismiss a lot of his favorites from court, but then
Richard just turned around, and declared them all treasonous. So yeah things were
not going well in in England, and this is where our tart enters the story. On
September 23rd 1387 Richard and the Bishop of Durham held a lavish feast for
two thousand courtiers in London. Ostensibly in honor of John of Gaunt -
as far as I can tell was out of a country at the time, but I don't know
maybe he was in for the weekend, seems doubtful. Now one thing that makes this
feast so interesting to us today is that we actually know everything that was
served at the feast, and in what order we even have the shopping list and it gives
us a good idea of just how much these dinners for Richard were costing the
kingdom. 14 oxen lying in salt, a hundred and twenty heads of sheep fresh, a
hundred, and forty pigs of lard and grease enough, however much that is, fifty
swans, two hundred and ten geese, sixty dozen hens, four hundred koenings are big
rabbits, a hundred dozen pigeons, a hundred and twenty gallons of milk ,12
bushels of apples, and eleven thousand eggs. The feast was broken up into three
courses. Each course had like 15 to 20 different dishes, and the dish that
finished out the first course was the Lombardy Custard.
Now while this feast was probably no more lavish than any other feast that
Richard held the mood in the kingdom was turning against Richard, and this kind of
spending didn't really help in the way of optics. See England was in the
fiftieth year of the Hundred Years War, and everyone was broke paying for it,
rich people and poor people alike, and here's Richard having a giant feast for
his uncle who's not even in town. So Richard couldn't be that surprised when
on December 19 the Lord's appellant headed by Richard's own cousin, and John
of Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke raised an army and defeated the king at The
Battle of Radcot Bridge sending his favorite Robert de Vere scampering off to
the continent, where he died a couple of years later, but that's a couple more
years than most of Richard's followers got, because the Lord's appellant purged
Richards court of his favorites and beheaded his top eight, but they stopped
just short of deposing the king himself for as another one of Richard's uncle's
the Duke of Gloucester said we do not rebel or arm ourselves against the king
except in order to instruct him. Seriously we're gonna buy that? Well it
just goes to show you should never leave a job half done, because over the next
ten years Richard became more despotic and maybe understandably paranoid, and
finally executed most of those who rose up against him, but his cousin Henry
Bolingbroke escaped, and a year later when he returned he overthrew Richard
declaring himself King Henry IV, first of the Lancastrian dynasty. Poor
Richard was locked away, and died soon thereafter ironically of starvation, but
I am NOT going to follow in Richards footsteps and die of starvation. No, no I
am going to eat this Lombardy Custard, which should be ready to take out of the
oven. So after about 20 minutes the top should look nice and set, but should have
a slight wobble in the middle. Go ahead and take it out of the oven, and
let it cool. So here we are our Crustade Lombarde. It smells so good. I kind of
thought that because I cast sugar on top that there would be almost like a crust,
or actually I was worried that it was going to burn, but it didn't. It was
like it melted in, muah, beautiful. It looks completely different from the one that I
did a while back so I'm curious to see how the flavor is different. Here we go.
Really good. Nice and sweet, good amount of sugar, no more than that because the
dates, and the prunes are already so sweet. The flavor is similar to the to
the one that I baked, but the texture is completely different. It's much more,
it's like a custard. The other one wasn't really like a custard. This one is like a
custard, because everything was separated. Now I didn't expect the marrow to come
through, I kind of figured that that would just kind of be like a source of
fat in the in the dish, but I expected maybe the parsley too and I could taste
a piece, but I didn't feel like the flavor infiltrated it in any way. I'm
wondering if the parsley is actually meant to give it a sort of green tint,
though I don't really see a green tint on this, because they often use parsley
and other foods to to color their food. Now if you're interested in learning
more recipes that Richard II would've eaten I have a wonderful playlist down
here of all The Forme of Cury recipes that i've done so far on the show. So
make sure to hit that Like button and I will see you next time in Tasting
History.